On October 10th, 2023, the College Republicans of America achieved a critical milestone, officially beginning its sixth month of operation. Over those six months, the CRA executive board had been working hard to rebrand and rebuild the College Republicans, across the nation and from the ground up. In a statement to CR News, CRA President Will Donahue recounted the organizations humble beginnings.

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“Two and a half years ago, fellow students and members of my executive board laughed at my inauguration speech for state chair of the California College Republicans when I shared my three goals for our movement. At that 2021 convention at Treasure Island in Las Vegas I told our students: one, I wanted to take our statewide operation national and create College Republicans of America to replace the CRNC; two, I wanted to pay students to knock doors; and three, I wanted to help students get jobs,” Donahue said.

“By 2022, at the end of my term, CCR had the highest fundraising numbers on record for a state federation in the country at over $52,000, the most social media followers in the country at over 25,000, and we were hosting statewide conventions in Las Vegas.” Donahue explained.

“Despite our success, they still said it couldn’t be done. Two years later, we proved them wrong.”

Since CRA’s inception, we have recruited over 1,500 new freshman students to join our organization, and have added in 100 different chapters across 50 states to our tally. President Donahue told CR News how we’ve been putting those numbers to good use.

“Six months into this project, we’ve got a thriving national organization, we’re pipelining students into jobs, we’ve worked out deals to start paying students to knock doors,  we’re making headway on our rebrand for the College Republicans by helping our communities and environment, and we’re partnering with national and international conservative organizations that love our vision for the future of our movement.” 

Put simply, the naysayers were, indeed, proved  wrong. So much so, that it became necessary to launch CR News with its articles published weekly on our website. The program gives our team members experience and exposure within the world of journalism and will keep our supporters everywhere informed on all our activities.

 One of those activities was a hail mary project to send Cal Poly’s Chem-E-Car Competition team to Orlando. The group had been refused funding due to a California law preventing state-funded travel to “discriminatory” states like Florida. CRA stepped in and funded their trip. Then, just a month later Governor Newsom repealed the funding ban, AB 1887, representing a massive win for students across California, and proof CRA is making a real difference.

That isn’t the only instance of CRA having put its money where its mouth is. Chapters across the nation have contributed to community involvement and improvement. We cleaned beaches and forests with Project Teddy, handed out Bibles and backpacks to hundreds of underprivileged students, and fed hundreds of people at food shelters; pairing our state-level policy impacts with local difference-making

To help us continue to make this change, we added three political powerhouses to our Board of Advisors with Tyler Bower, James Bacon, and Scott Baugh. We also unified the California College Republicans, ending a 4-year war and healing broken relations between conservative factions, and laid the infrastructure for our fundraising machine to propel CRA’s projects into the future. 

Our first chapter tabling materials are also currently being designed, but we already held our first training seminar to teach new presidents how to effectively run their chapters and recruit members, a necessary first step to begin recovering what was lost during Covid.

“As we ramp up our fundraising operation over the next few months, we’re going to continue to exponentially expand across the rest of the country and give students a home where they can both grow as an individual and help make the world a better place.” Donahue said.

President Donahue also took the opportunity to issue heartfelt thank yous to members of the executive board, to all of CRA’s supporters, and even to its detractors.

“Thank you to everyone that believed in our team and joined in the infancy of our organization, I’m incredibly grateful for your faith our idea. I’d also like to say thank you to everyone that didn’t believe in me, because that negativity was exactly the fuel I needed to start this project. Also, I’d like to give a huge thank you to Billy and Jack who have been with me since the very beginning and helped grow this organization into a behemoth. The rest of our board has also worked incredibly hard and I’m incredibly grateful for their sacrifices, but Jack and Billy were with me literally on day one, cold calling chapters all over the country, and I couldn’t have done it without them.”

“I’m excited for what the next six months will bring, with it will come new challenges, but I have faith that this momentum will not stop as God has clearly looked fondly upon our operation. We are very blessed,” Donahue finished.

We have had a huge impact in a short amount of time, from changing people's lives and communities to impacting policy at the state level. From all of us, thank you. Thank you for continuing to believe in our movement and be sure to stay tuned. 

We promise the best is yet to come