All right, all right, all right. I'm just going to come out and say it. As you know, I have been promoting the DSCC and its blog, <a href="http://www.fromtheroots.org">FTR</a> for several weeks now. But the time has come to make a statement in the public square about the efficacy of the DSCC's online fundraising attempts.
The DSCC and other Dem organizations are looking for netroots turkee in all the wrong places.
Some meandering thoughts:
Something hit me yesterday evening while I was reading the day's diary entries on Daily Kos. Fundraising, like politics and blogging, is in its essence a social activity.
To be a successful fundraiser, you must use the same sort of organizing intelligence that you use to build other kinds of successful social activities.
First, though, I want to give you an idea of what grassroots and netroots fundraising is so important.
Here in New Jersey, our Democratic Governor, Jim McGreevey, is the subject of an under-handed political attack by Republican U.S. Attorney, Christopher Christie, a guy said to be interested in replacing McGreevey in the next election. The attack is taking the form of an investigation of a big McGreevey fundraiser and whether or not he had some sort of undue influence in Trenton on account of the money he gave.
Now, if McGreevey was able to rely on grassroots fundraising, instead of big donors, would this sort of thing at all be an issue? Big donors give because they want access. They give out of personal interest. Small donors give out of public interest, or their idea of it, no matter how skewed. If we can reduce the need to go to big donors for cash, we can reduce the pressure that big donors can put on our elected officials.
Anyway, back to the DSCC and other Dem groups.
The DSCC's fundraising efforts seem to be predicated on the idea of "build it and they will come." The first generation of fundraising stuff on their website was a simple contribution page, where you gave your info and credit card number and ... zap! The payment was made into their system. The second generation includes things like "team leader pages" and "fundraising thermomenters." Very cool.
I guess you could say that, in terms of the technology, the DSCC now has everything on their site that they would need to effectively conduct a netroots/grassroots fundraising campaign.
But it just ain't so.
As I mentioned before, fundraising, even online fundraising, is a social activity like any other and requires the same sort of organizational structure that you would use to elsewhere to motivate a group of people into cooperating toward a shared goal.
Ever planned a party? You need to make sure that the guest list has some people who are gregarious, some people who are good listeners, a couple of benign drunks so people can act scandalized later and an adequate number of sober rides home.
The DSCC blog and -- I suspect -- the DSCC online fundraising attempts are languishing, because the DSCC has failed to recruit the right folks for promoting them and seeding them with the right kind of content and motivators for bringing in the cash.
The turkee is out there in Netrootsland. The DSCC just needs to go out and get it. The idea in the party seems to be that it's enough to get Howard Dean's mailing list or some such thing.
My prescription for bringing FTR to life:
1. Allow DSCC employees Cara, Ben and Seth to emerge as genuine personalities on the blog. If they aren't being given the time to contribute, make it a task for them. And they have to make their entries personal.
2. Post stuff way more frequently.
3. Implement a live Senate Dems news feed into the blog, with an emphasis on how our Senators are trying to work for voters. For example: "You asked us to protect American jobs and we're going to do it. This morning at 10:00, Sen. Daschle held a rally on the steps of the Capitol ... Do you want to see more of this?"
4. Go over to Blog for America and get some of the personalities off of their comments list and recruit them for FTR. Get Renee and Demetrius and Lobsters in AR and Linda in Iowa and all their friends to come aboard and help raise cash. Yes, it's easier just to buy Dean's mailing list, but it will not be as effective as getting people like this to put their stamp of approval on the process. And they will probably do it for free. These people believe.
5. Finally, get some help from Markos or Jerome or Zephyr or someone about how to turn blog postings into a narrative that engages people's attention.
I'm I just flailing around here? It seems like, all of the sudden, there is huge competition for online fundraising dollars. If the DSCC and other Dem organizations want to be effective, they are going to have to be a bit more savvy about the social aspects of netroots/grassroots than they are now.