Thank you very much for your kind donations
After the initial billboard launch in December, we have had a great response from supporters, and to date there have been 136 individual donations ranging from $10 to the Libertarianz very generously donating an invaluable $5692.13. Does this make us a front group for the Libertarianz? 🙂 The KilltheBill website has (or will have by the end of the day – I only updated the list last night and it needs to be placed on the site) an updated donors list and the extra donations allowed us to have some fun down in Invercargill.
By pure coincidence (they don’t have a lot of billboard sites down there), the billboard is opposite the Southland Institute of Technology. I only learnt this from the Southland Times reporter who rang up about the billboard, and had to confess to her that it was more good luck than cunning genius on our part. But as you can imagine it has gone down well there, and we have had many e-mails of support and even better more donations.
The Southland Times story was on Page 2 and also highlighted on the front page, and a photo of the billboard is here.
Incidentally the Free Speech Coalition was the first equal third party group to be registered. Just as well as we would have broken the law by now (and it is only January showing how ridiculously low the limits are) if we hadn’t. But do remember we are a small group with no paid staff at all, no office, no fundraiser and no resources except the donations we have received since we launched. We will be sending out individual acknowledgements to donors in the near future. Also once we have the time we’ll detail the costs per billboard. We aren’t required by law to do this until after the election, but plan to have regular disclosure.
UPDATE: Oh forgot to mention that on the flight to Christchurch yesterday I had a gentleman approach me (had not met him before) to say how supportive he was of the campaign and that he has a couple of spare billboard sites, including one by Parliament, which he could lend us. Made my day!