Fundraising

The historic numbers behind the NYT’s October audience increase

Thanks to aggressive pitching, my TimesSelect series got out– mostly from people I personally know. UMass-Amherst's Bill Densmore spoke to me about it for an upcoming podcast;  from Dan Gillmor: "prodigious work"; from Jonathan Dube: "very detailed analysis"; BusinessWeek Blogspotting's Stephen Baker passed it along as well.

Part 4: TimesSelect, the Business Case

In the last part, I discussed how many of the reactions to TimesSelect were more driven by emotion than anything else. Just yesterday, Morgan Stanley announced that they were selling their 7.2% stake in the The New York Times Company. The reactions piled up ( “Another Grim Milestone,” “Getting out while the getting is bad,” and taking the cake: “Another Bullet in the Old Gray Lady's Ass”). More of the media bloggers have stronger backgrounds in reporting than in publishing, and thus don't naturally delve into the numbers.

Prix Foxe: The $850 Million Gift to Fox News That You Don’t Know About

Every cable network has a contract with cable carriers, not viewers, and thus it caught little attention outside the trade press that last October, Fox renewed its contract with Cablevision, the nation’s fifth* largest cable system, tripling its carriage fee from 25 cents a month per subscriber to 75 cents.

Not Exploiting the Homeless

Two Sundays ago, I cross the river into Cambridge to experience a local meeting of the National Writers Union. This was the day that Penny For Your Thoughts piece was cited in the Sunday Globe (not as anything special, just merely as one of a few blog curiosities).

Fundraising Links

Here’s my list of current fundraising bundling efforts:

  • From the Roots — for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSSC)– help the Democrats capture 51 seats in the Senate
  • John Kerry Volunteer Center — one more month to raise money for Kerry for President.

Joining Rep. Jeff Sánchez on the May 23rd ALA Asthma Walk

I’ll be doing the American Lung Association Asthma walk on the Charles River in two weeks, and I’ve joined team Sánchez. For a couple of simple reasons. One, my Dad has suffered from an asthma-like condition. The more direct reason is that Rep. Jeff Sánchez asked people to join his team at the recent Democratic Town Committee meeting. So I joined up, and I pledged to raise an additional hundred dollars. Sánchez’s district covers part of Brookline– not my part exactly, but just down the street, one of the places that I’m looking to buy a condo. Or just as well, Sanchez’s district may yet change thanks to a court-ordered redestricting of Boston’s legislative districts.

Phone Banking: First Impressions

If you get a recorded message from John Kerry calling your home, and you enter the keys on the touchtone pad in order to donate money, you might just reach somebody like me. I spent an hour doing this tonight, and thought I’d record some initial observations.

You’ll never guess who’s a friend of Boston’s Homeless

The fundraising bug has bit me bad. Here’s tonight’s Mastercard damage:

Next time we’ll show up early. Jamie and I missed the dinner (which only would have set us back another $30), missed the Mayor, missed meeting any new people, and missed much of Kendrick Oliver’s band playing– they played one song in the third set. The crowd really thinned out after the dinner; I haver never seen Avalon so empty. And once again, I get that feeling of winning a fundraising contest in weak competition. It would have been nice to learn more about the organizations my money went to. I hope I have the courage to look a homeless person in the face now.

Your Money’s Worth: My evening with some tall Kerry supporters

I was able to convince my friend Abby that there was no better way to mingle with the beautiful people than to hit Fire + Ice for the $75 “Young ProfessionalS” Kerry. For sure, it was tall people. (I am 5’8″, and Abby’s 5’7″. I felt dwarfed). This campaign is so tall, I am waiting for the Bushies to accuse Kerry of being Dutch, and not French.

and the real KerryCore March Madness winner is… anonymous

I never had an idea that I would place in the KerryCore March Madness contest (a last day effort garnered me second place). I figured that somebody out there must have bundled a lot of more money– like an order of magnitude more– but I had no idea of finding out. If you search Google for “March Madness” KerryCore, you find three links from the campaign website, and two to me.

And now I just learned (thanks to Matt Gordon) that somebody had in fact raised more money online– a lot more money: $75,000. He is the anonymous blogger Atrios, who pointed out on his blog afternoon that Kerry HQ had not included this contest entry until too late. This might also explain why the contest results were not readily publicized.

We Did It! Second Place in Kerry’s March Madness contest!

Out of what appears to be eight thousand online fundraisers in John Kerry’s March Madness campaign, I finished second. How improbable! No matter, I won a three-day pass to the convention! (the fourth day I’ll go sailing).

Push Campaigning: Datamart, the Voter Vault, and you

I’ve written on length about Social Network Fundraising, which is so called because it pulls people in to the network. The nature of this “pull” campaigning is that a relationship ties each person into another person closer to the campaign.

Social Network Fundraising

The most effective way to raise money for a cause is through personal connections. It provides a relationship for the fundraising organization to reach individuals, and it also provides access for the individual up to the campaign. The basis of the system is that donors, when they give their money, name individual fundraisers, who can therefore take credit for bundling the donations. I call this “Social Network Fundraising”.

How to donate to John Kerry– and get something for it

You donate through me, of course. I signed up as a KerryCore fundraiser, which means you can list me as your link when you give. You in fact don’t have to even write my name anywhere, just use this link to donate: https://contribute.johnkerry.com/index.html?source_code=00016157 I’ve included a little rallying statement there to indicate why it’s important.

RNC reaches out to an unserved constituency– Massachusetts Democrats

The RNC must be pent-up for cash– they are now reaching out to Massachusetts liberals! (Did anyone else get a pitch in the mail?) I was thinking of sending them my annotations… but then realized that they wouldn’t think it very funny. So instead I’m going answer their request and tell them that I have indeed been let down: I really expect Republicans, when they control the legislative and the executive branch, to spend less money

Dean has volunteers dial for dollars– but for me, he brings in the pros

On NBC’s Meet The Press on 1/11, I learned that Dean’s campaign had picked up an cost-effective way of calling potential voters: leveraging unused minutes in cellphone plans. This sounded exciting enough to participate in: I wouldn’t even have to leave my home to volunteer, and, stumped with a tough caller, I’d have the benefit of my library and Internet to help out. I’d even appreciate getting a call this way. But that didn’t happen.
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