Last August conservative bloggers joined with Alexandria-based Campaign Solutions to address the GOP’s weakness in online fundraising. Already they were two years behind the Democratic pioneer in this space, ActBlue. The result was ABC PAC and Rightroots, and when I reviewed it upon launch, I found a lot to be desired:
Rightroots is the only slate [of candidates] available; other interested parties have been told they’ll just have to wait. I’m told that eventually it will be brought up to parity with ActBlue: Bloggers will have a personal ID with the site to track their accounts, and ABC PAC will make it possible to donate to any federal GOP candidate (right now only high profile candidates are listed). … As yet, a proof of concept is really all it is: It’s more like a shareware demo that only lets you play the first level.
Mike Turk, the GOP strategist most responsible for putting the site together, responded in the comments:
ActBlue has been in development for two years, and already raised north of six million dollars. To compare the functionality of a site that has been online for less than two full days, and which publicly states it is trying to put together funds for further development to a site like the one ActBlue is today is a bit disingenuous. … Given full funding, full functionality and a full catalog of candidates, ABC PAC has the potential to meet and exceed what ActBlue has done – and we plan to do so.
It seemed to me that ABC could have debuted with more functionality than it did — it should have built upon what ActBlue had pioneered — but his response was fair. However, I kept checking back throughout the fall, and while the fundraising numbers attained respectability, the ABC website itself never improved. (Disclosure, however, did improve — the front page of ABC now gives an idea of how your money will be handled.)
My main point the first time around was that ActBlue was a Web 2.0 kind of site, like a Facebook for progressive fundraising. You could sign up for your very own account, compile your own slate of candidates, keep track of your progress and follow the rankings. Not only that, but there was plenty of reading material about how ActBlue works. ABC, on the other hand, appeared to be ony a few pages deep, everything was locked down, nothing was customizable, and the only interactive feature would perhaps be watching the figures change.
Flash forward a couple months, and the situation is even more dire for online Republican activists. First, here’s a screen capture from ActBlue’s front page as of last night:
Now let’s compare that to the front page of ABC PAC, taken at the same time:
Note the figures. Yes, it’s all this cycle. The top 5 presidential candidates on ActBlue have received about $434,000, while all candidates on ABC PAC have collected exactly $298.
The stark difference continues as you explore each site. ActBlue’s page for the ‘08 presidential contest provides plenty of options for supporting a candidate, on the site and off, and also-ran apparent runner Dennis Kucinich has raised just $20 shy of ABC’s top recipient. Edwards is the clear fundraising leader, because his own campaign is making use of ActBlue’s infrastructure. If you go to his website and click “Contribute” under the “Take Action Menu,” you will be redirected to to ActBlue.
By contrast, it doesn’t seem anyone has linked to ABC in over a month. Will one of the just-hired GOP blogger consultants persuade one or more of their candidates to use ABC PAC? They can’t, at least not without talking to the Donatellis first. But why would you even bother? The website is boring, an obvious corporate job without even the faintest sign of the social networking tools that make ActBlue so cool.
And what of Rightroots itself, the monopoly blogger slate from the ‘06 cycle? It is no longer linked off the main page, and if you punch in the URL yourself, you’ll find a generic ABC page thanking you for your support:
Because of you, ABCPac was able to raise almost $300,000 for Republican House and Senate candidates, online! … We are currently in the process of expanding and improving our web site and will be announcing our new efforts in the coming months.
Maybe that’s true. But if that assurance was available somewhere besides an orphan page, I’d be inclined to take it more seriously. Besides, ABC doesn’t need to get a little better to be useful. It needs to get a lot better. Currently, there is no baby to throw out with the bath water.
As of now, putting ActBlue and ABC side by side is like comparing the Wii to a Tiger Electronics handheld. ABC isn’t even playing the same game as ActBlue, and it is far from clear that it ever will.
Update: For further discussion and debate on this topic, see (in chronological order going back nearly a week) Patrick Ruffini, Mike Turk, Rob Bluey and Todd Ziegler.
