Edwards

Luigi Montanez — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:57:34 -0500

I'm pretty sure that the Edwards campaign hasn't used ActBlue for their primary processing since the spring, as evidenced by their current contribution page (it's most likely by their vendor Plus Three, but someone in the campaign would know better than I do).

Also, I think where ActBlue has innovated has been in creating a culture of low-dollar, high volume online contributions. It's the norm now as a Democratic Netroots activist to contribute through ActBlue. Additionally, there's this expectation of an ActBlue donor to donate small amounts but to several candidates, and that's something that's extremely valuable to the national party and the progressive movement. So while ActBlue is still at it's essence an online contribution processor, it's done it in a way that benefits the cause rather than the company (or in its case, PAC). That's what was so ingenious and new.

Grassroots vs. processing

Patrick Ruffini — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:51:31 -0500

As someone involved with one of these efforts (Rightroots), I'd like to break this down a little further.

I think it's helpful to make a distinction between contributions raised by self-starting activists over the Internet, and campaigns that use ActBlue as their primary engine for processing contributions.

The bulk of ActBlue's money comes from committees and institutions that use it as a contribution engine and market to huge email lists. So, Edwards has raised $4.3 million, and likely very much more than that. (Curiously the Edwards number hasn't grown significantly since the end of the first quarter, and they use ActBlue for all their processing.)

ActBlue will also hide the total amount raised by a committee upon request. John Kerry used them to send earmarked donations to candidates in 2006, generating huge numbers off his 3M+ list. Those numbers were hidden from view. There are no stats on the John Kerry "page" that we can examine.

If you go tho their active and archived Pages directory, you'll see that barely half of their total $32M is accounted for. Pages are what is cited by people who write about this as ActBlue's bread and butter: bloggers raising money in $5-10 increments for favorite candidates, or candidates who are transparent about their processing.

Drilling down further, only $4-6 million out of $32 million has been driven through non-campaign, non-PAC entities (it's been a couple of months since I did this analysis, so forgive the roughness) -- about $2M of it through the Kos Dozen in 2004 and the Netroots Candidates in 2006.

When you look at how they raise a majority of their money, it's a mistake to say that a powerhouse "like ActBlue" doesn't exist on the right or elsewhere on the left. Had online fundraising vendors like Campaign Solutions, Aristotle, and NGP Software organized themselves as earmarking PACs like ActBlue does, it's likely that at least one of them could have surpassed ActBlue's $32 million haul.

So who gets credit for "raising" the money? Vendors who process contributions will always claim credit, but the real story is usually more complicated. If a Congressional candidate raises $50,000 from 100 of his closest friends at $500 a pop, does the processing agent really get credit if it's the candidate's network?

Or what if the candidate sends an email, and 1,000 people respond with an average contribution of $50? That's grassroots, but not necessarily ActBlue's.

But if a blogger sets up a page on ActBlue, and drives contributions through that page, I think both can fairly get the credit -- ActBlue for providing the infrastructure and the blogger for pounding the pavement.

For Rightroots' part, over 90% of our fundraising has fallen into this latter category: grassroots bloggers organizing mass donations independent of the campaigns.

These are all issues Andrew and Micah have thoughtfully raised re: the blurring lines between traditional contributions and "Internet" contributions.

Most of what ActBlue does isn't ingenious or new. And I don't fault them for posting their big number -- it's a great PR trick and people in this space would be stupid not to do it. But a true apples-to-apples comparison would be ActBlue vs. a traditional processing agent, or between the $4-6 million ActBlue has raised through blogs vs. what everyone else has raised through blogs.

Daily Digest: Where is the Republican ActBlue?

Joshua Levy — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:43:31 -0500

David All's Slatecard pulls in its first modest haul, but no Republican site has managed to approximate ActBlue's success; Fred Thompson decentralizes his volunteer calling methods, released voter names into the wild; VA Senate opponents Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner post wildly different campaign videos; and House Republicans are Twittering, are "at the bar downtown talking 2 voterz";

techPresident - Daily Digest: Where is the Republican ActBlue? - Comments

Edwards

Grassroots vs. processing

Daily Digest: Where is the Republican ActBlue?