The Obama Fundraising Machine

Last Friday, Beth gave Michelle and me a wonderful download from Meaghan Burdick's keynote presentation (Ms. Burdick being the director of direct marketing for the Obama campaign). Here are my notes:

- Strategy: “we’re going to try a lot of stuff that’s never been tried before and see what works”
- In 05, they had no cash … like $1MM
- Started w 90K donors … in two yrs, had 13MM donors
- “we need to take huge risks”
- Started with a logo/message “HOPE” and EVERY comm carried this and never swayed from this message … EVERYone had to repeat this at ALL times. The message is HOPE over and over and over to EVERYone.
- Spent a ton of money despite unproven/risky nature
- Focused on modern tech at every turn
- People developing their own websites (like firstgiving?) and LOTS of people did this and used the Obama FR kits.
- First donation amount generated a premium. Button if small. T shirt if more. So these people became ads unto themselves.
- Every single direct mail package looked different … carried common thread
- Direct mail incl sound cards with Barack Obama talking
- So no testing really (which makes sense due to short term focus … no opportunity to test and learn in a pol campaign)
- Public rallies – cheap – backyard bbq feel … “come on down and meet barrack obama”
- Telemarketing (TM) big
- Acquisition phone calling to build donor base. TMing off of call list. Senators’ calling lists DID NOT work. They had to find lists for non tradl political markets.
- IMMED reactive to news … next AM would have email out re news
- Merchandising – get away from hokey, red white and blue common pol look.
- Mybarrackobama.com "facebook-ish" because THEY built it (unlike Cause page), it sounds like they could link to database. (Equivalent for us would be using a donor database social network module to create our social network, so that we could track social net activity to the donor.)
- Fulltime regional staff to help reg folks raise $ … answered their Qs and gave fundraising advice
- Online: built EM list thru any poss method – collected EM adds from everywhere.
- Vids in every single email almost
- Imp to make folks feel a part of the movement esp thru their action
- Not about BO, but about what YOU are doing to make the change
- BO says it’s all about you, which makes people feel great … and they credit BO for making them feel great

How does this relate to us? What is here that ISN’T in our 5 year plan?
- News Cycle Relevancy/Reaction: How can we be prepared to talk about prison riots (like last week)(PF) and major news items (BP) to our audience? And, yes, BP does this all the time, but we want special things that stand out. The daily broadcast is fine, but if it doesn’t stand out…
>>Action Item: GET DAVID C, SUSAN R, KERRY, and STEVE B together to determine opportunities
>>Especially important to establish this capability out of the gate for our new websites. Must be immediately seen as *the* destination for news on our areas of focus, and for our take on that news.