One of the things I love about political campaigns is how fast they move.  In the case of Scott Brown’s US Senate campaign, things could not have moved faster- or come together so unexpectedly (and so well).

The Prosper Group had been hired to develop the website for Scott Brown in September- back when the campaign was not flush with cash and needed something together quickly.  We worked furiously over a single weekend and launched a website for Scott.

We first started recognizing an uptick in both traffic and fundraising soon after Christmas- perhaps connected with the Christmas Eve vote on health care.  Online fundraising began to pick up dramatically and crested after we collected about $375,000 the day when Scott appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity (January 8th).

In the meantime, the campaign had been promoting a microsite (aptly named www.redinvadesblue.com) talking about a “moneybomb” to take place on January 11^th.  Originally, the hope was to raise perhaps $80,000 or so to help buy some additional radio advertising in the final days of the campaign.  For a few weeks, individuals could visit the site and pledge certain amounts to contribute on that day.  On the 8^th, we had just over 1,000 pledges that totaled around $29,000.

But now, with the campaign already raising over $300,000 in one day, we thought we could do better than $80,000.  However, it was our contention at The Prosper Group that we couldn’t accomplish that without setting a public goal, which had been left out of the Red Invades Blue campaign to that point.  We needed contributors to be able to join in on the excitement of reaching that goal together.  The campaign leadership, however, had long felt that by alerting the Democrats to our online fundraising success, we might “wake them up” and encourage a barrage of negative attacks on Scott (which, of course, they eventually did with reckless abandon).  This below the radar strategy had served the campaign very well.

On Sunday, January 10^th we had new ammunition to take to the campaign leadership- a Public Policy Polling survey that had Scott Brown up 1 point.  Our case was that in essence “the cat was out of the bag” and nothing was going to stop the Coakley campaign from waking up now.  Rob Willington, the campaign’s new media director, agreed.  The proposal was to set the goal at $500,000, something we felt confident we could reach, but we thought $1,000,000 was within reach.  Despite some hesitation from some other advisors, the campaign’s leadership agreed to let us set an audacious public goal and see if Brown’s online supporters would help us meet it.

At The Prosper Group we worked feverishly the night of the 10^th to build a splash page with a graphic of Massachusetts that donors would turn from blue to red by helping us reach our goal.  In addition, a video of Scott talking about the moneybomb was added.

We went live at midnight and started recording contributions at 12:01am on the 11^th.  Just after noon we had already blown past $500,000 and had reset our goal to $750,000.  Just after dinner time we had pushed past $750,000 and were trying to decide if we wanted to upgrade the goal to $1,000,000.  Our decision was to see if we could get our online supporters to call for it first.  They did, so we announced the decision on Twitter and reset our graphic for $1,000,000.

From the @scottbrownma Twitter feed:

I see a lot of people are pushing for $1M... I agree, let's roll!#masen #41stVote #Victory6:29 PM Jan 11th from web

WOW, I see we hit our goal of $750K!!! #masen #41stVote6:27 PM Jan 11th from web

Brigadiers, We Are Going To $750K, let's roll! http://bit.ly/4ScpOw#masen #tcot #41stVote4:00 PM Jan 11th from web

Senior Citizens are calling our office b/c they heard about "the bomb" but are not online & want their checks to count #masen3:43 PM Jan 11th from web

It appears Cape Cod is next on our map, let's get to $500,000 before midnight! http://bit.ly/4ScpOw #masen #41stVote #tcot2:35 PM Jan 11th from web

I was just informed that we have raised $403,429.12 TODAY! You are incredible http://bit.ly/4ScpOw #masen #tcot #41stVote2:33 PM Jan 11th from web

Today we are trying to raise $500,000 to finish strong and win#masen please help us reach our goal http://bit.ly/4ScpOw #tcot9:35 AM Jan 11th from web

TODAY: our moneybomb to raise $500,000 today, will you help?http://bit.ly/6bY7bT #masen #41stVote #tcot (please RT&Blog)12:44 AM Jan 11th from web

But, honestly, that wasn’t the best news to come out of the money bomb.  Due to the success of the moneybomb, the contributions kept coming and put us on par with the millions being dropped into the state by the DSCC and the SEIU.  We raised another 1.3 million on the 12^th and had a day at 1.7 million in the same week. 

In retrospect it appears to me that the moneybomb could not have come together any better.  Any earlier and it may have been less successful or had the negative effect the campaign was worried about.  Any later and it would have been too late to spend the money raised.  I’m also fully convinced that without the public goal we set, the campaign may have raised just a few hundred thousand dollars and been unable to raise the money we needed in the final days to win.  Setting a goal (and surpassing it) opened the floodgates to more support online.

NOTE: Props should be given to Patrick Ruffini and his team at EngageDC, who put together the iContribute system the Brown campaign was using for online donations.  In addition, Patrick provided helpful data and advice as the campaign rolled on.