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Obama for America

"Q2 Fundraising Results" +
  4:46 web video from July 13, 2011.

Jim Messina: Hi everyone, it's Jim Messina.  Our campaign's first Federal Election Commission report is due on Friday.  Before we release it, we wanted to give you the news first.  This report is about how much we spent, how much we raised, and who we raised it from.  There's a lot of Washington chatter about this report, mostly focused on how much we raised overall, and we'll get to that number, but this report is really more about what kind of organization we're building, who is funding that organization and what we're doing with all the money you've been giving.  So let's get into it.

Organizing.  We've been reaching out to supporters in all 50 states to re-connect and to get new supporters on board for 2012.  More than 31,000 face to face meetings and more that 290,000 conversations so far. 

Small groups have been developing local organizing plans at grassroots planning session—nearly 650 sessions so far with dozens more on line.

As for the rest of the summer, our Summer Organizers program to train first time community organizers is going across the country in all 50 states.  And this Saturday we'll have a major day of action across the country to register voters, to bring new people into the political process.  So please join us.

So here's how your contributions are helping us as we ramp up the campaign.  The most concrete example are field offices.  We have already 60 up around the country with many more on the way.  Here's what our budgets going to look like in the next few months.  Your early support means we can make more investments now, giving our organizers more time to build relationships on the ground, reach more people, and recruit more volunteers.

So how are we going to make all this happen?  Our campaign is based on two organizations. 

The first is Obama for America, the same grassroots political organization founded by the President in early 2007 whose sole mission is to win the election in 2012 for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The Democratic National Committee is the national party.  They obviously share our goals, but they also have a broad goal of electing Democrats up and down the ballot in partnership with all the state parties and holding the folks on the Republican side accountable.  We work closely with the DNC to make sure our goals are aligned, so we formed a joint fundraising committee with the DNC called the Obama Victory Fund.  It's mostly focused on big events, so if you go to one of these big events around the country, the proceeds are split between the DNC and the campaign, as are the expenses.

Now let's look at what we all did together in the first quarter [ed.- it's the 2nd Quarter report, first quarter of the campaign].  I want to get specific, so let's talk about Obama for America.  The most important thing isn't the dollar total, but the number of people who pitched in to own a piece of this campaign.  So let's talk about that first.  552,462 people made a donation to this campaign in the first three months—more grassroots support at this point in the process than any campaign in political history.  Those people made more than 680,000 donations, demonstrating the strength of their commitment.  Congratulations on this monumental achievement. 

We made history on the 2008 campaign with our historic number of small dollar everyday people making donations of whatever they could afford.  If you look at the comparatile [phon.] four years ago, you'll see this movement is even stronger. And here's the part I'm personally very proud of.  Ninety-eight percent of all donations that came in were $250 or less, and our average donation is about $69, substantially lower than what our average donation in the 2008 campaign was.

Now let's step back and take a look at the larger budget picture.  Globally we raised more than $86 million, more than $47 million for Obama for America and more than $38 million for the DNC.  Again, we did this from the bottom up.  We didn't accept one single dollar from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs, a commitment no other presidential campaign has made, and which the Republican National Committee also refuses to make.

We have reason to be proud of what we've built so far, but it's going to get tougher from here.  Our report this week will be more than 15,000 pages of information about who's making donations and how we're spending our money.  GOP outside spending for 2012 could be as much as $500 million, but these groups don't report anything.  We're not allowed to see any of those numbers.  This is a whole new ball game like we've never faced before. 

Thank you so much for all you've done—for your donations, for volunteering, for talking to your friends and family about the work the President has done.  But your job, my job, our job is to bring more people into this campaign, more people working together to make the changes we know we need across this country.  Thank you very, very much.

Notes: Another PowerPoint type presentation conveys the sense that this campaign is a well-oiled machine.