It was nine years ago when Howard Dean, the Governor of Vermont, broke new ground when his campaign raised record sums of money when making a bid for the White House – and now, Obama is using mobile technology to accept donations via text message.
Jim Messina, campaign manager of Obama’s presidency campaign, explains the reason for this one-of-a-kind approach, in saying, “Grass-roots giving is powering this campaign. Accepting small donations by text message will help us engage even more grass-roots supporters who want to play a role by donating whatever they can afford to the campaign – and get the president reelected in November.”
Being the very first political candidate to run such a program, all that customers of Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S Cellular will have to do is text ‘GIVE’ to 62262 (spells O-B-A-M-A). Carriers such as AT&T among others will sign on in the near future.
Donations are capped at $50 per candidate or political committee and totally $200 for the entire election cycle – the latter being the maximum that an individual is allowed to give and which will be charged to their wireless bill.
While charities namely the American Red Cross has used this idea of text donations successfully, the same is not true of political campaigns as this method has faced legal and technical obstacles in the past.
However, a text donation proposal by LA based m-Qube Inc. was approved by the Federal Election Commission along with support from both the Obama and Romney campaigns. With that being said, Romney’s campaign also plans to begin text donations shortly.