Learning how to fundraise from Barack Obama

The CEO of the Ottawa West Nepean EDA, Neil Adair, has been saying that we could all learn a lot from how Barack Obama is running his campaign. So I looked into it.

Here is an article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/politics/20ob...
that describes how Obama has raised $150 million in donations, 90% of it small, online donations. $36 million in January alone.

Most of this is done by mass emails from the candidate, directing donors to an online site. Small donations (less than $100) are the rule. $150 million in small donations. WOW.

How is this relevant to us? I have been working on electronic donations to candidates for the GPO Oct campaign. GPC Council gave me this task last fall.

You have probably already seen the letter from Maureen Murphy, GPC fundraising guru. Candidates/EDAs can now hook up their websites to the GPC donation engine. You pass in your Elections Canada riding ID number, and the donation is tagged as yours. GPC keeps 20% to cover the costs and contribute to the federal warchest. The rest is transferred to the EDA.

I am setting up free-of-charge websites for GPC candidates (check out http://vote-green.ca). These websites have the donations link built in.

In my own campaign, I will try the Obama approach (OK, Dean/Trippi did it first). Why don't you try it too?