I wanted to take some time today to look at a few news clips out on the Internet that reflect the changing way in which we are looking at online contributions. The first one comes from Albuquerque Tribune about Democratic candidate Martin Heinrich who uses ActBlue and is running for Congress in NM-01.
Online support, however, is growing and is key to reaching people he probably otherwise wouldn’t, he said. And sites like actblue.com are an easy way to get donors to give
over an extended amount of time, including on an automatic, monthly
basis."For working folks, it’s a much more manageable way to give," he said.
Recurring contributions are a great way to spread out a larger contribution over a longer period of time. For families on limited or fixed incomes, this allows for easier participation in the political process, something that should not be limited to any one class of people. ActBlue has enabled this from the beginning, helping candidates and county parties set up steady revenue streams. In the future, we’ll look to provide our users with tools to better track these recurring donations and visually plan out donations.
Our next piece actually takes us to a blog story about another ActBlue campaign, that of Steve Novick running for the Oregon Senate seat held by Gordon Smith (R).
According to the Novick for Senate campaign, in the 48 days since his
announcement, the campaign has now raised over $100,000 from 300+
donors. At this moment, 253 of those donations for $56,797 have come via ActBlue.
Wow, would you ever expect to see over 50% of a federal campaign’s initial contributions made online? In "big-money" politics you might be more accustomed to a large number of high dollar checks providing the initial boost; clearly, this is changing. No one source of funding need be dominant, and we recognize that ActBlue’s ability to expand the donor pool is helping to diversify campaigns and their funding.
