1. SEA Online
Fundraising Workshop
Nate Thames
Political Director, ActBlue
nate@actblue.com

2. What is ActBlue?
• PAC -- Not a business
• 6 political staffers, 3 engineers
• List all Democrats in all states
• Founded in 2004 in Cambridge, MA
• Focus on community fundraising

3. How can we pay the rent?

4. Tips.
(thank you!)

5. $108 Million
4209 committees

6. Why should you fundraise
online?
• Your people are already there
• They know how to donate online
• Faster and cheaper for you

7. Basic Online Fundraising
Methods

8. Contributions on your
website
• Make sure you are
linking to a secure site
• Put it on your front
page so it is easy to
nd

9. Security
• Security is hard
• We go beyond
industry standards for
credit card data
• EVSSL veri cation to
prevent phishing
• The pros have
resources that you do
not

10. Physical Events
• Order before or
pay at the door
• Auto guest list
• Have a laptop at
the event for at
the door
payment
• Emailed tickets

11. Call time the easy way
• Have the donor give online,
immediately
• No checks to chase or donors to
harass
• Donors like the option and it is
convenient for them.

12. Email:
The holy grail?

13. What you need to know
about writing email
• Subject line, subject line, subject line

14. What you need to know
about writing email
1. Subject line
2. From
3. First line of text
4. Good links
5. P.S.
6. Text version

15. Don’t try to trick your
donors
(seriously)

16. When to send email
• Don’t feel like you have to have a
schedule
• Don’t let your list become stale
• Respond to current events
• Ask your members for more than
money

17. Email Fundraising Tech Tips
• Use a speci c landing page
customized for each blast
• Take advantage of click tracking
• Always give people the option to give
• Use a standard donation format

18. Testing Emails
• Test, if you have a large enough list
• Subject line is low hanging fruit
• Test conversions, not just clicks/opens
• Don’t bother with time or colors

19. Online fundraising
everywhere else
• Twitter, Facebook, etc...
• Paper materials
• Anywhere you can put a link
• Always let people have the option to give

20. Advanced Techniques
(still easy to use)

21. Recurring Contributions
• Monthly “Sustaining” members
• You can predict your revenue
• Donors can budget their donations
• Preset this option

22. San Diego Dem Party
• 48 Month recurring contributions!
• This is their sustaining member
program
• Every month, they know they have a
check
• $275,000 later... it clearly works!

23. Goal Setting
• Donors like to see
they are having an
impact
• Embed this anywhere,
including email
• Make sure it auto-
increments
• Donors or Dollars

24. Youtube Video
• On any page
• Useful for
raising money
to put an ad on
the air
• Also great for a
personal appeal
• Don’t send
donors away!

25. Community Fundraising
(power to the people)

26. my.BarackObama.com

27. Equality for All
• 445 Page Creators
• 14,480 Donors
• $1.2 Million

28. Why the fundraising
success?
• The campaign asked
• In uential people made their own,
and it went viral
• People had a reason to be passionate
about the campaign

29. Your supporters have:
• Blogs
• Facebook accounts
• Twitter followers
• Their friend’s email addresses
• Passion for Democratic Victory

30. You have to ask.

31. ActBlueSetup.com
info@actblue.com
nate@actblue.com