Grassroots fundraising is the discipline of raising funds through myriad small donations, generated by social networks.  My grassroots fundraising motto is: people give more, and they give more often, when they’re asked to give by someone they know and trust.  That’s why grassroots fundraising works.  And ti definitely works.  Grassroots fundraising has two origins: in online “-a-thon” fundraisers early in the 2000s, in which athletic participants sign up to raise significant amounts of money from their friends and family, and in Democratic Party politics circa 2004, with the founding of ActBlue.com by Matt DeBergalis and Benjamin Rahn (who teaches us about technology management in Chapter 11 of Growth through Governance) and the rise of Howard Dean and his grassroots-centered political methods.

The idea of grassroots fundraising is not new.  It is not different from what happens when board members buy a gala table and ask their friends to buy a seat.  That’s grassroots fundraising right there, because the friends would not have attended the gala had they not been asked to give by someone they know and trust.  Those friends went to the gala not because the organization was otherwise high on their personal list, nor because they travel the metropolitan area looking for every opportunity to sample prime rib, but primarily because they were asked to give by someone they know and trust.  In turn, those peripheral donors might become primary donors as they find out about the organization.  Or they might not.  They might be back next year to sit at their friend’s table, or they might just be one-time supporters.  But the sum total of all the money from all these friends’ donations accrues to the organization, and that’s why organizations do galas that way.  So the idea of grassroots fundraising is not new.  It’s just that in the 21st century, technology has progressed to the point where we can do grassroots fundraising at much greater scale much more efficiently, involving a wider range of dollar amounts (which results in a giving pyramid whose center of mass is in two-digit gifts), and not necessarily even having to bother with the prime rib.  But for those new to Internet grassroots fundraising, it’s important to remember it’s just a new application of the same old underlying principle we all know and use all the time.

I was right there for the birth of grassroots fundraising in politics.  As the Director of Technology at the Washington State Democratic Party, my whole job was to turn data into votes and into funds for our candidates.  I went on to serve as CEO of ActBlue’s software company for the 2008 election, its first year at current scale.  Several months ago, ActBlue surpassed one billion dollars raised, by allowing individuals to create their own fundraising pages and support the candidates of their choice.

Now, never mind the politics and the candidates; we’re learning about a fundraising methodology.  However, one of the most fascinating things about ActBlue is that Republicans never managed to duplicate its success.  They tried every year, and while I haven’t looked recently, for several biennial political cycles there, Republican earnings from grassroots fundraising was consistently paltry.  I recall Slatecard.com, a long-defunct Republican version of ActBlue, raised $300,000 the year we raised $85,000,000.  I say this not to make a political statement but to point out a fascinating question I don’t know the answer to.  Since 2008 I’ve been trying to get the attention of a political-science academic to study this question.  Grassroots fundraising is very new and very successful, and I suspect that academic inquiry to the highly differential results of the two major parties will teach us a lot about how marketing works in this new field, and may help us increase the effectiveness of grassroots fundraising by learning how to appeal to folks who apparently sat out those political seasons.  This is an emerging field, and I’d like to know why we saw such differential results.

In any case, from Dean to Obama to Sanders, politicians have raised unprecedented amounts of money through grassroots fundraising.  All the while, those athletic “-a-thons” were getting bigger and bigger.  I participated in the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic with Team in Training in 2005 (my second of three years in the Classic), where I signed up to raise what was to me a huge amount of money for a medical cause which, while a good cause, I had no personal connection to.  I don’t think either I or my friends would have given 1% of the funds I raised that year to leukemia research had it not been for the bike ride.  So I can attest from two different fields of work that grassroots fundraising works.

From my perspective, these two fields — athletic “-a-thons” and political grassroots fundraising — merged into one overarching professional discipline around 2005-2006.  As web technology improved, it became possible to present very professional and appealing “thermometers” (which are now almost a cliché but were and are essential to creating buzz), to offer donors small incentives, and to raise money for causes around the world by bringing donors into virtual contact with the people they were helping.  As a result, grassroots fundraising grew beyond its fields of origin as general nonprofit fundraisers began to borrow what had worked best from those first “-a-thon” and political experiences.

Today, grassroots fundraising is a very big business.  In Democratic politics, it is now probably the single most important determining factor in national contests — in concert with which, ActBlue has for almost a decade been the nation’s largest source of political funds.  (Would Bernie Sanders have had any impact at all without these practices and the technology that makes them possible?)  In 501(c)(3) fundraising, at this point, if you’re not into grassroots fundraising you’re clearly missing out.  Grassroots fundraising is inexpensive, although there is a learning curve.  There’s no longer any question that people give more, and they give more often, when they’re asked to give by someone they know and trust.  If your organization isn’t yet tapping into the grassroots, it’s time.

• My 2008 video (and audio podcast) “Welcome to Internet Community Fundraising” is quite as relevant today as it was back then, when I was just starting a software company to bring ActBlue’s best practices to the nonprofit sector.  (That venture didn’t work out, by the way, I think in retrospect because I wanted to be a rabbi, but I still think to this day there are grassroots fundraising best practices from politics that current nonprofit vendors aren’t using, and I’d welcome a chance to consult for any new startup venture that wants to explore this.)  The video’s purpose is to introduce a specific technology that is not currently available, but its introduction to the general concepts of grassroots fundraising is still as relevant as ever.
• My former company’s “Idea Book” is going to be helpful.  Again, its goal was to sell a product that isn’t currently available, but it’s 6 pages full of best practices, many of which your organization could start doing tomorrow.
• I like FirstGiving.com’s Resource Library.  I also prefer FirstGiving’s approach to the governance structure behind grassroots fundraising — that might be too obscure a topic for this blog post, but if people are interested maybe I’ll make another post about that.
• Speaking of ethics, in 2011 I was twice invited to speak at the National Association of State Charity Officers – National Association of Attorneys General on the topic of regulating grassroots fundraising in the 501(c)(3) sector “beyond the Charleston Principles.”  If you’re an ethics buff, ask me to talk about that when you have me over to speak.  You could hear a pin drop in that room when, during my first presentation, one of the state deputy attorneys general asked me, “Why shouldn’t we just ban this practice?”  Here is the outline of my first presentation, and the slides for my follow-up appearance six months later, where I co-presented with Bob Carlson of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.
• Unlike most listicles, which are little more than link farms, these “17 Fundraising Ideas to Raise More Money” from GiveForward.com are solid.