cross-posted from the new ActBlue Blog
On Monday I made a post about how ActBlue fundraisers could spice up their fundraising pages by embedding video into their 'asks'. This can be very powerful when the asker and audience have an existing relationship.
Over at Calitics, a great community blog in California, they've taken that suggestion and run with it. Here is a screenshot of this. Here are some of the successful elements they have included in their blog ask.
- Timely- The pitch is for end-of-quarter donations, for federal candidates, only days away at the time of the ask.
- Specific- Rather than overloading their page with a dozen candidates, they have stuck to just two or three that have a common theme- important when considering that a majority of ActBlue donors give to an entire page's slate of candidates.
- Personal- A Calitics blogger is asking his own blog readers to donate. They have an existing relationship and a degree of trust built up. Potential donors are not getting spammed by someone they are unfamiliar with.
- Options- Potential donors can choose to give once or even set up a recurring contribution. Recurring donations are growing in popularity on ActBlue, with over 1000 users having chosen that option for a variety of candidates.
Most of these elements are included in their Calitics ActBlue fundraising page as well. To improve the impact, some ideas might be to include the text from the post next to the video on the page itself or add the recurring contribution buttons below the embedded video. If that happened, the fundraising page could be e-mailed around to additional friends or registered users of the Calitics blog extending the end-of-Quarter ask into a new medium.
One other thing that might help the effort is to set a goal, similar to what the bloggers at Raising Kaine have done (screen shot). They are shooting for $20,000 to all their endorsed candidates by the end of the state quarter on Saturday, giving a real sense of momentum to their efforts. Adding some text about that immediate goal on their fundraising page would be perfect to tie it together with their blog posts.
While it is early in the cycle, bloggers can build upon their early adopters to make effective asks in creative ways that fit their audience. What ideas might you add?