I've noticed quite a few diaries and comments here on Kos where an individual or community consensus dictates the need for some sort of personal fundraising pages where users can create campaigns, manage them, promote and track their progress, and get credit for their achievements.
You asked for it, and now you have the power ... not only the power to promote Democracy Bonds, but also start individual fundraising campaigns centered around Governor Dean's one year anniversary as DNC Chair (coming Sunday!), or any issue (or number of issues) of your choice. The tool also aggregates all of your indiviudal campaigns into one large total for your effort.
(This Diary is a lot of links and gizmos, but please read it, comment on the new pages you created, recommend, and share best practices for everyone else -- Tim)
New Features
- Ability to create and manage different pages and the same time.
- Easy-to-use invitation, reminder and thank you system.
- Democracy Bonds add to your total when someone is charged each month until they leave the program.
- Personal thermometer for different mini-campaigns. One master thermometer that adds up everything for every campaign you participate in. You can use the URLs on your own webpage; they even update automatically every five minutes.
- We'll eventually have pages for issues, groups and councils.
Allow me to walk you through, or if you are feeling frisky just click the link below and get started now!
http://www.democrats.org/...
Step One: Visit the Page
The tool is hosted at - http://www.democrats.org/... - open it in a new browser, take a quick peak, and come back so I can help walk you through the rest.
Step Two: Decision Time
You have many options on how to begin. Do you want to begin by recruiting new members to the Democracy Bonds Community? Do you want to start by celebrating Governor Dean's one year anniversary as DNC Chair? Kick-off your participation by creating a fundraising campaign centered around an issue/event of your choice? Or just get underway by determining an overall goal for fundraising from which all the totals from the previous campaigns mentioned would funnel into. You can even use that "total page" as a stand-alone effort.
Step Three: Let Me Continue to Explain
The first thing I did when I created my own personal fundraising page was to decide what my overall goal was. I visited the page, clicked on "your total" (under manage my campaigns) and set my goal ... $1,000,000. Take a look at how my page looks now.
I [heart] Democracy Bonds, so I stopped by there next to create my own individual Democracy Bonds fundraising page. As you can see, you even get your own graphic as well for use on your website or blog--this goes for each campaign, whethers its the total, Democracy Bonds, Governor Dean's One Year Anniversary, or any other campaign you create. The graphic is tailored to your specific goals/campaign, and the text on the page is completely alterable by you when you set up the page.
For example, if you click on the image to the Democracy Bonds image below, it directs you to the text on my personal page for Democracy Bonds. You, for example, could change that text to talk about why you feel it is so important to invest in Democracy Bonds. Here is how they all look, side-by-side:
Step Three Point Five
As I mentioned, one of the options is to create a page for Governor Dean's one-year anniversary as DNC Chair. The anniversary is actually Sunday, but we are going to be celebrating all week. We'll be coming out with a recap of the first year, sorta like a compilation of greatest hits outlining what your support has meant and what we have accomplished.
In a perfect world, we would love your help with fundraising during this time. Sure, we'll do a lot of the heavy lifting. But our success will increase exponentially if everyone picks up the ball, creates their own "one year anniversary" pages, and promotes them to their friends, family, or on their websites/blogs. Which brings me to my next point...
Step Four: Promotion
Once your page is complete, the new tool allows you to email information about your page to those in your address books. Obviously, you can take it a step further on your own individual websites and blogs by adding "buttons" like the one above on your own sites and blogs that link to your personal fundraising pages.
Getting Credit
Here are a few URLs so you can see how it looks when you create your pages:
Here is a link to my Democracy Bonds Personal Fundraising Page.
Here is a link to my Democracy Bond Make-The-Contribution Page
As you can see, there is a big box on the contribution page (second link) that shows you "This contribution will be credited to Democracy Bonds for Bloggers." Credit is given to whatever you name that page -- which is also your option. In this case, I named it Democracy Bonds for Bloggers.
Various Links
As I said above, in a perfect world, you'll create your own page. But if you have your own site, here are a few links you can you use if you don't want to take the time to do so, but want credit given to the blogger community at large.
Democracy Bonds for Bloggers
One Year Later - We Still Have Governor Dean's Back
My Total/Aggregate Page
Feel free to direct users there -- place the graphics from those links on your own individual sites -- they update every five minutes, so hopefully it will be fun to watch! If you have any problems/questions, please email - websupport@dnc.org
And with that... Please include links to your freshly minted pages in the comments and enjoy!