Unrestricted restrictions
Posted Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 3:57 pm by John Brian (91 posts)
With news of Obama’s
$150 million month still fresh on my mind, I saw an email from him appear in my inbox with the subject line “You Decide.” Skimming the email, I hoped that it would lead me to a donation form that asked me to determine which states my contributions to go to. Sadly, my hopes were dashed – it was just another standard donation form.
This makes sense – in general, restricted giving is dangerous, as your supporters aren’t always the best judges of how you should spend your campaign resources (as any field organizer will tell you if asked about yard signs). But look at the place where Senator Obama is at:
- Ahead in the polls by about 6 points nationally
- Winning enough states by 8 or more to get to 270 EVs without even considering battlegrounds
- Flush with cash, to the point that he’s running TV ads 3 to 1 in states where he’s competing with McCain, and running unopposed in other states
- Expanding the map to states that no one considered remotely near the table a year ago
- Running out of time to place more TV buys
This is no reason to be overconfident – 
as a Democrat, I’m quite used to playing Charlie Brown to the electorate’s Lucy. But it is a reason to consider bold new ways to involve your contributors: why not just let them pick the states to target their fundraising?
First, consider that this one fundraising campaign is a drop in the bucket – you’ve got plenty of other appeals, not to mention big dollar fundraisers and merch. Plus the value of money is dropping daily – a dollar given today is worth much less than that same dollar in May, since he’s pretty much hit the saturation point with TV anyway and has started expanding to XBox Live and iPhones.
Second, there’s no reason the campaign has to get too specific. Don’t let donors determine exactly what the contribution is for, but maybe just the state or general expense area. With so many states in play, it’s unlikely that more than a token amount of money will go to states where it’s completely wasted, since even Massachusetts and DC have field expenses that could be reallocated later.
But more than anything, it gives donors a sense of ownership in the campaign. They’ve seen countless presentations by David Plouffe with his charts and maps showing the plan for victory, so why not let your most dedicated supporters direct their contributions to make it possible – I’d be willing to bet that the results would look a lot like the maps that the campaign is looking at.
Non-profits lucky enough to find 
themselves the recipient of similar windfalls should also consider relinquishing control to donors. As long as you make the choices such that almost anything is good, and set up disclaimers to allow you to shift unallocated dollars to general revenue, the benefits of increased giving that always come from restricted dollars should outweigh the headache to your accounting department. And while you’ll still have to do much of your fundraising as unrestricted so that it can be used to pay for less photogenic programs, like administrative costs, a few “donors choice” restricted fundraisers a year can do wonders for your net revenue.
For Barack Obama’s campaign today, a restricted gift isn’t really restricted – there’s almost no bad place to spend his money. Telling the donors, “You decide” and meaning it would keep up the tidal fundraising that’s been a sign of the massive grassroots support he’s enjoyed so far – and might do the same for your non-profit.
