As RNC faces donation problems, ActBlue raises record $10 million this quarter for Democrats
Earlier today, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin published one of what has become a series of posts about previous donors to the Republican National Committee who have sent back rejected donation solicitations to the RNC. Given the widely-reported scandals involving the misuse of RNC funds, it’s not surprising that Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl stated recently, “this kind of thing has got to stop or they won’t get any contributions.” The Washington Post even reported today that a person recently hired to help the RNC’s fundraising had been fined by the District of Columbia “for improperly spending money from a political action committee he chaired.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that shortly after reading the WashPo piece I received an email from ActBlue’s Adrian Arroyo alerting me to the fact that the site has raised over $5 million in the month of March for Democratic candidates and committees. Launched in 2004, ActBlue “is a political nonprofit that enables anyone to fundraise online for the Democratic candidates of their choice.” Over the years it has been one of the most effective tools for netroots bloggers to raise money for candidates by supplying easy-to-use buttons and links to funnel online donors toward a particular campaign. When Republican Congressman Joe Wilson famously shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s State of the Union address last year, it was ActBlue that thousands of Twitter users and bloggers linked to to raise over a million dollars for Wilson’s opponent.
I exchanged several emails with Arroyo, the site’s communications director, to determine how effective the site has been over the years in raising money. To date, it has raised over $127 million for thousands of candidates and causes, with $10 million raised this quarter alone. “We disbursed funds to 627 federal committees this quarter,” he wrote in an email. “In other words, every federal Democrat who raised money online got a check from ActBlue. And, as we close in on our 1,000,000th contribution in just five years, our fundraising numbers speak to ActBlue’s far-reaching presence in Democratic politics.”
I asked him to compare recent fundraising numbers to previous years.
“The nearest apples-to-apples comparison for 2009 is 2007,” he replied. “What I find particularly interesting about it is that there are a lot of structural reasons to expect 2007 to be the bigger year: just after a major Democratic victory in ’06, looking forward to the presidential cycle in ’08. But 2009 was much, much bigger”
The numbers are staggering. In 2007, the site raised $16,781,745 from 125,601 contributions, with a mean contribution size of $133.61. In 2009, it raised $30,811,495 from 241,267, with a mean contribution size of $127.71. That’s nearly 84% growth.
“Note, particularly, that the average contribution size dropped between ’07 and ’09, while total contributions nearly doubled,” Arroyo said. “Strong evidence for the growth of grassroots fundraising there, I think. Also, the smallest quarter in ’09, (Q1) was on par with the largest quarter in ’07 (Q4).”
Other trends he noticed:
# There’s a huge spike in # contributions in Q3 2009. That’s due to the fundraising around Rob Miller and the No On 1 campaign in Maine. Those were huge grassroots efforts that took place on ActBlue.
# You’ll see that activity reflected in the avg contribution size in Q3, which becomes much smaller.
# The growth in grassroots fundraising is best visualized by the growth in active fundraising pages, and the number of active committees on ActBlue. Both of which, as you can see from the graphs, have seen a steady increase
I know I would not give directly to the RNC anymore. My money will go to specific candidates and the tea party of course.