One of the challenges of running Slatecard is always having to be compared to a website on the Left, ActBlue, which has been operating four times longer than we have.

For example, even a good reporter like Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post makes the mistake of comparing the current standings/totals raised of ActBlue v. Slatecard. But doing so is like comparing apples to an apple seed. Trust me, I know the guys at ActBlue, they will be the first to tell you how hard it took them to get where they are today. 

Success does not happen overnight. There is no silverbullet.

Hopeful that we'll start seeing honest apples to apples comparisons, I left a comment on the post:

Matthew -

Indeed, ActBlue is a tremendous resource for the Left and no one would discount their current success. However, they will be the first to tell you that their success did not happen overnight. It takes dedication and time. You have to build the machine before it runs.

So I would respectfully note that this piece misinforms readers by comparing apples to an apple seed.

Let's try apples to apples for a go.

ActBlue's first election cycle (2004) they raised a total of either $791,900 or $890K depending on whether you want to source the Wall Street Journal or ActBlue. I blogged about it here. I still don't exactly know what they pulled in their first cycle except that it was less than $1M.

Slatecard, of which I'm a co-founder, hopes to raise more than a million this election cycle to beat ActBlue's first cycle. Yes, we have about half a million to go to meet our challenge.

Can we do it? I don't know. It is in the hands of the Republican community.

ActBlue has said it would pull in $100M this election cycle. How's that working out for them?

Look, we are working hard everyday on a volunteer basis to offer the most dynamic, cost-effective platform for Republican candidates.

And leaders like U.S. Senator Jim DeMint have embraced the platform because of its lowest-in-market processing fees and new tools it offers his campaign for FREE.

But at the end of the day -- successful at reaching our goal or not -- developing a tool that effectively empowers Republican grassroots activists and candidates is a win in our book.

I appreciate your focus on this space and I'm very hopeful that you'll better paint the picture for your readers by providing more historical analysis and context.

Revolution,

David All
Slatecard.com

Slatecard co-founder Sendhil Panchadsaram and operations manager Joe Mansour and I are at the RightOnline Conference in Austin, Texas.

Slatecard's presence at the Conference was covered today by both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

From the WaPo:

On Friday, a Who's Who of online conservatives will gather at the Renaissance Hotel in the picturesque Texas Hill Country here for an inaugural two-day conference called RightOnline. At the same time, less than 12 miles south in the city's downtown sprawl, the heart of the online liberal community is on its second of four days at the Austin Convention Center for Netroots Nation. 

* * * * 

The speakers include David All, co-founder of SlateCard, the conservative answer to ActBlue, the Dems' online PAC; Robert Bluey, the Heritage Foundation staffer who hosts a weekly meeting of conservative bloggers; and David Almacy, the Bush White House's former Internet director (yes, there is such a job). 

And the WSJ:

Some Republican candidates are also benefiting more from grassroots online giving, thanks to new tools developed by conservatives. Since October, more than $428,000 has been raised online for candidates at Slatecard.com, a site launched by Republican Internet strategist David All last October. The site has set a goal of raising $1 million online this year.

It was designed to be the conservative answer to ActBlue.com, a Democratic site that makes it easy to raise money online by streamlining the process of complying with federal campaign-finance rules. Liberal activists have raised more than $57 million for Democratic candidates on the site since it was launched four years ago.

 

UPDATE TO ADD NYT (July 21, 2:07 PM): The New York Times also picked up on it:

Also appearing is Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland and now chairman of GOPAC. The main featured blogger-speaker is Michelle Malkin, the popular writer at HotAir.com. Other prominent bloggers nationally are Erick Erickson of RedState.com, Matt Sheffield of Dialog New Media and of NewsBusters, Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation and David All of TechRepublican and SlateCard.

Sendhil and I helped train a group of conservative activists on how the Internet could be used by organizations. Texaspatriot has some great notes on the presentation. Here's our presentation:

Carrie Sheffield has just posted a video story on how Democrats are using the Internet to raise money online and how the Right is working to catch up using Slatecard.com.

I have a small piece of the story.

When I wear a consulting hat, one of the groups I'm honored to work with is the College Republican National Committee. They get the importance of the Internet.

Today I was pleased to speak to a group of CR State Chairman from throughout our great nation where we talked about how the Internet was about to change the way they operate to help build and grow the CR movement.

After my presentation, the first hand that shot up in the air was the CR State Chairman from Maine who had worked closely with Republican candidate Dean Scontras (who you likely recognize as one of the top candidates on Slatecard).

Quick aside: Dean lost in the primary to Charlie Summers. At Slatecard, we stay out of primary races for good reason, but we want to say thank you to Dean and his team for being our second candidate to believe in our system and trusting in us to deliver for him when he needed it most. We are hopeful that Charlie wins the General Election and that Dean will continue to pursue a career in public service.

Back to the story, the question from the young leader was about Slatecard. I hadn't brought it up because that's not what the discussion was about; however, I was happy to field a question. Well, I'll be honest, I'm always extremely happy to talk about Slatecard.

Instead of answering the question directly, I was curious if anyone had heard of Slatecard. I lobbed a question back at the room: "Show of hands, how many people are familiar with Slatecard?" A good 50 percent of the hands shot up in the air. That's solid. And thanks to that question, now 100 percent of the room is familiar with your utility.

The buzz... it's happening... I'm feeling it and seeing it with my own two eyes.

Thank you for being a part of something remarkable Slatecard community. Together, we will revolutionize Republican politics. Promise.

A week or so ago, Ronald Hansen of the Arizona Republic and USA Today included Slatecard.com in his round-up of companies on the Right and Left which candidates use to process their online donations. I was quoted in the piece:

Processing fees already may be viewed as an unavoidable expense as basic to campaigning as phone bills and plane tickets.

"Your average online donor is an impulse buyer," said David All, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant who last year founded Slatecard.com, which he hopes to be a Republican answer to ActBlue. So far, the site's donors have raised more than $5,000 for GOP presidential candidates.

In charging a 4.5% flat fee, All said he loses money on small donors, which is hopefully offset by the bigger ones. In any event, he sees the site as filling a critical void for the GOP.

"With online donors, the sooner you can seal the deal, the better," he said. "You're risking not sealing the deal if you can't donate online." 

While I appreciate the mention, I think Ronald missed some important points about Slatecard that I added to the comments of the post. Here's what I wrote:

Thanks for including Slatecard.com in your round-up. This a very important discussion to have.

Transparency, openness and honesty are just a few of the guiding principles we cling to at Slatecard.

In fact, that's why one of our first blog posts back on October 11, 2007 (we launched October 8) dealt with this issue specifically, titled "Transparency in Processing."

We're proud to be one of the most cost-effective online processing solutions for Republicans and while we're doing this as a volunteer effort, we believe it's necessary to helping give the Right the tools it needs to better leverage the power of the Internet.

One point I'd like to include is that while we may have only raised a little over $5k for Presidential candidates, we've raised well over $325k for other Federal Republican candidates and committees. In fact, we're proud that over 41 candidates have already signed up to use Slatecard to exclusively process their donations.

We're just getting started but we're making tremendous progress given the fact that we've only been up for six months.

Thanks again.

David All
Executive Director
Slatecard.com PAC

The bottom-line is that a processing fee for online donations will always be a part of the process. However, we're proud of our lowest-on-the-market rate of 4.5% regardless of what credit card a donor uses and the fact that we don't charge a per transaction fee or a set-up/monthly fee to candidates.

To keep this operation running - we instead rely on generous donations from you - the Slatecard community. And, as you know, we appreciate it.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on the rising strength of small dollar donors in politics. This is a trend I've called the Long Tail of politics.

The recent flood of Internet donations that has helped pump 2008 presidential campaign coffers to highs also is accomplishing what Watergate-era campaign-finance regulations set out to do: dilute the influence of special interests and wealthy donors.

The main beneficiaries of the boom in small donors are Democratic contenders Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both were expected to file reports with the Federal Election Commission Thursday night detailing their February fund raising. The Obama campaign has released numbers indicating the Illinois senator would report raising about $55 million in February, a one-month record for a primary candidate. About 90% of the total came from donors who gave in increments of $100 or less.

I'm quoted twice in the piece:

Political strategists are trying to replicate the Obama model. David All, a Republican political consultant, admired how the campaign last year chose five small donors to have dinner with Sen. Obama, and then made a video about each one and posted them to the Obama campaign Web site. "It told their story, and Barack Obama was merely the thread that connected them all," Mr. All said. "What he's doing is creating a community, and this community is spreading his message virally" by word of mouth and emails to friends, he said.

And:

Internet giving at the congressional level also is spreading, albeit more slowly. Web sites such as ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democrats, let donors contribute to individual candidates. ActBlue has directed more than $14 million to federal Democratic candidates this election cycle, compared with $16 million for the 2006 congressional elections.

Mr. All, the Republican consultant, started a rival site last October called SlateCard.com. It has raised just $300,000. "What I'm finding is a lot of Republican campaigns are just hiring college kids or using their son who has a Facebook account," said the 28-year-old Mr. All. "They don't understand what this is all about." 

 

I'm not much of a poet, so I won't try, but it's a good way to point out a blog post generating some buzz for Slatecard thanks to Captain Ed Morrissey over at one of the Right's most popular hangouts, Captain's Quarters.

Of note, Captain Ed has built his very own Slatecard to promote the candidates he cares about.

On Thursday, I was on air with Captain Ed at Heading Right Radio where we discussed Slatecard and our effort to help promote Republican candidate Jon Elrod in Indiana.

This past Saturday, I was on a New Media Panel at CPAC where I discussed what we're doing at Slatecard.

Ethan Demme, who was gracious enough to sit in the back and tick through the slides for my presentation, passed along this video:

 

At the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), we will be airing a 30-second promotional video to help alert conservatives to the Slatecard utility.

Our vision for the video, was to come up with a creative idea that would be memorable, interesting enough to cut the clutter with countless other spots, and be "fun" enough to hopefully generate some buzz among activists.

We think this video hits its mark:  (Digg the vid here)