Obama for America 2008
Senator Barack Obama retained BSD to manage the online fundraising, constituency-building, issue advocacy, and peer-to-peer online networking aspects of his 2008 Presidential primary campaign. To date, the campaign has used the BSD Online Tools to mobilize well over a million donors to contribute over $300 million online, to motivate over 850,000 social networking participants, and to create and promote more than 50,000 events across the country.
background and goals
For his 2008 Presidential primary run, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) knew they needed to build an unprecedented community outreach program. With the 2004 Presidential race as a guide, they knew that online contributions, online activism, and online community-building would be paramount as the race heated up, and they needed a technology platform that would power all these and more.
In 2006, after a careful search of the market, the campaign turned to BSD as they began preparing in earnest for his Presidential run, retaining the firm to build and manage a state-of-the-art Internet campaign operation.
fundraising
The community-driven communications platform built and operated by BSD at http://MyBarackObama.com, which exploits all the capabilities of the BSD online tools suite, is arguably the most effective online campaign Web site in history. And the success of the program (like the success of the Obama campaign in general) is most critically measured by its fundraising success.
The BSD tools suite provides technology support for a sophisticated Internet-based fundraising program, including outbound segmentation by gift and activity history, detailed tracking by source code, and real-time statistics. The Obama campaign has made full use of all these fundraising tactics, to their great benefit.
They collected over $17 million in online contributions via the BSD online tools in the first six months—far more than any other campaign in the race at that stage—and have raised upwards of $200 million to date.
And the Obama campaign was the first organization to make use of BSD’s innovative True Match technology, a gift-matching program that brings together new donors and their matching donors personally, so that they can meet, communicate, and reinforce one another’s commitment to their common cause. For the Obama campaign, True Match brought a significant and measurable lift in contributions compared to traditional anonymous-match programs, as well as concomitant media attention.
advocacy and activism
BSD’s online tools integrate contribution opportunities into a holistic activist environment, which the Obama campaign has aggressively leveraged. More than 1.4 million people have provided their email addresses to the campaign via the BSD-powered Web site. To date, on the Obama campaign site, those constituents have used the BSD tools to create over 100,000 user profiles, write over 50,000 blog entries, and post over 20,000 campaign events for other supporters to find and attend.
All of this content taken together creates a healthy positive feedback loop for the campaign, one of the factors that has made the Obama campaign the early leader in online fundraising and organizing in the race.
As Senator Obama’s constituents use the BSD tools, they accrue points, which serve as a subtle inducement to deepen their involvement. Indeed, tens of thousands of unique users visit the site more than once a week. This degree of commitment is evidence that for its users, a BSD-enabled site is as much a social experience as it is a fundraising and activation tool.
The Obama Internet team has made full use of the powerful, easy-to-use administrative interface to create, manage, and publicize special fundraising and advocacy campaigns and promotions. Such programs are easy to create and track using the BSD management dashboard, which enables authorized staff to control the look and feel of landing pages, create new fundraising and action campaigns, produce an outbound email fundraising program, manage a community content and blog program, and carry out other initiatives with the click of a mouse.
Statistics are tabulated automatically, so that the campaign’s program managers can monitor performance on a continuing basis and modify promotions to maximize response and results.
BSD brings together fundraising, advocacy, and constituency-building into a single Internet application, which is easy to integrate with your existing Web site. Use the BSD Online Tools Suite to raise funds, develop your online constituency, build legislative or opinion support for an issue or candidate, maintain an active public face for your organization, or any combination.
Obama for America is using the BSD Online Tools Suite to build and manage a sophisticated fundraising and constituency development operation on the Web in support of Senator Obama’s Presidential campaign.
Achieve More Online with BSD's Online Tools
BSD’s Online Tools Suite is the most effective Internet community solution available for candidates, cause-related organizations, and companies. Our tools combine fundraising, advocacy, and constituency-building capabilities into a comprehensive, action-oriented suite that will help you raise more money, grow your community faster, lock in constituent loyalty through social networking, and motivate your constituents to build public and legislative support behind the issues that matter to you.
The best fundraising tools on the market – including our innovative True Match technology, which matches up individual constituents personally to drive your fundraising revenue up – are at your fingertips, behind a program manager interface that helps you select segments based on their activity history and message them more effectively. And our advocacy tools, integrated with our versatile Legislative and Media Contact System, have been used successfully by dozens of organizations to win critical issue victories in state houses, in Congress, and among opinion leaders and the press.
But the real power of the BSD suite flows from our community development and social networking capabilities. By deploying BSD’s Online Tools Suite on your Web site, you can help your constituents connect with others who share their interests, motivations, and passions; leverage their desire to be part of a change-making movement; and motivate them to take specific actions that will further your cause.
Lead generation and tell-a-friend, peer-to-peer fundraising, blogging and community content management, event calendaring, a group communication engine open to every member—all these tactics are available for you to deploy, through our easy-to-use program manager interface. Point tracking, built-in messaging, and community rating are all built in, to help encourage your constituents to stay involved and active.
