Obama Crowdsources Election Campaign Funding
The NYTimes reports today in Obama Opts Out of Public Financing for Campaign that Senator Obama ”…raised $95 million in February and March alone, most of it, as his aides noted Thursday, in small contributions raised on the Internet. More than 90 percent of the campaign’s contributions were for $100 or less, said Robert Gibbs, the communications director to Mr. Obama.“
Obama’s success raising money with small donations is a clear indicator that crowdsourcing is a viable approach to financing what is probably the most expensive and demanding type of electoral contest ever seen — a U.S. presidential election campaign.
The old ways aren’t going away just yet — witness McCain’s more conventional reliance on a mixed palette of public finance and unlimited donations to the RNC — but successful crowdsourcing of an election effort of this scale and duration proves other models — networked, distributed / decentralized, bottom-up, etc. — can be effective in the most challenging situations.
“Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you’ve fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford,” he told his supporters in the video message. “And because you did, we’ve built a grassroots movement of over 1.5 million Americans.“
And that’s a good thing. The relative electoral stalemate we’ve had in the U.S. for the last decade echoes the trench warfare phase of World War One; grinding battles of attrition between nominally distinct combatants that consume much, accomplish little, and yield no substantive change for the people involved.
The next step is to apply this networked / crowdsourced / distributed financing model to support a campaign by someone outside the (distressingly) complacent major parties. We’ve managed to change the feeding mechanism, now we have to change the animal it feeds.