{"id":71,"date":"2008-10-22T07:24:25","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T07:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html"},"modified":"2008-10-22T07:24:25","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T07:24:25","slug":"one-million-repeat-donors-peop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html","title":{"rendered":"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Further to my earlier post about how Obama’s $150 million September<\/a> serves to utterly vindicate the vision of Joe Trippi and Howard Dean, comes this interesting observation by Al Girodano about the donor base<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With an average contribution of $86 that means that more than 1.7
\nmillion people donated last month. Plouffe reports that September
\nbrought 632,000 new donors. The interesting number to me is the
\nremainder: more than one million people out of almost 2.5 million that
\nhad given earlier in the year gave again<\/em> in September<\/b>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recall that Joe Trippi’s vision was a million donors giving $100 each<\/a> – at an average contribution of $86, and repeat givng, it’s clear that the vision was actually conservative<\/i>! But it isn’t just the money, either – small-dollar donors convert much more readily into ground activists as well:<\/p>\n

That’s the day I learned the phrase, “the donor-activist model.” The
\nconcept was this: that if you get a regular working person to give even
\na small amount of money – say, five dollars – that person had now made
\nan investment and would work harder as a volunteer because he and she
\nwould then want a return on that investment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The small-dollar donor is essentially an investor buying “stock” in a company. They become invested in the company’s success, and so will act to help bring that success about long-term. The analogy also holds for big-dollar donors, who for a campaign are really buying access, not success. In many ways, big donors don’t really care if the candidate wins, they are just hedging their bets, and if the candidate loses they still retain influence. This is akin to large investors who buy millions of shares in a stock, not for any long-term investment strategy but rather to make a short-term or medium-term profit. <\/p>\n

Finally, Giordano echoes Trippi’s Perfect Storm essay<\/a> in observing how the activist-donor base empowers a genuinely different kind of politics:<\/p>\n

\n

Should Obama win the White House, he’ll be the first president in
\nages who can afford to buck the instructions of the super rich and
\ntheir bidders (he’s already told their lobbyists and PACs that their
\nmoney is no good to him) and count with the sufficiently large small
\ndonor base to back him up for reelection should that happen. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

the donor-activists are going to want a return on their
\ninvestment in his candidacy: they now outnumber the influence donors
\nnot only in population, but, newly, in buying power. They – the people
\nthat gave five or ten or a hundred bucks – and then worked the phones
\nand the neighborhoods to get a return on that investment – may soon
\nbecome the most<\/em> special interest in America.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This isn’t mere populism, but rather something new – to borrow the phrase from the Dean days, a “people-powered” politics<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Related: Internet Politics 101: The List vs The Network<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Further to my earlier post about how Obama’s $150 million September serves to utterly vindicate the vision of Joe Trippi and Howard Dean, comes this interesting observation by Al Girodano about the donor base: With an average contribution of $86 that means that more than 1.7 million people donated last month. Plouffe reports that September…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[116,38,118,26],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-purple-politics","tag-fundraising","tag-obama","tag-perfect-storm","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\none million repeat donors: people-powered politics - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Further to my earlier post about how Obama’s $150 million September serves to utterly vindicate the vision of Joe Trippi and Howard Dean, comes this interesting observation by Al Girodano about the donor base: With an average contribution of $86 that means that more than 1.7 million people donated last month. Plouffe reports that September…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-22T07:24:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics - City of Brass","og_description":"Further to my earlier post about how Obama’s $150 million September serves to utterly vindicate the vision of Joe Trippi and Howard Dean, comes this interesting observation by Al Girodano about the donor base: With an average contribution of $86 that means that more than 1.7 million people donated last month. Plouffe reports that September…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html","og_site_name":"City of Brass","article_published_time":"2008-10-22T07:24:25+00:00","author":"Aziz Poonawalla","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html","name":"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics - City of Brass","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-22T07:24:25+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-22T07:24:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/one-million-repeat-donors-peop.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"one million repeat donors: people-powered politics"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/","name":"City of Brass","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}