Moneybomb
Encyclopedia
Moneybomb is a neologism coined in 2007 to describe a grassroots fundraising
effort over a brief fixed time period, usually to support a candidate for election by dramatically increasing, concentrating, and publicizing fundraising activity
during a specific hour or day. The term was first applied to a supporter-led fundraiser on behalf of presidential candidate
Ron Paul
, in which context the Mercury News described a moneybomb as being "a one-day fundraising frenzy". The effort combines traditional and Internet
-based fundraising
appeals focusing especially on viral advertising through online vehicles such as YouTube
, Myspace
, Meetup, and online forums. In the case of lesser-known candidates it is also intended to generate significant free mass media
coverage the candidate would otherwise not receive. Moneybombs have been used for grassroots fundraising and viral activism over the Internet by several 2008 presidential candidates in the United States
. It continues to emerge as an important grassroots tool leading up to the 2010 midterm elections and 2012 presidential election
in the United States.
" has had other usages in the past, but the coinage of "moneybomb" or "money bomb" to describe a coordinated mass donation drive for a political candidate came to prominence in 2007, during the campaign
of American presidential candidate Ron Paul
with the help of his technology team, Terra Eclipse. His supporters initiated multiple grassroots fundraising
drives; New York City
musician Jesse Elder is said to have coined the usage of "moneybomb" for such an event., and active-duty service member Eric Nordstrom registered the dotcom domain on October 16, and designed the first moneybomb site. A large moneybomb involving over 35,000 donors was created and proposed by James Sugra on Oct 14th through a YouTube video and organized by Trevor Lyman
took place on November 5, 2007, Guy Fawkes Day
. The fundraising drive raised over $4.2 million in one day, making it at that time the largest one-day Internet political fundraiser ever, and was backed largely by new or disaffected voters. After this, news media such as CNN began widely reporting the term "money bomb" to refer to the event. The term has also been used as a verb and apparently arose from analogy with the neologism "googlebomb".
Guy Fawkes
, the film V for Vendetta
, and the traditional rhyme celebrating Fawkes's plot being foiled. Unofficial drives in support of Fred Thompson, Barack Obama
, Mike Huckabee
, John McCain
, and Dennis Kucinich
were referred to by the media as moneybombs and seen as attempts to replicate the November 5 event.
Thompson's campaign disavowed his supporters' effort, which was speculated to have failed because it had been scheduled for the day before Thanksgiving
and due to lack of realtime donation tracking feedback. Neither the campaign nor the site released contemporaneous fundraising results after the fundraiser. Kucinich's supporters organized a drive on December 15, in honor of the Bill of Rights
adoption. Murray Sabrin
, New Jersey
candidate for U.S. Senate, also repeatedly brought the moneybomb concept to his own race, as well as Jim Forsythe, candidate for New Hampshire's 1st congressional district
.
No fundraising drives for any campaign matched the success of the Fawkes bomb until December 16, when the moneybomb on the Boston Tea Party
's anniversary, organized entirely by online volunteers, raised an amount estimated as $6.0–$6.6 million ($6 million in approved credit card receipts), from 58,407 individual contributors to Paul's campaign. This broke the November 5 record, as well as the 2004 one-day political fundraising record of John Kerry
, indicating it was the largest single-day fundraiser of any kind in U.S. presidential campaign history. Professor Anthony J. Corrado, a campaign finance expert, found the event "extraordinary ... What [Paul] has done is establish himself as a major candidate, and he's no longer a fringe voice."
The first political money bomb in Canada was organized by Dr. Ryan Meili during his 2009 campaign for the leadership of the Saskatchewan NDP Party. Meili set a goal of raising $10,000 and ended up raising over $12,000 in the week leading up to the leadership convention. Meili asked for donations in multiples of 34 - $3.40, $34, $340 - to reflect his age at the time he was seeking the leadership of the party.
Political consultant Ed Rollins
said of the moneybomb concept, "I'll tell you, I've been in politics for 40 years, and these days everything I've learned about politics is totally irrelevant because there's this uncontrollable thing like the Internet. Washington insiders don't know what to make of it."
A 2006 Federal Election Commission
ruling, exempting most Internet activity from campaign finance rules, created the loophole for moneybombs, according to Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center: "It's difficult to imagine any threat of corruption posed by an activist sitting at home trying to talk people into making small donations directly to a candidate's campaign .... These small donors are a good thing for the system .... This is the classic example of the modern soapbox."
Sonia Arrison of TechNewsWorld considered the transparency in pledge and donation amounts to be an important open-source element of moneybomb success: "Those revelations stand in direct contrast to traditional campaigns, which tend to be silent and proprietary about who is donating."
Campaign finance analyst Leslie Wayne regarded the YouTube
and viral campaigning associated with moneybombs as an unexpected new trend in campaign finance. Wayne found the November 5 event a remarkable success because "the Paul campaign never even asked donors for the money. A grassroots group of Paul supporters, via the Internet, all decided to have a one-day online fund-raiser for Dr. Paul." RealClearPolitics
considered Paul's two largest moneybombs to be one of the five moments that changed the 2007 GOP race, and the "incredibly successful" November 5 moneybomb was awarded a Golden Dot as "Technology Impact Moment of the Year" at the 2008 Politics Online Conference.
The link between moneybombs and polling results is unclear.
in the New Hampshire Republican primary, John McCain
raised $1 million online in 24 hours.
When John Kerry
accepted the Democratic nomination in 2004, he raised $5.7 million in one day, partly over the Internet.
On January 8, 2007, a one-day call center organized by Mitt Romney
raised $3,143,404 in donations ($6.5 million including both donations and pledges).
An anonymous Republican fundraising strategist found a close comparison between moneybombs and smaller Daily Kos
fundraising pushes, and looked forward the possibility of "efforts to replicate this performance".
In November 2007, the New York Times and the Associated Press
stated that the one-day fundraising record among 2008 presidential candidates was held by Hillary Clinton for raising $6.2 million on June 30, 2007. Other sources awarded Paul the one-day record for the December 16 event, while the Times and AP did not mention Clinton's total in their December coverage.
On December 15, 2007, Dennis Kucinich
raised $131,400 from approximately 1,600 donors.
On February 5-6, 2008, in the aftermath of the Super Tuesday
primaries, Barack Obama
raised at least $3 million from 7 p.m. to 7 p.m. EST. Between September 3-4, 2008, the night after Sarah Palin
gave her speech at the Republican National Convention
, Barack Obama raised $10 million from over 130,000 donors.
On November 2, 2009, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) raised nearly $570,000 in a one-day moneybomb for his re-election campaign.
On January 11, 2010, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate seat in Massachusetts, Scott Brown
, used this method of fundraising to raise well over one million dollars for his campaign.
On October 19, 2011, Ron Paul
campaigners conducted a major online fundraiser to fight a blackout of Ron Paul by the mainstream media.
Grassroots fundraising
Grassroots fundraising is a method of fundraising used by or for political candidates, which has grown in popularity with the emergence of the Internet and its use by US presidential candidates like Howard Dean and Ron Paul...
effort over a brief fixed time period, usually to support a candidate for election by dramatically increasing, concentrating, and publicizing fundraising activity
Campaign finance
Campaign finance refers to all funds that are raised and spent in order to promote candidates, parties or policies in some sort of electoral contest. In modern democracies such funds are not necessarily devoted to election campaigns. Issue campaigns in referendums, party activities and party...
during a specific hour or day. The term was first applied to a supporter-led fundraiser on behalf of presidential candidate
Ron Paul presidential campaign, 2008
Ron Paul was a Republican Party primary candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election.Initial opinion polls during the first three quarters of 2007 showed Ron Paul consistently receiving support from 3% or less of those polled...
Ron Paul
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...
, in which context the Mercury News described a moneybomb as being "a one-day fundraising frenzy". The effort combines traditional and Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
-based fundraising
Fundraising
Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...
appeals focusing especially on viral advertising through online vehicles such as YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Meetup, and online forums. In the case of lesser-known candidates it is also intended to generate significant free mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
coverage the candidate would otherwise not receive. Moneybombs have been used for grassroots fundraising and viral activism over the Internet by several 2008 presidential candidates in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It continues to emerge as an important grassroots tool leading up to the 2010 midterm elections and 2012 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2012
The United States presidential election of 2012 is the next United States presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. It will be the 57th quadrennial presidential election in which presidential electors, who will actually elect the President and the Vice President of the United...
in the United States.
Origin
The phrase "money bombMoney bomb (disambiguation)
Money bomb or money bombing may refer to:*"Moneybomb", a political fundraiser*"Money bombing", a synonym of commercial googlebombing*The Money Bomb, a controversial 1983 book by James Gibb Stuart about the British pound...
" has had other usages in the past, but the coinage of "moneybomb" or "money bomb" to describe a coordinated mass donation drive for a political candidate came to prominence in 2007, during the campaign
Ron Paul presidential campaign, 2008
Ron Paul was a Republican Party primary candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election.Initial opinion polls during the first three quarters of 2007 showed Ron Paul consistently receiving support from 3% or less of those polled...
of American presidential candidate Ron Paul
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...
with the help of his technology team, Terra Eclipse. His supporters initiated multiple grassroots fundraising
Grassroots fundraising
Grassroots fundraising is a method of fundraising used by or for political candidates, which has grown in popularity with the emergence of the Internet and its use by US presidential candidates like Howard Dean and Ron Paul...
drives; New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
musician Jesse Elder is said to have coined the usage of "moneybomb" for such an event., and active-duty service member Eric Nordstrom registered the dotcom domain on October 16, and designed the first moneybomb site. A large moneybomb involving over 35,000 donors was created and proposed by James Sugra on Oct 14th through a YouTube video and organized by Trevor Lyman
Trevor Lyman
Trevor Morris Lyman is an American musician and internet music entrepreneur. Lyman popularized such political campaign concepts as moneybombs and dedicated political blimp advertising...
took place on November 5, 2007, Guy Fawkes Day
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in England. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding...
. The fundraising drive raised over $4.2 million in one day, making it at that time the largest one-day Internet political fundraiser ever, and was backed largely by new or disaffected voters. After this, news media such as CNN began widely reporting the term "money bomb" to refer to the event. The term has also been used as a verb and apparently arose from analogy with the neologism "googlebomb".
Expansion
Multiple other similar events were scheduled for several of the 2008 presidential candidates, generally in coordination with a historical date. Imagery in the November 5 fundraiser drew on the history of the revolutionaryRevolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes , also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.Fawkes was born and educated in York...
, the film V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta (film)
V for Vendetta is a 2005 dystopian thriller film directed by James McTeigue and produced by Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers, who also wrote the screenplay. It is an adaptation of the V for Vendetta comic book by Alan Moore and David Lloyd...
, and the traditional rhyme celebrating Fawkes's plot being foiled. Unofficial drives in support of Fred Thompson, Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, Mike Huckabee
Mike Huckabee
Michael "Mike" Dale Huckabee is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won . He won...
, John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, and Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich
Dennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....
were referred to by the media as moneybombs and seen as attempts to replicate the November 5 event.
Thompson's campaign disavowed his supporters' effort, which was speculated to have failed because it had been scheduled for the day before Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
and due to lack of realtime donation tracking feedback. Neither the campaign nor the site released contemporaneous fundraising results after the fundraiser. Kucinich's supporters organized a drive on December 15, in honor of the Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
adoption. Murray Sabrin
Murray Sabrin
Murray Sabrin is a professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey,. In 2008 he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in New Jersey, the seat currently held by Democrat Frank Lautenberg...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
candidate for U.S. Senate, also repeatedly brought the moneybomb concept to his own race, as well as Jim Forsythe, candidate for New Hampshire's 1st congressional district
New Hampshire's 1st congressional district
New Hampshire's 1st congressional district covers the southeastern part of New Hampshire. The district consists of three general areas: Greater Manchester, the Seacoast and the Lakes Region....
.
No fundraising drives for any campaign matched the success of the Fawkes bomb until December 16, when the moneybomb on the Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...
's anniversary, organized entirely by online volunteers, raised an amount estimated as $6.0–$6.6 million ($6 million in approved credit card receipts), from 58,407 individual contributors to Paul's campaign. This broke the November 5 record, as well as the 2004 one-day political fundraising record of John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
, indicating it was the largest single-day fundraiser of any kind in U.S. presidential campaign history. Professor Anthony J. Corrado, a campaign finance expert, found the event "extraordinary ... What [Paul] has done is establish himself as a major candidate, and he's no longer a fringe voice."
The first political money bomb in Canada was organized by Dr. Ryan Meili during his 2009 campaign for the leadership of the Saskatchewan NDP Party. Meili set a goal of raising $10,000 and ended up raising over $12,000 in the week leading up to the leadership convention. Meili asked for donations in multiples of 34 - $3.40, $34, $340 - to reflect his age at the time he was seeking the leadership of the party.
Effectiveness
Ed Rollins
Edward John "Ed" Rollins is a Republican campaign consultant and advisor who has worked on several high-profile political campaigns in the United States. In 1983-84, he was National Campaign Director for the Reagan-Bush '84 campaign, winning 49 of 50 states...
said of the moneybomb concept, "I'll tell you, I've been in politics for 40 years, and these days everything I've learned about politics is totally irrelevant because there's this uncontrollable thing like the Internet. Washington insiders don't know what to make of it."
A 2006 Federal Election Commission
Federal Election Commission
The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency that was founded in 1975 by the United States Congress to regulate the campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1975 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act...
ruling, exempting most Internet activity from campaign finance rules, created the loophole for moneybombs, according to Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center: "It's difficult to imagine any threat of corruption posed by an activist sitting at home trying to talk people into making small donations directly to a candidate's campaign .... These small donors are a good thing for the system .... This is the classic example of the modern soapbox."
Sonia Arrison of TechNewsWorld considered the transparency in pledge and donation amounts to be an important open-source element of moneybomb success: "Those revelations stand in direct contrast to traditional campaigns, which tend to be silent and proprietary about who is donating."
Campaign finance analyst Leslie Wayne regarded the YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and viral campaigning associated with moneybombs as an unexpected new trend in campaign finance. Wayne found the November 5 event a remarkable success because "the Paul campaign never even asked donors for the money. A grassroots group of Paul supporters, via the Internet, all decided to have a one-day online fund-raiser for Dr. Paul." RealClearPolitics
RealClearPolitics
RealClearPolitics is a political news and polling data aggregator based in Chicago, Illinois. The site's founders say their goal is to give readers "ideological diversity." They have described themselves as frustrated with what they perceive as anti-conservative, anti-Christian media bias, and...
considered Paul's two largest moneybombs to be one of the five moments that changed the 2007 GOP race, and the "incredibly successful" November 5 moneybomb was awarded a Golden Dot as "Technology Impact Moment of the Year" at the 2008 Politics Online Conference.
The link between moneybombs and polling results is unclear.
Single-day fundraising comparisons
In 2000, after beating George W. BushGeorge W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
in the New Hampshire Republican primary, John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
raised $1 million online in 24 hours.
When John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
accepted the Democratic nomination in 2004, he raised $5.7 million in one day, partly over the Internet.
On January 8, 2007, a one-day call center organized by Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...
raised $3,143,404 in donations ($6.5 million including both donations and pledges).
An anonymous Republican fundraising strategist found a close comparison between moneybombs and smaller Daily Kos
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
fundraising pushes, and looked forward the possibility of "efforts to replicate this performance".
In November 2007, the New York Times and the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
stated that the one-day fundraising record among 2008 presidential candidates was held by Hillary Clinton for raising $6.2 million on June 30, 2007. Other sources awarded Paul the one-day record for the December 16 event, while the Times and AP did not mention Clinton's total in their December coverage.
On December 15, 2007, Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich
Dennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....
raised $131,400 from approximately 1,600 donors.
On February 5-6, 2008, in the aftermath of the Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday
In the United States, Super Tuesday, in general, refers to the Tuesday in February or March of a presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections to select delegates to national conventions at which each party's presidential candidates are officially nominated...
primaries, Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
raised at least $3 million from 7 p.m. to 7 p.m. EST. Between September 3-4, 2008, the night after Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
gave her speech at the Republican National Convention
2008 Republican National Convention
The United States 2008 Republican National Convention took place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from September 1, through September 4, 2008...
, Barack Obama raised $10 million from over 130,000 donors.
On November 2, 2009, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) raised nearly $570,000 in a one-day moneybomb for his re-election campaign.
On January 11, 2010, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate seat in Massachusetts, Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown is a United States senator.Scott Brown may also refer to:-Sportsmen:*Scott Brown , American college football coach of Kentucky State...
, used this method of fundraising to raise well over one million dollars for his campaign.
On October 19, 2011, Ron Paul
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...
campaigners conducted a major online fundraiser to fight a blackout of Ron Paul by the mainstream media.