Obama Raised Half a Billion Online (after Palin speech, $10 million in 24 hours)

Source: Washington Post

Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising.

In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama's online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.

"You looked at the money being raised online in the same way that you looked at the crowds who came to the rallies," Joe Rospars, the 27-year-old director of Obama's new-media department, told The Post. "You were constantly surprised at the number of people who were coming out to see him," and, when it came to online donations, "people exceeded our expectations as to what they were willing to do."

Obama also raised millions from traditional campaign bundlers -- rich, well-connected fundraisers -- but the bulk of the more than $600 million that Obama raised throughout the campaign was through the Internet, aides said. (Some of those bundlers, of course, also arranged for donations to be made online, so there is some overlap.)

In September, his single biggest month of fundraising, Obama amassed more than 65 percent of his record-shattering haul -- $100 million of the $150 million -- from online donations, aides said. After Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin dismissed the value of community organizing in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Sept. 3 -- "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," she said to applause -- Obama raised $10 million within 24 hours....

***

No other major campaign this cycle put technology and the Internet at the heart of its operation at this scale. Inevitably, the scope of the operation was the envy, if not outright obsession, of other campaigns....

(NOTE: Much more information and statistics at link.)

Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/20/obama_raised_half_a_billion_on.html?hpid=sec-politics

After Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin dismissed the value of community organizing in her acceptance speech ...

You have to connect with the people, you elitist morons!

She's a sick, pathological, deeply troubled person.

No good can come of where she's headed.

I'd love to see a graph made up of # of donations compared to Palin/Mccain (together or separately) appearances at rallies.

I know for a fact that whenever that silly moosefaced lying fundie nutcase spewed some of her most disgusting rhetoric, I hit the "Donate" button, promptly.

I betcha others did the same.

:rofl:

Award for descriptive writing

I've got them. PM me.

and I am thinking it probably will be a couple of months.

since he won.

Looking at the good part about this.

I over-donated so much my phone and internet got cut off because I couldn't pay the bill. My power even got shut off for part of a day. I just got my phone back, and I'm accessing via dial-up through my computer's modem. I'll probably be able to get my higher-speed connection back next week.

Was it worth it? You Betcha!

OK, yes, I'm bragging . . .

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all Americans who made this sacrifice.

"And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.'"

Yet another section of the Bible the rich don't like to hear.