Ron Paul's Haul: Lessons for Online Fundraisers?

The political world was stunned yesterday with the news that Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian insurgent who is considered a longshot for the Republican presidential nomination by the mainstream press, had raised a forehead-smacking $4.2 million online in little over 24 hours from a whopping 35,000 donors. To recap: casting his 5th of November online fundraising plea as a not-subtle Guy Fawkes attack on the entrenched political powers in his own party, Paul's campaign raised what his campaign calls "the largest single-day online primary fundraising effort by a presidential candidate in United States election history."

It really is amazing, considering the decentralized, open-sourced, viral nature of the campaign - and I think there's a lesson in there somewhere for nonprofit fundraising. The entire campaign was choreographed by a volunteer, Trevor Lyman, according to The Politico:

Lyman, who’d never contributed to a politician before Paul, doesn’t fit into either category.

The co-owner of a company that promotes musicians on the web, he saw a video online proposing someone gather pledges from Paul’s legions of Internet followers, to be contributed through Paul’s campaign website on Monday, Nov. 5

He bought the domain name ThisNovember5th.com and launched the site Oct. 18.

“There’s no officialness about it in any sense. It’s just a website that said ‘hey let’s all donate money on this day,’” Lyman said. “And once the banners were in place and people could start spreading links, it just propagated virally. And that’s really it.”

Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton said the campaign did not coordinate with Lyman but was aware of his efforts, which Paul piggybacked on as Nov. 5 approached.

Could committed volunteers operating semi-independently from major organizations and causes really blow the doors off online fundraising (not to mention list-building)? I think so. Political fundraising isn't the same, of course, as charity fundraising but the basic techniques online can be similar and they do boil down to an effective case, good timing, ease of use, and list-building. We'll be watching the Ron Paul campaign for more developments.