In the first major test of this campaign, you delivered.
More than 475,000 people decided to own a piece of this campaign in just our first quarter — a promising sign of what’s to come if we all stay focused and work together.
We’ll be in touch with more information as we continue to crunch the numbers. But for now, I wanted to pass along a quick video I think you’ll like.
If you missed it, the President held a press conference earlier this week. The last few minutes were really something special. It’s a good reminder of why we’re fighting so hard to get him re-elected:
Thanks again. Hope you have a great holiday weekend.
June 30th at 11:59 p.m. is the first big deadline of this campaign. At that moment, we’ll close the books on this financial quarter and begin preparing our fundraising report to the Federal Election Commission, the press, and the public.
Our opponents are chasing Washingtonlobbyists and special-interest PACs for big checks ahead of the deadline. To them, and to most of the pundits, campaigns are all about how many millions of dollars each candidate can raise.
We disagree. Of course we have a budget and financial goals. But we believe that the true strength of our campaign is the number of everyday people owning a piece of it.
So we refuse money from Washington lobbyists and special-interest PACs. And rather than setting a goal of millions of dollars, we’re setting a goal of 550,000 grassroots donations by the June 30th deadline.
The number of contributions we earn in this quarter will be the definitive record of how strong our support was at the very start. If you’re one of this campaign’s earliest supporters — thank you. Will you chip in another $5 or whatever you can afford to help us hit our goal?
A lot of people out there are wondering whether this campaign can inspire the kind of grassroots support that has been the foundation of our success. A lot of people out there are already saying we can’t.
So we’ve got something to prove.
What happens between now and Thursday will shape the story of how the 2012 race began.
Help write that story with a donation of $5 or more here:
Thanks,
Messina
Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
P.S. — This Thursday also marks the end of the Dinner with Barack contest. When you give, you’re automatically entered for a chance to win. Throw your hat in the ring:
I want to show you a quick presentation I’ve been giving to the first staff coming on board here in Chicago, outlining our strategy to win and our overall approach to this campaign.
In the weeks and months to come, we’ll ask grassroots supporters like you to meet with one another and local organizers to take the first steps to victory on November 6th, 2012.
But before we begin meeting in living rooms and backyards across America, it’s important that we communicate with each other about a set of principles for the organization and our overall strategic thinking about how the race will shape up.
The most important aspect is this: Our campaign will be grounded in President Obama’s experience as a community organizer. This notion of ordinary people taking responsibility for the organization at the neighborhood level is not only the way to win, it’s also the way politics ought to work. Our campaign will be an example of innovation and efficiency, but it will also be an example of civic engagement at its best and most rewarding.
Have a look at the briefing, then share it with your friends and neighbors and ask them to help build this campaign with us:
This plan will evolve as we get feedback from grassroots supporters like you over the weeks and months ahead. That’s already happening — as you know, we’ve already started the process of having one-on-one conversations with people in every state to gather thoughts and ideas, and thousands more talks will take place over this spring and summer.
But this briefing should give you a sense of our current thinking about how we’ll build an unprecedented grassroots campaign to win — with you leading it.
You’ve been hearing from Messina about our overall strategy and what’s at stake in this election. My job as the Battleground States Director is to report back to you on the nuts and bolts of what we’re building in communities across the country.
I want to take you through it in detail, so you can understand how to get involved and shape our organization where you live.
We’re going to build it from the ground up. And we’re going to use this summer to roll out our team model and organizing structure through grassrootsplanning sessions in homes and by videoconference.
Here’s the full briefing — watch it here, and if you’re willing to get involved now and be part of the organization in your community, let me know:
Some of these planning sessions are already under way, and we’re starting to get some feedback. I got one email from a supporter named Steven, who hadn’t been involved at all since 2008, and only went to his grassroots planning session on a whim.
As a result, he’s all-in — he wants want to get involved fast, and also has all sorts of new ideas for how he can apply his skills better this time and which friends and colleagues he can reach out to about joining the campaign.
The subject line of his email about the meeting was “Inspiring night.”
This kind of organization-building isn’t just an electoral strategy — it’s a reflection of what we believe in as voters and citizens. It’s a commitment to the kind of politics that begins in backyards and living rooms and empowers every single American to get involved and organize for the changes they want to see.
At a moment when it feels like the only thing that separates our opponents is how quickly they want to end Medicare as we know it, winning this way — driven locally, powered by the grassroots — will be a rebuke to those in Washington who still think that people across the country don’t have a seat at the table where decisions are made.
I’m asking you to pull up a chair. If you’re willing to get involved now, at this crucial point in the campaign, let me know here:
P.S. — If you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s a quick rundown on where we stand:
— Messina mentioned the one-on-one initiative last month. We’re going to talk with every person who volunteered or made a donation last time. So the staff and I started making calls and meeting with people one-on-one. And then those people started having their own one-on-ones with others. So far more than 75,000 individual conversations have happened across the country. The results are a massive army of newly energized volunteers, plus thousands of pages of ideas and feedback that will inform how we shape our organization nationally.
— Grassroots planning sessions are under way across the country — we’ve had dozens so far with more than a hundred still to come. Everyone has been or will be invited to one.
— You heard about our Summer Organizer Program when we asked you to help recruit them. Well, there are now hundreds across the country, and they start next week. We were pleasantly surprised that the number of applicants far exceeded what we saw when we launched this program in 2008, and you’ll be hearing more about them — and in many cases from them directly — in the coming months
This donor-matching drive ends tonight — thanks for taking that first step and owning a piece of this campaign.
But I need your help to get us where we need to be: With more than 15,000 people joining this matching drive so far this week, I’m setting a goal to reach 20,000 before our deadline at midnight.
My team calculated how many new donors this goal translates to in your area. Here’s where we stand:
GRASSROOTS MATCH
Deadline: Midnight tonight
National Goal: 20,000 new donors
Goal in Seattle: 15
One of these people — maybe even someone in your neighborhood — will make their first donation to the campaign because you’re ready to double their impact.
Can you help us meet our goal by pledging to match a first-time gift of $25?
We know that we can compete without compromising our values — measuring our goals not just in dollars raised, but in people who’ve taken ownership of this campaign.
So tonight’s goal is an important one — and you’re a big reason we’re in a position to hit it. People like you are the most effective fundraisers we have right now. You made your first donation simply because someone said, “If you give, I’ll give, too.” Now, it’s your turn.
Donate $25 or more today and help bring in a new donor:
Be a Seed for Change 
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