From the Los Angeles Times: Small Donors Playing Bigger Role in Campaigns

[flpoljunkie]

Small donors playing bigger role in campaigns
Presidential candidates collect record amounts in small sums. Just as valuable: the support those dollars and cents represent.

By Dan Morain
Times Staff Writer

July 23, 2007

From her computer in Anchorage, Sharon Pipino hits the "send" button once a month, and delivers another $25 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

"I just can't help myself," Pipino said with a chuckle. A massage therapist who had never made a campaign donation until this year, she added: "If I have some left over at the end of the month, I send him more." She has made at least four donations totaling $164.21.

With the 2008 presidential campaign generating intense interest, candidates are finding that small donations are anything but chump change. They are raising unprecedented amounts in small sums, employing the Internet and traditional direct-mail and telemarketing techniques, and holding low-budget fundraising rallies.

In a campaign expected to cost the two major-party nominees a combined $1 billion, a few bucks from Anchorage don't mean much on their own. But candidates hope to leverage those donations into more money and something at least as valuable: volunteer campaign workers.

"You want people to give their time," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. "We need people to do phone banks and canvassing…. These are the people who are going to provide the foundation of a very strong national organization."

Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) leads all major candidates in collecting small donations, receiving nearly 30% of his $58.5 million in small increments. The $16.5 million he raised in amounts of $200 or less in the first half of the year is more than all the other Democrats combined raised in such small donations.

Much of it comes via the Internet unsolicited. Plouffe estimated Obama raised $5 million by using direct mail, with the average donation $70.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-money23jul23,0,5095961,full.story?coll=la-politics-campaign

For more detailed information:

http://opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp?cycle=2008