Barack Obama's unprecedented campaign generated an astounding $640 million. People in the political and fundraising sectors are looking for answers on how the Obama campaign was able to achieve such great fundraising success. Imagine if he had lost the election? I wonder what the fallout would be? The amount that he raised needs to be viewed within the context of how the money was used.
So how was it used? Anyway that the Obama campaign saw fit. And the reason is that 91% of the funds were raised through indivdual contributions. And 0, yes I said zero, came from federal funds. In essence, nearly all the Obama money was UNRESTRICTED. Truly, a developement director's dream. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00009638
It wasn't an accident either. The Obama campaign implemented systems that could support grassroots activity and generate huge sums of money from small contributions at a low cost. It's a strategy worth taking note of as you devise a fundraising strategy for your organization. More unrestricted, low-cost contributions is good. Restricted public funding is not as good. Major donations may not be an absolute necessity.
But the prevailing thought is that the only reason Obama raised so much money was because the cause was so compelling. According Jeff Brooks at the Donor Power Blog, it was simply too compelling of an offer for people to refuse. And that nonprofits should first look at their own offering and see if it is compelling enough to generate such success before making wholesale changes to their fundraising engines.
It's true that Obama's cause was ultra-compelling for all the obivous reasons. So what do you do if your organization can not match the offer that was made by the Obama campaign?
The most important thing that you can do is to make the ASK more compelling. Take for example, the nightly calls I've received lately from the Massachusetts Special Olympics phone banks. It's the holidays. Seemingly everyone needs money. So I must admit a bit of hesitancy to answer the phone when I see "Special Olympics" on the caller ID. It's easy for me to reject them because I would be rejecting a telesales operator. No big deal. The ask is simply not compelling even though the cause is a great one. Around the same time, someone in my family ran in a half marathon and asked if I would donate to them because they had to raise $500 for their cause in order to participate. I gave without hesitation. To be honest, I don't even remember which charity was the recipient of the funds. Someone in my family was asking for a modest donation on their behalf. Of course I was going to give. The cause itself didn't really matter because THE ASK WAS COMPELLING.
This is why we're huge proponents of the "a-thon" model which can include walkathons, marathons, road races, bike rides, etc... Any forum or medium that allows people to ask their networks for money on your behalf makes the ask more compelling.
Another key factor in Obama's success is his use of the intenet to raise money. In January 2008 alone, Obama raised $32 million. $28 million was from internet donors. These are low cost transcations. Without the internet, the costs of administering all of these transactions would have been far too high.
There is nothing surpising here. Nonprofits already know that they need more online donations. But if orgs can combine ultra-compellng asks with low costs methods fo aggregating funds, they have inched closer towards replicating Obama'a model.
Again, this is why we're big proponents of the a-thon model but only if it is combined with software like SWEET that will keep your cost per transaction very low.
And finally, remember that your cause may not be Barack Obama, but your asks can be equally as compelling.
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