Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Progress Report RE: TAO14-00052
This is a progress report for a $5,000 grant that was given by the Tides Advocacy Fund
for capacity support. The grant period began October 1, 2014 and ends September 30,
2015.
KCADP states the following: All activities conducted by Kentucky Coalition to Abolish
the Death Penalty were and are consistent with its status under Internal Revenue Code
section 501(c)(3) which remains unchanged since the proposal and related materials were
submitted to The Advocacy Fund. Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
warrants that it is in full compliance with its grant letter dated October 1, 2014 and that, if
the grant was subject to any restrictions, all such restrictions were observed.
Beginning in November 2014, KCADP transitioned from Constant Contact to
voterV OICE, a resource that allows us to have greater impact through our grassroots
educational and lobbying efforts. By contracting with voterV OICE supporters on our
organizational lists not only continued to receive what we describe as “eNews” updates,
but also began to receive action alerts by which they could be in direct contact with their
State Senators and State Representatives.
When new supporters enroll at our various events, e.g., a Witness To Innocence tour or
the Kentucky State Fair, their names are added to the list on voterV OICE. The names of
supporters for whom we have email and home addresses numbers is slightly over 1,100
persons. The total number on the list, which means we can reach others through direct
mail or email only, is just over 2,200.
The constant challenge with lists like this is keeping them up-to-date and making sure the
data entry is correct. This is an area where a dedicated volunteer focused on details could
be helpful. We keep that in mind and have not yet discovered someone who can help in
this way.
Our legislative strategy this year included scheduling of meetings with legislators every
Wednesday when possible. Attending these meetings would be constituents, victim
family members and/or an exoneree. One meeting included the father of one of the men
on Kentucky’s death row. The Coalition spent $910 of this grant to register the Outreach
Coordinator (OC) as a legislative agent and for the time and associated expenses of this
activity. After each of these meetings with 11 legislators, notes were recorded and have
been added to the spreadsheets we keep to use in follow-up meetings with them. KCADP
is keeping a vote tally of each chamber and using this to develop our ongoing strategy.
Through these visits KCADP learns who is supportive, who is not supportive, and who is
not supportive but has serious doubts about the use of the death penalty. We still have
more than 40 legislators in the combined chambers that we need to visit. The OC is
working to schedule meetings during the summer and fall with them. She is using the
voterV OICE list to identify constituents in districts and ask them to attend these
meetings. Use of victim family members, exonerees, family members of death row
inmates and others will continue.
Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Progress Report RE: TAO14-00052
We also used $110 of this grant paying Facebook to “boost” posts on the KCADP
Facebook page. Each time a post was “boosted” the number of those clicking on the
“Like” button increased considerably over times when posts did not get a paid boost.
Also the number of persons reached increased and the number of those engaged did also.
We began uploading videos to Facebook after learning their algorithm favors original
videos directly uploaded rather than linked to Y ouTube. We boosted one in March for
$30 and targeted Kentuckians from a variety of backgrounds. That post was seen by
nearly 13k persons according to Facebook and the video was viewed 4,248 times. This
garnered us more page likes and made persons aware of the problem of the death penalty
in Kentucky who may not have known the Coalition even existed.
In mid-April we boosted a story featuring the father and mother of the child, Martin,
killed in the bombing in Boston. We paid $30.00 and by the time the two day boost was
finished over 8,000 Kentuckians had seen the post and 178 of them liked, commented,
shared or clicked on the post. We gained 9 persons who “liked” our page and some of
them added their names to our supporter list.
A boosted post in December featuring an op-ed in the Courier-Journal by two former
prosecutors and a former Kentucky judge opposing the death penalty brought us 15 new
page likes after being seen by more than 7,000 Kentuckians. All this only cost $20.
For $30 we boosted a post of an op-ed by the dean of one of our Kentucky university
justice programs who in a prior life executed five persons in Georgia. Twenty-four of the
more than 5,000 reached “liked” our page.
We learned that boosting posts on Facebook finds us new supporters every time; and it
educated 1,000s of Kentuckians who forget or have not known there is a death penalty in
this state. We plan to continue to boost posts throughout the coming months. Many of
these include requests for persons to contact lawmakers so we will continue to use this
grant in this capacity building fashion.
About $2,000 remains to be spent. These funds will be spent to pay for the OC’s time
spent on legislator meetings. A portion will also be used to boost more Facebook posts to
reach more Kentuckians so we increase the number of persons following us on the
Facebook page. If any is left when the voterV OICE renewal contract is due, we will
spend the money on that renewal.
This $5,000 grant was a small portion of the total income we received in calendar 2014.
We received from individuals and grantors $63,346 and spent $58,481, primarily ona
salary, fundraising activities, events and the use of media to give the problems associated
with the use of the death penalty a higher profile in the minds of Kentuckians. This has
resulted in a stronger bi-partisan coalition of those working to abolish the death penalty.
