TeaParty11.com - Dec 16th Money Bomb - Ron Paul Tea Party

[dusman]

About the weekly donations, the problem I see with this is that it's much harder to keep track of. We'd have no idea if people are actually following through with their pledge to donate weekly. Most people are lazy and forgetful, which is why they all need to be herded to donate on one specific day. I'm not sure if something like this would be successful or not.

Yeah, I was concerned about that as well. I was working on a proposal to deliver the campaign to adopt a recurring donation system where it could be automatically deducted if supporters chose to do so. I haven't had much time to work on it much, but it might still be worth it.

 

[Sentinelrv]

Yes, we got the t-shirt guy on board. We'll have up to 1,000.

We were thinking a t-shirt for 50 referred pledges. The first 1,000 supporters would receive a t-shirt. That would put us at 50k pledges and I think it might be possible to achieve.

Wow, that would be awesome if we could get that many people to participate to win something. The thing is many people might do it because the goal to win a shirt isn't that large. Why not make it 65 pledges though? That would match the 65,000 pledge goal. Do you have a picture of the shirts?

Also, are you still going to release a pledge meter to coincide with this competition? We could put it on the forum as well as the website.

 

[dusman]

If you want a steady stream of money, the best thing to do is to advertise for it which the campaign severely lacks. If the grassroots would run ads on Google, Facebook, etc to specifically get people to donate, it would go a long way into getting the campaign the funds it needs.



I remember a strong effort in 2007.

Don't get me wrong.. there was an attempt, but nothing that reached the broad base in a significant manner. Consider right now for example that we have about 20 web sites hosting iFrames on their web sites. Those could easily change to a weekly moneystream concept and would be a step above how $5 Fridays was approached.

 

[dusman]

Wow, that would be awesome if we could get that many people to participate to win something. The thing is many people might do it because the goal to win a shirt isn't that large. Why not make it 65 pledges though? That would match the 65,000 pledge goal. Do you have a picture of the shirts?

Also, are you still going to release a pledge meter to coincide with this competition? We could put it on the forum as well as the website.

That's doable as well I think.

 

[dusman]

Wow, that would be awesome if we could get that many people to participate to win something. The thing is many people might do it because the goal to win a shirt isn't that large. Why not make it 65 pledges though? That would match the 65,000 pledge goal. Do you have a picture of the shirts?

Also, are you still going to release a pledge meter to coincide with this competition? We could put it on the forum as well as the website.

We have someone working on making the meters right now. If it's not ready tomorrow, I'll probably go ahead and do it myself.

 

[Sentinelrv]

Yeah, I was concerned about that as well. I was working on a proposal to deliver the campaign to adopt a recurring donation system where it could be automatically deducted if supporters chose to do so. I haven't had much time to work on it much, but it might still be worth it.

Is that legal though? I would think if the FEC didn't disallow it, all the campaigns would be doing it right now.

 

[dusman]

Which brings up an idea.. maybe we just use the widgets to do a 2-3 day plea to donate to the campaign now and we supplement that loss of advertising with the pledge competition? It'd at least get a fair amount of exposure and wouldn't impact the moneybomb in a dramatic way as long as we have people actively seeking pledges still?

 

[lucent]

dusman, I sent you a private message.

 

[dusman]

Is that legal though? I would think if the FEC didn't disallow it, all the campaigns would be doing it right now.

As far as I understand, there are ways they could do it without violating FEC. It wouldn't be like a typical automatic withdrawal, but more so a one-click acceptance feature. The credit cards could be stored securely and each week an automatic message would go out that basically "offers" supporters an easy means to do a one-click donation.

 

[lucent]

As far as I understand, there are ways they could do it without violating FEC. It wouldn't be like a typical automatic withdrawal, but more so a one-click acceptance feature. The credit cards could be stored securely and each week an automatic message would go out that basically "offers" supporters an easy means to do a one-click donation.

Getting people to trust you with their email is like pulling teeth... Getting people to trust you with their credit card is a whole new ball game.

 

[Sentinelrv]

Which brings up an idea.. maybe we just use the widgets to do a 2-3 day plea to donate to the campaign now and we supplement that loss of advertising with the pledge competition? It'd at least get a fair amount of exposure and wouldn't impact the moneybomb in a dramatic way as long as we have people actively seeking pledges still?

You mean we use the current Tea Party widgets to advertise the Iowa Push instead? And we would switch the main promotion engine of the money bomb to the pledge competition? I like that idea. Maybe we could hook into the donation feed and create a meter to $1 million dollars and display that on all three widgets up until midnight of the 15th. Then on the 16th you change the widgets back to a Tea Party Money Bomb advertisement to donate now.

 

[dusman]

Getting people to trust you with their email is like pulling teeth... Getting people to trust you with their credit card is a whole new ball game.

No, this would not at all be handled by the grassroots. It would have to be done by the campaign and if they weren't willing to take on such automation, that idea would be dead in the water.

 

[dusman]

You mean we use the current Tea Party widgets to advertise the Iowa Push instead? And we would switch the main promotion engine of the money bomb to the pledge competition? I like that idea. Maybe we could hook into the donation feed and create a meter to $1 million dollars and display that on all three widgets up until midnight of the 15th. Then on the 16th you change the widgets back to the Tea Party Money Bomb advertisement to donate now.

Yeah, something along those lines. The widgets do help promotions and getting the moneybombs more exposure.. however, I don't believe it would suffer greatly on the moneybomb to transition in that kind of manner as long as we have other initiatives to supplement the momentum.

 

[lucent]

Sentinelrv, sent you a private message.

 

[lucent]

Yeah, something along those lines. The widgets do help promotions and getting the moneybombs more exposure.. however, I don't believe it would suffer greatly on the moneybomb to transition in that kind of manner as long as we have other initiatives to supplement the momentum.

I am not thrilled with the idea when we can use the widgets to promote the moneybomb competition instead. We are the only ones advertising the moneybomb whereas the campaign isn't.

 

[Sentinelrv]

Would you know how to create a ticker? I'm thinking about a ticker showing our overall goal of $1,000,000, where we are on a meter and the current dollar amount, as well as a button that leads you to the campaign website to make your donation. Then like I said, on the 16th we switch the widgets back to the money bomb theme. We'd have the separate pledge meter on RonPaulForums, so people here would still be informed of where we're at without having to look at the pledge count on current widget.

 

[lucent]

I will also point out that the websites that have put a widget up did it under agreement of promoting the moneybomb.

 

[lucent]

Btw, all the coalition sites are missing on the website.

 

[dusman]

I will also point out that the websites that have put a widget up did it under agreement of promoting the moneybomb.

Well I do know half of these guys and I know Nathaniel is in contact with a lot of them as well.. so it wouldn't be an extreme jump to send out a confirmation e-mail. Don't get me wrong, I am a bit nervous potentially stagnating our momentum even more than it has been. Just throwing out ideas on how we might be able to help.

Ultimately, 80% of it is entirely in the campaigns hands to make happen.

 

[Sentinelrv]

I am not thrilled with the idea when we can use the widgets to promote the moneybomb competition instead. We are the only ones advertising the moneybomb whereas the campaign isn't.

If the campaign was so concerned about the money bomb I think they would have started emailing us already like they usually do. Instead they specifically told people not to hold out. I don't think they want to start advertising it for fear that donations will dry up and they won't be able to reserve the ads spaces they need. I'm really concerned about this, so I think we should do what we can to aid in this Iowa push. For Black This Out, the pledge competition was a major part of bringing in 11,000 pledges. I think it would be a much more significant part of this money bomb compared to the effectiveness of the pledge widgets, especially if it's guaranteed that people will win a prize if they reach 65 pledges. I think we should seriously think about using the widgets to help the campaign raise money now, since they need it urgently.