Participatory Milestones: Long-tail Online Fundraising Site Actblue Hits $50M

by: Matt Stoller

Tue Jun 10, 2008 at 11:22

There's a huge amount of chatter about Obama's remarkable fundraising apparatus, most of it themed around the idea of, well, '$&*@$# that's a lot of money'.  And consultants are licking their lips, thinking about how to get their hands on a slice of it.  Yet Jose Antonio Vargas in the Washington Post gives a glimpse into the reality of what this fundraising means, which is not about cash totals but about participation.  Vargas tracks a Food network watching mother who gave a few dollars online to the Obama campaign, and then rose to become a local organizer, an Obama delegate, and soon-to-be candidate for office.

This kind of participatory increase is widespread and, while not unrelated to Obama, is part of a larger cultural shift.  Just as Google and Facebook did not create the search engine or the social network, the Obama campaign is sitting on top of a network that is, as Joe Trippi told me last week, "five times as big as it was in 2004".  In fact, the Obama campaign's massive centralized bottom-up fundraising apparatus is unusual not because it is such evidence of a 'new' way to raise money - Barry Goldwater in 1964 had more than a million donors, Dean raised huge sums online in 2004 - but because it alone is being noticed because of the enormous sums involved (Update: Actually, this probably isn't quite right - it has to do with his elite and mass organizing.)

I put up a picture of Actblue crossing the $50M threshold, because that, along with what Vargas put out there, is the missing part of the story.  Actblue is a clearinghouse for Democrats on a state and Federal level, providing a neutral platform for thousands of candidates who use innovative and milquetoast strategies to raise online.  These are the candidates who don't have the media glare, who have to scrabble for attention, press, and hope to fill small rooms with a dozen people to listen to their state educational plans.  To put it in web terms, it is the 'long tail' of candidates.

According to the Congressional Management Foundation's recently released report on Congressional communications, 44% of Americans contacted a member of Congress in the last five years, a significant bump from 2004 and a number that far outstrips the total count of online donors.  The report also goes on to point that the internet has become the primary vehicle for learning about and interacting with Congress, even though most people don't think that Congress is listening.  The gist of the report is not just that people who are connected vote, and people who vote tend to be connected, but that connectivity is driving increased political interaction with decision-makers.

This will only increase in the years ahead, and frankly, if Obama didn't exist in this race, the country would invent him.  Actblue's exponential growth - from less than a million in the 2004 to its current base - shows that the country is hungry for change and that a leadership base of committed organizers are running for office using new tools.  Looking a bit beneath the surface of the Obama juggernaut, as Vargas did, shows that this army of people is real, and that it isn't just money they are giving.  The 10 million people (at an extremely high end) who may donate to Obama, while extraordinary, is dwarfed by a rough factor of ten by the 44% of the country who have contacted Congress in the last five years.  

The country is strengthening its flabby civic muscles, and learning how to be a committed and engaged citizenry.  We haven't seen anything like this for a hundred years, if not more.  And that's not even counting the younger generation, who grew up on this stuff.

I do some consulting work for Actblue and have been an adviser to the group since its inception.