"Show Me the Money"

OK, I admit I've never watched all of the film "Jerry McGuire" (Tom Cruise) which made this phrase famous.

I was intrigued by a news report that the federal libs are being politically timid because, well, they're broke. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=4e...

This lead me to to analyze the latest fundraising reports from the Elections Canada website. Unlike the superficial journalists, I didn't look at absolute dollars raised. I looked at $ per voter. (Voters being determined by current polling numbers X voters in 2006).

The results are attached (and I'll share the spreadsheet with anyone interested.) I feared that GPC was doing a bad job fundraising, but I think that we're actually doing OK, given our fairly small support base (today).

The Bloc is doing MUCH worse. Which is fascinating. Raw numbers: they raised less than $50K, but we raised more than $200K in the Jun-Sep 2007 period.

Clearly, the Conservatives have figured out how to raise lots of money in small donations from a broad base, and the Liberals haven't (since they were so well-fed by the sponsorship $, etc.)

Money doesn't decide elections, but it sure helps. GPC has just hired a new Dir. Operations, Maureen Murphy, and she has a great background in fundraising. I'm looking forward to working with her to get GPC fundraising-per-supporter up where it belongs.