I was extremely excited to see Ron Paul's email asking for donations to his Liberty PAC and hinting that it could help him decide to run in 2012.
However, I also had mixed feelings because the money will go to the PAC and will not contribute to the fundraising numbers for his future campaign, which will be important to the media.
So I want to see what other people think of starting to raise money now, for a Ron Paul 2012 Kickoff money bomb, by following the example of ThePoint.com.
ThePoint.com allows people to enter their credit card information to pledge a donation amount to a specific cause, but they only get charged if a specific donation amount is reached, or if a specific action occurs.
So theoretically, we could do something similar and start collecting donations right now for a Ron Paul 2012 kickoff moneybomb, but only charge people when/if Ron Paul actually announces.
This would allow us to start contributing now and make sure all of it goes to a Ron Paul campaign, and it could also help nudge Ron to run by creating a pot of money that he could only receive by deciding to run.
Now, ThePoint.com itself, charges a 5% fee for credit card processing and admin costs, so it would be nice if we could somehow setup our own version specifically for this moneybomb.
There are already several sites collecting pledges of support and pledges for donations:
ronrunpaul.com (over 2000 pledges)
draftronpaul.com (over 300 pledges)
ronpaul2012.net (over 21,000 pledges)
But none of these have the ability to actually collect money, and so they don't carry as much weight.
If a new site is to be made, it must be done very carefully and professionally to avoid any fraud. It needs to be a very trustworthy and reputable site.
That is why I suggest that RonPaulForums.com organizes it. A special page for the pledges could be created at something like pledge.ronpaulforums.com, and then maybe buy a couple of special domains to point there as well(along the lines of ronpaulmoneybomb.com). It may be hard to find a good domain available, but there has got to be something out there.
What could be the negatives of this approach?
Is there any reason it absolutely could not work? I'm not sure if campaign finance laws make it impossible. Would the donations have to be considered as coming from one source, and therefore subject to a maximum donation? Would the host of the pledge site have to register as a PAC? Or is there a way to have the donations flow through directly from the individuals to the campaign? If we were donating to an exploratory committee I think the reporting requirements aren't as strict, so we might not have to collect employer information. But if Ron jumps straight into a regular campaign, could we collect the employer information and send it along with the donation?
The legal hurdles seem like they might be difficult, but is there a way to make it work?
However, I also had mixed feelings because the money will go to the PAC and will not contribute to the fundraising numbers for his future campaign, which will be important to the media.
So I want to see what other people think of starting to raise money now, for a Ron Paul 2012 Kickoff money bomb, by following the example of ThePoint.com.
ThePoint.com allows people to enter their credit card information to pledge a donation amount to a specific cause, but they only get charged if a specific donation amount is reached, or if a specific action occurs.
So theoretically, we could do something similar and start collecting donations right now for a Ron Paul 2012 kickoff moneybomb, but only charge people when/if Ron Paul actually announces.
This would allow us to start contributing now and make sure all of it goes to a Ron Paul campaign, and it could also help nudge Ron to run by creating a pot of money that he could only receive by deciding to run.
Now, ThePoint.com itself, charges a 5% fee for credit card processing and admin costs, so it would be nice if we could somehow setup our own version specifically for this moneybomb.
There are already several sites collecting pledges of support and pledges for donations:
ronrunpaul.com (over 2000 pledges)
draftronpaul.com (over 300 pledges)
ronpaul2012.net (over 21,000 pledges)
But none of these have the ability to actually collect money, and so they don't carry as much weight.
If a new site is to be made, it must be done very carefully and professionally to avoid any fraud. It needs to be a very trustworthy and reputable site.
That is why I suggest that RonPaulForums.com organizes it. A special page for the pledges could be created at something like pledge.ronpaulforums.com, and then maybe buy a couple of special domains to point there as well(along the lines of ronpaulmoneybomb.com). It may be hard to find a good domain available, but there has got to be something out there.
What could be the negatives of this approach?
Is there any reason it absolutely could not work? I'm not sure if campaign finance laws make it impossible. Would the donations have to be considered as coming from one source, and therefore subject to a maximum donation? Would the host of the pledge site have to register as a PAC? Or is there a way to have the donations flow through directly from the individuals to the campaign? If we were donating to an exploratory committee I think the reporting requirements aren't as strict, so we might not have to collect employer information. But if Ron jumps straight into a regular campaign, could we collect the employer information and send it along with the donation?
The legal hurdles seem like they might be difficult, but is there a way to make it work?
