Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

Learning from the Democrats: Raising Money Online

I think the online fundraising bonanza that is going on during this primary season is something we in the non-profit world should be watching closely.

I'm not primarily going to focus on how much has been raised, although the raw numbers are staggering. Today's edition of The New York Times reports that of the $36.1 million that Obama raised during January, $28 million (78%) came over the Internet. The evidence is clear: motivated donors choose the Internet. The corollary to that is that if you have online donations enabled on your site, but you're not raising a lot of money, it's not because there's anything wrong with your audience. People need to be motivated to give.

So let's focus on strategy and e-mail design. First, the content of the e-mails that these candidates are sending out is primarily intended to raise money. Clinton's e-mails are exclusively pitches for donations. Obama (or his staff) writes more often with editorial messages, commenting on victories or challenges ahead. They insert links to video clips more often. Obama's e-mail list is apparently over a million names. That's got to be paying off, since they send several appeals a week.

I would prefer more editorial. I find pitches for money tiring. It seems to me that there's an opportunity for a better segmentation strategy where content for existing donors would be different than non-donors, etc. That's not happening now, and I guess we'll have to wait another four years for that.

What's also interesting to me is that a standard template design for e-mails is developing. Take a look at this: 

Note that the "ask" happens in several different places in the same e-mail. There's always a graphic on the right side. Then there's a call to action placed several times within the text. Apparently putting it in several times, separated by white space works. Both Democratic candidates follow pretty much the same layout.

I have never seen a solicitation that looks like this from a non-profit. Perhaps someone should test it?

Generational Shift Indeed

When the Kennedy family endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, the rhetoric was all about generational change. And that change is no better demonstrated than in Obama's deft use of the Web.

Consider this:

I watched some of the "State of the Union" address last night, and fell asleep. Apparently the Democrats did the normal thing and broadcast a rebuttal on television right afterwards.

When I checked my e-mail at about 1:00 AM (don't ask) Obama had already sent me an e-mail with *his own* rebuttal.

They guy apparently rushed upstairs to his Senate office and recorded this:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/sotu 

For the first time, a presidential candidate is in "my" living room speaking to me about something that happened only a few hours ago. It's direct, and though scripted, seems personal. And please note out how well the Web page is laid out. The simple and direct calls to action are a model for us all.

We are indeed witnessing a generational change -- and this one is in how campaigns are won and waged. We're seeing how the immediacy of e-mail and online video can cut the press right out of the equation. I'm just imagining how a president Obama would use the Web in this way. Can you imagine a weekly video-blog from the White House?  It could happen - and it should happen.

Presidential Politics and the Fall of "Old Media."

As both an Internet entrepreneur and an avid political junkie, I'm just loving the presidential campaign this time around. I've been carefully watching what each of the candidates is doing online, and naturally paying a lot of attention to their e-mail strategies.

However, the subtext of last week's NBC debate in Nevada wasn't as much about the candidates as it was about the chasm that lies between the traditional media (i.e., television) world and the new media (i.e., Internet) world in which we are all now living. 

If you didn't see the debate, imagine the following scenario. You have the three candidates (in a last minute power-play, NBC managed to prevent Kucinich from participating) sitting at a large table across from two anchors, Brian Williams and Tim Russert. Then, about 15 feet away in some kind of theatrical Siberia sat NBC's "Today Show" co-anchor Natalie Morales. What was she doing over there? Well, she was “taking e-mail questions from the public.” However, the e-mails had already been sent in -- there was nothing live about it. The computer was a prop.   

Let's examine this a bit further. NBC chooses Morales to represent the voting public, but then sticks her back in a corner where the candidates can't even see her without craning their necks. Isn't NBC by its actions implicitly saying that its smart white guys belong "at the table" with the candidates, but questions from the voting public belong off to the side? Apparently our questions aren't legitimate enough to be front and center.

And the chasm between the public and the candidates didn't end there. The first 20 minutes of this two-hour “debate” were all about the journalists. Going into it, everyone knew that Clinton and Obama had kissed and made up to try to get away from the gender and race scuffle they had been engaged in for the last few days. So naturally, Brian Williams had to begin with questions about that. Okay, that's fair, we expected it. But then it just didn't stop. Russert chimed in. Question after question pounded away about what the candidates said three weeks ago, six months ago, and in books published a year ago. For the entire first section of the debate the candidates fought to get air time to address the issues that any American would possibly find relevant. But the journalists were intent on making it all about them. They had created the story, they had fomented the story, and now they needed to keep the story alive so that they could look good for having reported it in the first place.

Yet every day there is more and more evidence that as we the American public embrace the openness of the Internet, we demonstrate that we don't want anyone in the middle anymore.   

This was brilliantly exemplified by The YouTube debates in November, in which average Americans videotaped and sent in their own questions which were broadcast at the debate, and the candidates had to respond to them directly. These questions were honest, refreshingly direct, and always relevant. The YouTube debates signaled the beginning of a new era in which the domination by the national media (and its penchant for celebrating itself rather than focusing on the things that people care about) will come to an end. Why? Because by the next presidential election we all will be watching TV on flat-screens connected to the Internet, and we'll control what we watch that much more completely.

This debate showed how our television networks still don't get it. They believe that they are still living in a world in which they rule. Yet, as the Internet develops, the public’s demonstrated eagerness for authentic information will force an environment in which we are much more directly in contact with the candidates who have a story to tell. One can easily imagine a web-based nightly live "Obama-cast" from the campaign bus. Right now, we're in the very beginning of the digital age, but our media structures are still stepchildren of the 1950s. As John Edwards says, “we can do better than this." And we will. 

Benchmarking Online Presidential Donations

There's a lot of news today about how much each presidential candidate has raised so far. Not all the candidates have reported, and the amount of information they each disclose on their sites isn't consistent.

Far from the total amount raised, what's interesting to me is how much was given online.  Hillary raised $26 million - the most of any candidate, and of that $4.2 million was online. In contrast, John Edwards raised less, only $14 million, but $3.3 million was given online. (I can't find any simliar information for Obama or even Biden, at least not yet.)

So, it's Edwards 22% online, vs. Clinton 16% online. It could be that these numbers are skewed by all sorts of manipulation behind the scenes. Or maybe the Edwards web staff is doing a better job in this arena, or Edwards' donors are more web savvy than Clinton's?

What can we glean from this information? Since these donations are highly motivated --  let's just say that somewhere between 15% to 20% is now a good benchmark to aim for.  For arts organizations, where donors are likely to be less motivated, shall we discount this by, say, half? 

Is your organization bringing in 7% - 10% of your donations online? 

Edwards Gets My vote

This is not a political statement. It is a marketing statement.

Just look at this main page. I cannot imagine what our arts world would look like if every arts organization had a main screen that was as clearly focused on collecting e-mail addresses as this is. Check the call to action, and the use of design to guide your eye to the sign-up box.

Also, notice the little red area on the bottom right that enables you to bypass this screen and go to the web site directly.

Since the election is so far away, who can tell which candidate is better or worse? At least for today, my vote is for Edwards.

Obama's Web Strategy

So, it's getting fun now.

First of all, the nice clean uncluttered Obama for President web site has suddenly become very busy and confusing. That's too bad, because what he's doing seems remarkable.

This guy (or his advisors) really get the Web. Check out his "pre-announcement" which I found way more interesting than his speech this weekend announcing the beginning of his campaign.  As of this writing "Obama TV" appears to be not working (oops..) but if you have a moment go trolling on his site for the "pre-announcement" video.  

It's interesting to contrast this with Hilary's activities so far. She started her campaign by saying "let's start the conversation" and staged several live streaming video chats in the next few days.

Here's Obama inviting people to create social networking sites and even write their own blogs about his candidacy.  It's all there on his site.

If there was every a model of how to use the Web to create community - these two candidates are blazing new trails in politics and writing a "how-to" book for  other non-profits.