When I first joined Acumen Fund in January 2007, our goal was to raise $100 million in philanthropy in 24 months. Like lots of things in life, a little ignorance goes a long way – I didn’t have direct fundraising experience and basically had no idea what it meant to raise $100 million in philanthropy.
We split things down the middle and set a $50 million target for 2007, and it was my job to lead the team to hit this goal. Most of my energy in the early days was on building the fundraising pitch, figuring out the systems we would use, putting in place the building blocks that would set us up for success.
But, as I said, I didn’t have direct fundraising experience and a big part of what I needed to do was to get out there and fundraise.
What I remember like it was yesterday was when, in the spring of 2007, I personally closed my first $100,000 donation. This is a lot of money, and I felt pretty chuffed that I had pulled this off. I got the confirmation of the donation in an email while I was heading home, and I recall thinking, kind of vaguely and absentmindedly: how many of these would I have to pull off for us to hit our $50 million goal?
It sort of seemed like the answer to that question should have been 50, but of course it wasn’t, it was 500. I would need, in the coming 8 months, to get 500 people to commit to give $100,000 each to reach a $50 million goal.
This is elementary math, but as anyone with fundraising experience will tell you, with a small team and a small organization, getting 500 people to commit to giving $100,000 is nearly impossible – the only way you’re going to hit a $50 million goal is either by creating a machine that can raise, say, five-hundred thousand $100 donations OR you focus your greatest effort on getting a very small number of $1 million, $5 million, even $10 million donations. (We did the latter).
While I’m positive that I could have successfully divided $50 million by $100,000 long before I had my job at Acumen (in second grade, say) until you’ve sat in a fundraising seat (CEO, head of development, Board member, political candidate, etc.) you won’t feel the reality of this math in your gut.
This brings me over to the Presidential election and Super PACs. Until recently the most you could give was $2,300 to a candidate, $30,800 to the national party, $46,200 to all candidates and $70,800 to all PACs and parties. Under the new rules, Harold Simmons, who was described yesterday by the NY Times as “a wealthy Texas businessman,” has personally given $14 million to a revolving door of Super PACs supporting various Republican presidential contenders (Perry, Gingrich and Romney). Simmons and another two dozen individuals have given more than $1 million to Republican Super PACs – their collective contributions total more than $50 million so far making them “easily the most influential and powerful political donors in politics today.”
So let’s be totally clear: what the fundraising math tells us is that these 7- and 8-figure donors are the entire center of gravity, they are dominating the US political system, they will end up having undue influence over both over the outcome of the electoral process AND the future decisions of our elected officials. The gravitational force of this group, on both the Republican and Democratic side, is a black hole in the democratic process, sucking up whatever light was left in a system that was already mostly broken.
My real hope is that what is going on today with Super PACs is so beyond the pale that it could actually create a whiplash effect and give momentum to campaign finance reform…but I color myself skeptical on that count. Less outlandishly improbable, 2012 will be an aberration and we will soon revert back to the old, still-broken system we used to have that, at least, was better than this one.
or perhaps because these 7-8 figure donors are putting so much money towards multiple candidates they will eat each other alive…..
it would be nice if all of this excess money could go towards something sustainable.
A classical Marxist, which I am not, would probably say that the advent of Super-PACs is a good thing, in that it makes a previously bad situation so much worse that reform becomes much more likely. This would be your “whiplash effect” Sasha.
Let us hold that hopeful thought.