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Fundraising Lessons from Obama

How Did Obama Raise All That Money?
Venture capitalist Mark Gorenberg explains what drove the fundraising phenomenon

“In terms of internet fundraising, instead of saying on the site, ‘donate, donate, donate,’ they said, ‘engage, empower, and own.'”

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2 Comments

  1. Andy wrote:

    I think that the strategies employed by Obama were really powerful. He was really tapping into the realities of the world we live in.
    I really believe that to be effective in fund raising, it is essential to realize that we are living in an ever changing world. It is so important to make the best use possible of technology and the internet. I recently came across this amazing online fund raising solution (http://micalendar.ca/online-fundraising-calendar-program.html) – it’s a great tool, linked to your website, where your donors get to personalize a calendar and the proceeds go to you. I think this is a really neat idea and great use of the internet.

    Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:19 pm | Permalink
  2. Obama was incredibly successful with his political fundraising campaigns due to harnessing the power of the social web. While engaging with likely donors, he was able to amass a large volunteer base of millions of people who all donated on average $20, which amounted to tens of millions of dollars in new donations. A major reason for converting all of these visitors to ‘sign ups’ was the use of A/B multi-variate landing page testing of various messages, pictures, videos and more.

    By researching all, his campaign was able to use precise data to make incredibly accurate decisions on what message works and what is not resonating with potential supporters.

    Obama ran the best political fundraising campaign in history and is on track to raise $1 billion – first candidate ever to do so, for the next election. Needless to say, he will be very tough to beat in 2012.

    Friday, May 6, 2011 at 5:49 pm | Permalink