Personal Holiday Fundraising

How the Internet has brought Politicians into our family Celebrations

The Obama Campaign recently introduced (see below) a new facet of fundraising effort that is a continuation of widely expanding genre of raising money that I call Personal Holiday Fundraising.

Political campaigns are about mass communication, and that requires money always.  It is the bane of reality.  Before the late nineties, political campaigns had to rely upon three tried-and-true methods of fundraising: (1) One-to-one personal requests where the candidate or a surrogate would personally ask another for a donation; (2) The Campaign Fund Raiser - such as a dinner (with a visiting crowd-drawing guest); and (3) the direct mail request.  

Email and the internet have not changed those tools, but they have certainly added some interesting new flexibility in tailoring and targeting the message.  Previously it may have been cost effective to do a fundraising letter (with the stamp, the hand written address,etc) to mark or celebrate a birthday, but it was very limited.  I recall seeing a few letters trying to raise money for Reagan's Birthday, but that was it.

Now with the internet, political candidates insert themselves into all of our personal holidays such as birthdays, Father's Day, Mother's Day, and now weddings.  These pitches seek to acheive four critical goals for any electoral campaign:  (1) Connect the candidate with voters on personal issues; (2) Raise Money; (3) Create engagement by having voters "sign" the card, or send a message of support; and (4) develop a database of active supporters.

Mothers' Day

The Obama campaign continues with a near flawless integration of campaign messages and personal holiday fundraising with three efforts.  

(1) Sign the Card.  Voters are asked to "join" the Presdient and sign the Mother's Day Card.  When people click on it they are asked to put in personal information (to build the database) and also for a donation.

(2)  Get a Tweet from the President.  This is something new - where grassroots activists who get five or more contributions attributed to them will be entered in for a chance to have the President tweet to your Mom on Mother's Day.  These sort of promotions are really new in fundraising and thus far incredibly successful. 

(3) The Mother's Day Video.  Starting off with the courageous introduction that "I think it is important to  recognize that Mom's come in all different shapes and sizes..."  The video flawlessly intertwines the political messages of inclusiveness, equal pay, medical care with messages of hearth and home.

Concentrated Benefits versus Diffused Costs:  How a Minority Political Interests Win

Interest groups may succeed in obtain political benefits by spreading the expense of the broader political base.  The benefits motivate the interest group, while the relatively small “expense” fails to have a similar motivating effect upon the broader political base.  Examples include:  School Board Elections, School Bond and Tax Increase Election, and Public Financing of Sports Stadiums.  In this case “benefits” could be monetary, regulatory, or public assistance.  

In politics, as in economics, incentives matter.  It follows that benefits given to a smaller group of individuals provide a greater incentive to each individual to support the measure.  If the cost of providing that benefit is spread out over a larger group of the populace - each individual faces a smaller incentive to fight against the measure.  University of Maryland’s Mancur Olson theorized in his first book The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965) that motivating a group toward or against a particular action becomes increasingly difficult as the size of the group increases.  As Wallace Forman writes in his blog Commentarius, “self-interested voters rationally allow themselves to be robbed a penny at a time.” 

Smaller interest groups increase the odds of success when they are able to shift elections or referendums to non-traditional voting dates, for example school board and city counsel elections.  Individuals employed by school districts are highly motivated to take the time to vote compared to other members of body politic.

The First Casualty of the Campaign Political Lexicon

This site contains political campaign tactics, themes, and arguments as well as words and phrases that have become "terms of art" in the political world.  Inspired by WIlliam Safire's Political Dictionary and Sun Tzu's Art of War - I strive to create the online practical guide to marketing politics in the 21st Century.

I bring four qualifications to the table.  (1) I have a Bachelors in Marketing; (2) I have past modest paid political campaign employment experience; (3) I am a practicing attorney involved with litigation; and (4) A love of logic, rhetoric, and the turn of the phrase.

I will update this blog every week at a minimum drawing up current campaign events, so please subscribe and I look forward to your comments.