Obama Raised $500M Online
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, 2012 Election, Barack, Money, Technology
If you had any doubts that the internet has created a new public financing system, this story should put those to rest.
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.”
And, by the way, contrary to earlier reports…Obama did indeed raise the vast majority of his money through online donations, not traditional bundling. Still, the bundlers did do one hell of a job too…
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.)
The question now: what will 2012 bring?
This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, 2012 Election, Barack, Money, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
