A week or so ago, Ronald Hansen of the Arizona Republic and USA Today included Slatecard.com in his round-up of companies on the Right and Left which candidates use to process their online donations. I was quoted in the piece:

Processing fees already may be viewed as an unavoidable expense as basic to campaigning as phone bills and plane tickets.

"Your average online donor is an impulse buyer," said David All, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant who last year founded Slatecard.com, which he hopes to be a Republican answer to ActBlue. So far, the site's donors have raised more than $5,000 for GOP presidential candidates.

In charging a 4.5% flat fee, All said he loses money on small donors, which is hopefully offset by the bigger ones. In any event, he sees the site as filling a critical void for the GOP.

"With online donors, the sooner you can seal the deal, the better," he said. "You're risking not sealing the deal if you can't donate online." 

While I appreciate the mention, I think Ronald missed some important points about Slatecard that I added to the comments of the post. Here's what I wrote:

Thanks for including Slatecard.com in your round-up. This a very important discussion to have.

Transparency, openness and honesty are just a few of the guiding principles we cling to at Slatecard.

In fact, that's why one of our first blog posts back on October 11, 2007 (we launched October 8) dealt with this issue specifically, titled "Transparency in Processing."

We're proud to be one of the most cost-effective online processing solutions for Republicans and while we're doing this as a volunteer effort, we believe it's necessary to helping give the Right the tools it needs to better leverage the power of the Internet.

One point I'd like to include is that while we may have only raised a little over $5k for Presidential candidates, we've raised well over $325k for other Federal Republican candidates and committees. In fact, we're proud that over 41 candidates have already signed up to use Slatecard to exclusively process their donations.

We're just getting started but we're making tremendous progress given the fact that we've only been up for six months.

Thanks again.

David All
Executive Director
Slatecard.com PAC

The bottom-line is that a processing fee for online donations will always be a part of the process. However, we're proud of our lowest-on-the-market rate of 4.5% regardless of what credit card a donor uses and the fact that we don't charge a per transaction fee or a set-up/monthly fee to candidates.

To keep this operation running - we instead rely on generous donations from you - the Slatecard community. And, as you know, we appreciate it.

Campaign Managers and Candidates:  Imagine logging in to a web-based dashboard every morning to see which issues have been driving donations to your campaigns. You could use that information for smarter, more effective online and offline donor prospecting.
 
Slatecard Community:  Imagine being provided opportunities to support the candidates who best represent the issues that you support -- similar to how Amazon.com is able to recommend books that you might like based on previous history and similar users. Regardless of geography, you would find the candidates that are your kind of candidates who stand up for the issues that matter most to you.
 
These visions are about to become reality through Slatecard's Donor Analytics™

 

 

The following is a memorandum previewing the revolutionary innovation and value of Slatecard Donor Analytics^TM. And remember, Slatecard is the most cost-effective solution on the market for Federal candidates, committees and Causes. Republican candidates, committees and conservative Causes interested in getting started with Slatecard.com, the most cost-effective solution for processing online donations, should email Team@Slatecard.com.

Download and Take It With You: SlatecardDOTcom_Memo-DonorAnalyticsReport-01292008.pdf (505.96 kb)

Memorandum
To: Interested Parties
From: David All, Executive Director, Slatecard.com PAC
Date: January 29, 2008
Re: Previewing Donor Analytics™

Since its launch on October 8, 2007, the Slatecard.com community raised $151,318.52 through January 23, 2008 for Republican candidates, committees and conservative Causes from 1,845 grassroots activists throughout the nation. The average donation has been $82.01.

While seemingly similar websites have merely served as an “online shopping cart” for political candidates, Slatecard has always been much more. Slatecard is a utility to support and enhance Republican activism. Upon its launch, Wired.com labeled Slatecard a “Facebook for Republican campaign donors.”

One of the most important innovations leading to Slatecard’s early success has been the deployment of “Issue Badges.”

When someone makes a donation through Slatecard.com, the donor is asked to assign an “Issue Badge” after the donation has been authorized which represents the issue that drove the donation to that candidate. By doing so, the donor is helping qualify candidates based on the issues they represent. The innovation of Issue Badges is an intellectual property asset of Slatecard.

We currently have 30 issue badges loaded in the system:

 

DISCLAIMER: It is our hope that the following analysis merely provide a glimpse of what the Slatecard.com utility could provide to Republicans and conservative Causes. We recognize that the sample size of which this analysis is based is likely not statistically accurate.

What are Donor Analytics™?
Along with FEC-required contact information, through our Take Control Portal, candidates, committees and Causes can access the issues that are driving donations to them from grassroots activists. Eventually, these reports will be automated through Slatecard Donor Analytics™.

If used effectively, this free tool can help build a smarter, more effective donor prospecting strategy.

By analyzing data collected from the Slatecard.com community, we can identify the issues that are driving donations to Republican candidates, committees, and conservative Causes. It should be noted that not every donor assigns an issue badge to a candidate. The following analysis is based on 477 assigned Issue Badges for a total of $54,187.17 collected from October 8, 2007 – January 23, 2008.

As donor volume increases and donors better embrace the Issue Badges process, we expect the statistical sampling of these reports to improve in quality. Further, some issues, such as immigration in the broad sense, have several issue badges (Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Secure Our Borders, and No Amnesty) which could affect the outcome of this report.

Also, we plan to randomize the placement of issue badges in the very near future so that the default issue badge is not “Conservation of Resources.”

The Issues Driving Donations
One of the more interesting observations is the average donation size for individual issue badges assigned to recipients. One might label this average a “value” for a donation. 

When reviewing the chart below, the methodology should be noted (Issue Badge Total / Frequency = Avg. Donation).

 

 

Top Issue Badges By Frequency

1.    Cut The Pork: 54
2.    Pro-Life: 48
3.    Protect & Defend America: 46
4.    Jobs & Economy: 36
5.    Conservation Of Resources: 33

 

 

 

Top Issue Badges By Total Dollars

1.    Protect & Defend America: $9,435.99
2.    Cut The Pork: $6,593.00
3.    Available and Affordable Health Care: $4,825.00
4.    Jobs & Economy: $4,337.00
5.    Defeat Radical Islam: $3,525.00

 

We're pleased to announce the launch of the Slatecard Causes program.

UPDATE (Feb 11, 11:23 AM EST): We have updated our cost-comparison graphic to include another vendor along with the downloadable document below. We have also added more candidates to our tally of candidates using Slatecard exclusively.

Since our October 8 launch, we've been honored to serve as the online clearinghouse for 26 campaigns.

We owe much of early success to former Congressional candidate Kevin O'Neill for being the first candidate to use Slatecard exclusively to transact his online donations. When asked how Slatecard helped his campaign get ahead on the campaign trail, Kevin said:

"The reliable and innovative features of Slatecard provide my campaign an edge when it comes to getting my message out to grassroots activists and online donors. In particular, the issue badges selected by my donors have proved to be a valuable resource, helping my campaign understand what issues matter most to my supporters. Further, the real-time tally of online contributions has helped build momentum for my campaign."

Today, we're reaching out to ALL Republican candidates seeking Federal office and letting them know that they too can use Slatecard as their hub for all online donations.

We've done our research to figure out what some of the vendors charge campaigns to process donations and we have found that Slatecard is the most cost-effective solution for Republican campaigns. Here's a chart (click to download as a PDF file) which compares Slatecard's fee structure/services to campaigns compared with those of some of the others in this space:   

 

We've created a document which better explains the services we offer and why it makes sense to use Slatecard immediately to process online donations for your campaign. You can download the document here as a PDF.

To get started, email us at Team AT Slatecard.com and we'll get back to you quickly.

Thank you for your consideration.

Slatecard is pleased to announce that we now accept American Express (AMEX) for all online contributions.

Even Wes would be happy to hear that: