Obama’s new trick

November 6, 2012 is still a long way and yet in the USA electoral fever has already hit the nation. But American non profit organisations should be less interested in outcome of the polls and more interested in the fundraising strategy, especially when it comes to Barack Obama. A new fundraising tool, which on BarackObama.com is called “Quick Donate” and that has already been dubbed as the “one click trick” by journalists, emulates the Amazon.com’s winning sales-boosting one-click buy button encouraging donors to support the campaign. After all it doesn’t get much more simple than donating with a simple click of the mouse.

“Imagine this,” writes campaign journalist Michael Scherer in an article published by Time called ‘Barack Obama’s one click fundraising trick’, “fair-weather Obama supporter watches the President deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, and finds herself unusually excited–for about 10 minutes–about the coming election. Just then, her phone buzzes. It’s an SMS message from the Chicago headquarters that says reply to this message to donate $10 to the campaign. It’s that easy.”

Or this, he writes “Another Obama supporter watches the Republican candidate give his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. He is outraged, or turned off, or exasperated. Just then, he gets an email from the campaign ranting about the radicalism of the Republican Party, or a posting on his Facebook page, with a message from Michelle Obama. Click here to donate $10, it says. Without entering any information about himself, he clicks. It’s all over in an instant.”

The Click Donate mechanism, like all brilliant ideas, is simple: you register and save your payment information for use at a later date allowing you to donate simply by clicking on a link and saving you the hassle of having to re-enter you credit card information.  But how effective can one-click fundraising actually be? After all in the past it has always been the substantial 10 thousand dollar and upwards donations to have made a difference. This is no longer true, not for the Democrats at least. In 2011 48 per cent of Obama’s campaign funds were raised through small donors, that is to say people who donate 200 dollars or less, for a total of 56.7 million dollars, almost 20 million dollars more than the Republicans.