techPresident - ActBlue - Comments

Is Randy Brinson blowing smoke?

tlsmith — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:35:23 -0500

That number seems awfuly high. I also think it is high since most people who have access to e-mail have multiple addresses, such as one for work, one for home, and one as a "spam catcher".

We're working on it

Joshua Levy — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:23:00 -0500

We're working on fixing the front-page chart -- we'll have it fixed soon.

this has been bugging me...

larethdf — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:18:55 -0500

Your Youtube chart on the front page hasn't been updated in over a month now, yet the Youtube chart page itself seems OK. Can you guys fix this so we don't have to view the full chart to get current numbers?

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.

apologies

Joshua Levy — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:12:42 -0400

Jessica - my bad. I've fixed the post.

I didn't say that!

JessicaFeministing — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:29:22 -0400

Hi Joshua, you've incorrectly attributed a quote to me. Jen Moseley blogged about the MySpace/MTV event. I wasn't even there.

Edwards back on Facebook

Joshua Levy — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:18:08 -0400

John Edwards' profile is back on Facebook. Apparently there were too many messages going out from supporters and it triggered Facebook's spam catcher.

James, Do you really expect

nottellingwho — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:13:14 -0400

James,
Do you really expect that a candidate will be able to personally respond to every query they receive? It doesn't make sense that a candidate would cherry pick to speak directly with one person, while ignoring others...that alienates those he doesn't address. They are much better off putting together videos that have wide spread appeal. Why should a candidate shun the opportunity to speak to as many people as possible and instead waste a vblog on one person?

Just to Clarify

EmergencyCheese — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:29:27 -0400

People seem to have this idea that I only want candidates to respond directly to me. Of course it would be cool if they did that, but I'm really interested in seeing them respond
through video to somebody (anybody!) who sends them a video message.

It doesn't have to be me - in this case, Clark did post a video response to me (which you can see under my video 'Wesley Clark on YouTube.. My contention is that if he wanted to make a video response to me, he should mention my name, just like almost all legitimate video responses on YouTube mention the name of the person they're responding to. That's one big way of telling if the person is really responding or if they just want attention for their video.

I'd be very happy to see candidates address their responses by to whomever they wanted to respond to. This is the same advice that Sam Roake, the manager for David Cameron's web campaign, gave to candidates as quoted on the most recent PrezVid post:

"Don't make the videos scripted and spun. Involve the voters: respond to them and address them by name."

-James Kotecki

I wonder where he went...

Joshua Levy — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:45:43 -0400

Something tells me he isn't gone for good. His campaign site still links to the defunct profile, and he's fully embraced a bunch of other services... I think he'll be back on Facebook.

John Edwards dies on Facebook

nottellingwho — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:06:21 -0400

Edwards has died an enigmatic death on Facebook. He seems to have left the the virtual land of procrastinating college students for greener pastures. So long good buddy... The only question now is, will anyone notice he's gone?