My non-partisan, conservative educational foundation, the Leadership Institute, has as its mission to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders. My staff and I do this by recruiting reasonably conservative people and teaching them how to win.

My Institute now offers 39 types of training schools, which are described in our Programs Catalog.

I invite you to attend one or more of these schools, which are reliable sources of well-trained candidates and campaign staff.

Last year, because of generous donors, the Institute trained 6,787 people. Since I founded it 1979, the Institute has trained more than 62,000 people, including thousands here in California.

I've been Virginia's Republican National Committeeman since 1988.

Back in 2003, I wrote a long letter to all my fellow members of the Republican National Committee. That letter directly addressed the opportunities for our party to increase its institutional strength, to increase the number and effectiveness of grassroots activists for our Republican candidates.

Before today, virtually no one but RNC members has seen that letter. Because it is relevant to the dangers and opportunities which face us in 2008, I have brought copies for you today.

In my judgment, it would be the height of folly for conservative Republicans to throw away our credentials within the Republican Party. It's the only party which, in the decades ahead, can be used as the vehicle for conservative principles.

Our Republican Party is a large and often powerful institution. It works best when power flows from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.

At the national level, we have three main organizations, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Today, the RNC is in much better financial shape than the Democratic National Committee. But the NRSC and the NRCC are falling behind the National Democratic Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

There are two reasons why the NRSC and the NRCC are less successful now in fundraising than the House and Senate Democrat committees.

First, the business community has dramatically shifted its giving from the NRSC and the NRCC to the Democrat counterpart committees.

The Democrats now have majorities in both Houses of Congress. Too many in the business community give political contributions to buy access rather than to affect the election results.

Second, the disparities are due also to a long series of short-sighted decisions within the House and Senate Republican committees.

Unlike the RNC, the NRSC and the NRCC have notoriously failed to invest in building their donor bases. That's called eating your seed corn.

Finding new donors and treating them well pays off handsomely in the long run, but it costs a lot of money in the short run.

Too many chairmen of the NRSC and the NRCC have operated these organizations for the short run. They believed that their short tenures would be judged almost entirely by the results of the upcoming elections.

Faced with the choice of pouring all their resources into the upcoming election campaigns or investing some of their net money into recruiting new donors for the future, they opted for spending almost everything on the election at hand.

And they pressure their existing donors unmercifully to squeeze the last possible dollar from them, without considering how many donors will be turned off permanently by their high-pressure fundraising tactics.

After all, next year somebody else will be head of their committee.

Short-sightedness is understandably endemic in top-down organizations which frequently change leadership, where there's little or no thought given to the group as a long-term institution.

The Republican National Committee, however, is much more of an institution. It has members elected from the bottom up. Its members get and pay attention to frequent reports, which include regular information on how many new donors are being acquired. Its chairmen are not automatically replaced after each congressional election.

That is not to say that the RNC is even close to perfect or that the RNC always treats its donors as well as they should be treated.

But unquestionably, the RNC, as an institution, takes a longer-term view of its mission.

Similarly, Republican Party organizations at the state and local levels are most successful when power flows from the bottom up and when they are led by people who intend to build the party as an institution -- for the long haul.

There is always some tension between elected public officials and grassroots party activists. Many activists were participating long before those public officials were elected and fully intend to be active in the party long after those elected politicians leave public office.

The truth is that many public officials will try to move Heaven and earth to make party organizations wholly owned subsidiaries of their own political operations.

They distrust and often dislike almost anyone who is motivated by principles rather than by personalities, anyone who is not always willing to do exactly as he or she is told.

When a politician who has achieved a strangle-hold on a party organization passes from the scene, as certainly happens sooner or later, what's left is often only ruins.

And then, principled grassroots activists have the long, arduous, and sometimes impossible task of putting a political party together as an institution again.