Running Slatecard is not easy, inexpensive, or fun. It's without a doubt one of the most time-consuming projects we have ever taken on.

It requires constant attention from a team of volunteers spread throughout the nation including:

• Co-founder and chief developer Sendhil Panchadsaram,
  
• Day-to-day management officer Joe Mansour,
• Slatecard issue badge designer Katie Harbath,
• A dozen Slatecard Captains who help us keep the directory up-to-date and keep us motivated,
• Interns who help Joe with management activities,
• Consistent feedback from developers, candidates, bloggers, and users on how to make the utility better, and
• Me.
  

If even one of these folks were to walk away from the effort, it would doubtless be a chore replacing them.

So with that being said, you may be wondering Why we do it?

That's an easy question for me to answer.

1. First and foremost, we do it because we believe that candidates and a community of grassroots activists have a right to know honestly and transparently that there is a credit card processing fee associated with making a donation online. We believe in it so much that we're the only folks helping shine sunlight on the issue noting that we have the lowest fee in the market at a flat 3.95%. 
2. We do it because we believe that bloggers and citizen activists -- from massive national efforts like Redstate.com, Iraq Veterans for Congress, DontGo Movement, or Right Wing News to state and local efforts like Conservatieve Thoughts out of Texas or First State Politics out of Deleware -- need the utility to help make a difference.
3. And most importantly, we do it for you -- the Slatecard community. We believe that supporters like Ron and Tami Meade who gave the "Drill Here. Drill Now." badge to Luke Puckett (IN - 02) and John D. Cattano who gave the Jobs & Economy badge to Virgil Goode (VA - 05) and the thousands of others who have used the utility want and need to send an important message of support to their favorite candidates.

Slatecard is a challenge and a heavy responsibility which we take on every single day and we promise to do so for as long as we need to do it. We remain dedicated to its success because we are sick and tired of Democrats beating Republicans on the Internet.

If you want to help us with this effort -- if you believe in the utility and us -- I hope you'll consider making a $10 donation today.

Your $10 donation will help fund this volunteer effort and pay the high costs associated with overhead administrative fees and servers.

We have a record of success with a roadmap to catch up to the Democrats online but we can't do it alone.

Please step-up to the plate and stand with us today with a $10 donation so that we can stand stronger together tomorrow.

Revolution.

With a little over two months to go before the General Election, we're still quite short of our goal of reaching $1 million in our first election cycle to beat what ActBlue raised in its first cycle ($790,900 in 2004).

However, these next two months are when campaigns and activists truly begin to focus on the election so we're hopeful we can reach that goal. Hopefully we can count on you to do your part.

• Total: $486,093.97

• Donors: 7,290

• Avg: $66.68

 

Eighty-One days to go until the General Election and we're closing in on our goal of raising $1 million in our first election cycle to beat what the Dems did in their first cycle.

• Total: $467,922.47
• Total Donors: 7,047
• Avg. Donation: $66.40

To beat our goal, we need to raise at least $532,077.53 between now and election day which is an average of $6,568.86 / day.

Following up on our goal to raise $1M this election cycle, I wanted to give you an update on our totals.

• $410,787.88 Total
• 6,434 Total Donations
• $63.84 Average Donation

These past few days have been strong; however, we have miles to go before we sleep.

Please consider donating to any candidate today to help us reach our goal and (finally) beat the Democrats online.

This is kind of funny.

Earlier today I walked into my office from a lunch and noticed a nice big box on my seat. It was marked "perishable" and screamed "open immediately."

I did.

In it I found an apple pie and two frozen pizzas from a bakery/pizzeria in Chicago. When I looked at the note attached I found out that it was from Slatecard co-founder Sendhil Panchadsaram. It said, "Thanks for all the work you guys do on Slatecard."

As per our usual mode of communication, I IM'd Sendhil and asked if he sent us pizza and pies. Why? Because it seemed odd that someone who has slaved just as hard as we have for the Slatecard utility would be thanking us. Here's a peek at the IM conversation (click pic to enlarge):

 

 

 

Thanks for the pies Sendhil. And thank you for all you do for the Revolution.

As you may know, over at my group blog, TechRepublican, I've been running a series on the "New Guards."

As part of my third post in the series, I included the following item on Slatecard that you may find interesting:

Slatecard.com, a utility to support and enhance Republican activism which we launched in October 2007 is indeed one sign of progress for our side and its results speak for themselves. It has already raised more than $370K for Republican candidates and committees, has helped raise money for House Special Election races that few care about, and 48 candidates are using Slatecard exclusively to process their donations online.

To put that into perspective, the Left's ActBlue pulled in around $791K in its first election cycle (2004) and we're on track to beat that total. Further, both ActBlue.com and Slatecard.com share a Google pagerank of 6/10 -- an independent view of the "importance" of the website.

And about the buzz for Slatecard, feel free to check out the coverage of Slatecard in my del.icio.us account.

But, of course, we're not resting on our laurels. With the expected launch of Slatecard version 2 in the spring of 2009, we intend to continue to build on that success, to be an even bigger, better utility for our candidates and community in the 2009 and 2010 Election cycles.

 

 

A few quick items:
 
1. Slatecard's record is now 1-1 with regard to supporting candidates in a Special Election. Republican underdog Jon Elrod was defeated on March 11 by a liberal Democrat whose biggest backer was Jack "Porker" Murtha. Sometimes the mountain is just a bit too steep. However, I'm proud of our efforts to raise $1,765 from 38 grassroots activists.
 
2. So far, we've raised a total of $277,536.49 from 4,468 supporters. Progress, slowly.
 
3. If you have a few minutes (and are a political junkie), we could really use your help to update the Slatecard directory. All you have to do is check out the directory, navigate to your state, and cross-reference our directory with a website like Politics1.com to ensure that we have every Republican currently seeking Federal office. Send updates to directory@slatecard.com.
 
Thanks for all you're doing to help us make a difference.

Back to work...

Last night I spoke with a small group of conservative activists at the Leadership Institute about some of the emerging technologies and tips I offer with regard to fundraising online.

Via my SlideShare account, you can see (and download) my presentation:

Of course, a presentation is only as good as its presenter, and since most of the slides in my deck offer little text, I'll elaborate.

I kicked off the discussion by noting that the Internet has done one major thing, "helped us communicate more effectively with real, live people -- 'smarter, better, faster, NOW.'" We no longer have to wait for checks to be written by our supporter and mailed to our campaign -- instead, we're seeing a trend of folks who are giving donations online.

I use the example of Barack Obama as the latest evidence of this shift from offline giving to online giving. I site Barack's online fundraising numbers that have been reported well by Patrick Ruffini.

With regard to how Democrats have been able to amass so much treasure from previously unturned stones, I always use a personal example to help relate what I call the Long Tail of Fundraising.

Now that the stage is set, I talk about the Left's ActBlue and how Slatecard has helped provide a similar utility for the Right. I then talk about some of the tools that I believe will change the online fundraising space forever like Slatecard's proprietary innovation, Donor Analytics, and our deployment of anywhere fundraising widgets and facebook applications (still in private beta) to help drive donations in popular watering holes.

I conclude by offering four quick and easy tips to help better embrace online supporters.

1. Capture Emails at Every Possible Turn. Use a splash page before folks enter your website to make your supporters make a choice -- join your team or don't -- but the choice must be made before entering a website.

2. Ask for Realistic Gifts. Ask your online community for $25, $50 or $100. Your community will give you what they can afford but the folks that will give you low-dollar amounts online will likely give more to you over time. The point is to lower the barrier of entry and build your donor base.

3. DonationTubes. Have your principle/candidate make the final "ask" via video embedded directly to your secure donation page. Read this blog post for a more thorough answer.

4. Thank Your Supporters. It's hard to believe, but some politicians (and I know from personal experience) do not thank their online supporters. As an example of how to properly thank your supporters, I relate the fact that I received a personal note from Senator Tom Coburn when I contributed a mere $20 to his campaign through Slatecard. The benefit of him taking the time to personally recognize my donation is that, well, here I am blogging about it and I told a room of 30 conservative activists about it last night. In other words, treat every donor on an equal playing field and it will likely yield a great ROI.

The bottom-line with regard to online fundraising is that there's no silver bullet. I can't tell you how to mirror what Ron Paul did or what Barack Obama is doing. But we can keep an eye on the space and help relate what works and what doesn't.

Last week at CPAC we asked conservatives walking by our exhibit booth to take the CPAC Slatecard.com Pulse. The Pulse was a quick poll where conservatives selected their choice for the Republican nominee for president and then assign an "Issue Badge" to describe why they were supporting that candidate.

Well the results are in and with 289 votes cast, conservatives at CPAC have spoken.

With 151 votes, John McCain came away the clear winner of our CPAC Pulse, followed by Mike Huckabee with 92 votes and Ron Paul with 46 votes. 

But what's most interesting are the top issues driving support to the candidates.

 

For those backing John McCain the top issue by far was "Protect & Defend America":

 

But for Mike Huckabee his supporters top issue was "Faith & Values":

And for Ron Paul's backers, it was "Cut the Pork":  

 

Of course, the cool thing about Slatecard is that when you donate to a candidate, we ask donors to tag your donation with an issue badge that explains why you're supporting them. It works the same way as the poll folks took at CPAC. For more information about issue badges, read this blog post.

Here's a short video explaining how Slatecard works:

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: