Prater Raines has been the leading provider of online campaigning tools to the Liberal Democrats since 2002. Our scalable, hosted solution is used by hundreds of Lib Dem sites across the country – from MPs to MEPs, local parties to party campaign organisations, council groups and regions. Find out more here.
Prater Raines are delighted to be working with the Liberal Democrats on the development of a new Local and Regional Party Portal. This is due to launch in January 2020.
The Portal will be a user friendly web interface to allow Local and Regional Party Officers to:
In September 2017, the management of the Liberal Democrat Christmas Draw told us they were hanging up their tombola wheel. It made us dad that they were going to stop the draw after over 20 years.
The Lib Dem Christmas Draw was a nationally organised ticket based raffle run by a team of volunteers since 1995. In that time, it raised well over half a million pounds for local parties and central Lib Dem funds. Party members, supporters their families and friends won over 800 prizes.
However, in recent years there had been a fall in the number of Local Parties participating. Much of this was due to the amount of work that was involved for the Local Parties and the draw organisers. Tasks such as ordering, distributing, collecting and sending back the tickets, stubs and money. Buying the tickets became more inconvenient as the use of cheques fell. The draw looked to be on the way out.
But it remained a great idea, and a really strong fundraiser for the Party. So after discussion, we were delighted to be commissioned to develop and launch the new online Liberal Democrat Christmas Draw.
Prater Raines are delighted to be accredited by the Liberal Democrats as an Approved Supplier under their GDPR compliance programme. We’ve been supplying websites for the Party for over 15 years, so really hoped we would!
The accreditation is for our Lib Dem “Foci” website service as a “Website, Email, Campaigns and Social Media Platform”.
However, our WordPress installations and support are acknowledged to meet their GDPR compliance requirements as well. Our WordPress sites have UK hosting and always run on the latest version. They automatically upgrade on your behalf, ensuring data is stored within the local WordPress database. Additionally providing regular plugin updates and built-in SSL support.
In July we launched a new site with a bespoke design for Stephen Lloyd, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman (and former MP) for Eastbourne.
The new site was a key part of Stephen’s recently announced bid for re-election at the next General Election.
The site is based on and has the same functionality of our Liberal Democrat service, but the look and feel was intentionally very different to our other sites and based on ideas from Stephen’s team. It’s also designed to be totally mobile friendly and drive sign-ups to build Stephen’s team – and it’s working.
A fresh look for the website of one of our longstanding clients: Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale and Leader of the Liberal Democrats.
The design has been tested to be responsive and look good on a wide range of devices and screen sizes, and is one of over 30 available to the users of our Lib Dem Foci2 service.
Lib Dem clients can find out more on our Foci2 Facebook support group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/Foci2/
Prater Raines has been asked by various Liberal Democrat regions to deliver websites for their PCC candidates.
An important part of each campaign will be fundraising, using our Go Cardless powered donation facility, and keeping in touch with supporters, using our extensive email campaigning function.
Email campaigns with Prater Raines can be targeted at every level, with the ability to send emails to supporters in specific polling districts, wards, and constituencies. Email campaigns can also target supporters based upon the campaigns they’ve supported (through signing petitions or completing surveys), the amounts they’ve donated, and whether or not they’re a party member.
Wider campaigns can be developed through the use of petitions, surveys, opinion polls, and events set up from within your site, all of which can easily be shared to social media.
Prater Raines has been supporting Liberal Democrat MPs since 2003, when we first developed the website of Andrew Stunell. We continue to do so today, delivering websites for Tim Farron MP and Greg Mulholland MP.
Through our system of daily, weekly and monthly email digests, we offer an unparalleled ability to match ground campaigning through Focus leaflets with online campaigning via email. You produce the content, and we’ll handle the delivery. The perfect system for hardworking local MPs.
In these days of big data, we also offer open, click and donation tracking as standard, as well as the ability to import data from other sources.
We were delighted to be asked to create a website presence for three candidates in the Liberal Democrat Presidential Election 2014. Each website needed to make use of base Foci2 skins in a unique way, incorporating strong imagery, engaging content, and CSS overrides, to create a brand identity for the candidate that distinguished them from their competitors who were also using the same web services.
Each campaign sought to engage with members in unique ways, leveraging our social media integration, contact/volunteer forms, and email digests to keep supporters engaged and updated throughout the campaign.
The Liberal Democrat President, Sal Brinton continues to use her site to help keep members up to date with her work as President.
Liberal Democrat Image sell party branded goods and support material for Liberal Democrat activists and campaigners online and by phone.
With a wide range of different products, many personalisable and available in different varieties, their online shop needed to be budget-conscious yet flexible and easily updateable.
The site includes a secure checkout, integration with their payment provider HSBC, and can authenticate party members for the sale of restricted products.