techPresident - Tax Day Special Report: What is Online Fundraising? - Comments

A Small Percentage

Just6Dollars — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:34:31 -0400

However it's defined, online contributions count for just a small percentage of the total amount candidates raise. The contributions with the most cache and influence come in much larger amounts than individual online contributions. The only way American voters can "write a bigger check" is through public funding.

A Very Valid Debate

Michael Turk — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:55:25 -0400

Since the McCain campaign's success in 2000, the media has really looked at "online fundraising" as a type of fundraising separate and distinct from any other fundraising, and has given credit to candidates who are able to generate a lot of "online donations", but never ask exactly this question.

I have a lot of e-mail from people since I posted my critical exploration of Mitt's "online fundraising". Much of the e-mail I have received is critical of my view that driving your $2300 donors to give through the website instead of by check is not "online fundraising".

I tend to believe that direct mail, telemarketing, and your website generally attract the same donors. They're people who normally give small amounts, but may occasionally bring in a large $2300 donation. The RNC seems to agree, for the most part, as they have their finance shop divided into small dollar and major donor segments. A small dollar effort (like a mail piece) may prompt a large gift, but the bulk of the $2300 donations are done through personal solicitation, not online.

If I e-mail 500,000 people who are typically small donors, and a large gift comes in, I consider that a grassroots contribution.

Under the definition you've proposed, donations made in conjunction with something like Mitt's National Call Day would be an online contribution if they fulfilled through the website. These weren't calls to $25 donors. Meg Whitman, Matt Blunt and Bill Weld don't call $25 donors. Moreover, 400 people don't raise 6.5 million dollars (an average of 2000 per hour per caller) calling $25 donors.

Why, then, would we count those donations in the same way we do Obama's 50,000 "online donations"? Why would give those donations the same weight as an indicator of grassroots strength? It is demeaning to small donors and discourages their role in the process if we say their effort and the effort of fat-cat money men are in the same boat.

I'm tend to be a populist in the sense that I give a lot of small dollar donors as much or more political weight than a large donor. Both, to be sure, are critical to the success of a campaign (at least in today's environment), and the involvement of both is necessary to win. If we seek to measure whether a candidate is appealing to both, we cannot simply lump the two together in one aggregate number simply because they both used a website to give.

If we're going to define everything solicited or fulfilled online as an online donation, then, given the staggering number of variables your lists allow, we may as well not look at "online donations" and stick instead to itemized versus unitemized donors (which Romney, to his credit, also detailed).

Tax Day Special Report: What is Online Fundraising?

Alan Rosenblatt — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:13:06 -0400

With all the attention being paid to how much money the candidates are raising online, I think we need to better understand what “online fundraising” means. Does it just include funds that are solicited and fulfilled online, or does it also include any funds submitted through the candidates’ online contribution forms, regardless of how solicited? Or what if people mail in a check based on an email solicitation? You see, this is not such a simple question.

Further, while we tend to focus on online campaign strategies in isolation from other campaign strategies, that view is already dated. The boundaries between online and offline campaign strategies are blurred, at a minimum, and obliterated at most. One only need look at the spike in Obama’s YouTube views following the extensive coverage CNN and the rest of the media gave to the 1984 video to see that offline developments drive online activity.

So let me suggest a typology for online fundraising:

The solicitation and fulfillment are both online
The solicitation is offline and the fulfillment is online
The solicitation is online and the fulfillment is offline