As Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination sets record after record in money-raising, leaders of traditional civil rights organizations, social service agencies and other groups that serve African-Americans must be asking themselves whether the financial spigots Obama has discovered can be turned on for them.
 
Interviews with a number of Obama’s financial supporters, including large donors and small ones, suggest that the answer is almost certainly “No.”

“A big part of Sen. Obama’s success is a phenomenal candidate,” said Tony West, a partner with the San Francisco law firm Morrison & Foerster, who is also one of Obama’s five campaign finance co-chairs for the state of California. “If you take him out of the equation, it’s not clear that you’re going to be successful.”
 
“I think it would scare me if the Obama campaign attempted to mobilize their broad base of support for purely African-American causes, because I think that what brought a lot of people to the table in the first place is that there was no mention of his race,” said Che Hashim, a 27-year old lawyer in San Francisco who has contributed $250 to Obama’s campaign.  “I think that would be off-putting to a lot of the broad-based support.”
 
Obama’s ability to raise money is unprecedented in American political history.  As of April 21, he had raised more than $240 million, more than any other candidate, Democratic or Republican, in the 2008 contest. His monthly receipts have been staggering:  $32 million in January, $55 million in February, $41 million in March.  Earlier this month, his campaign issued a special appeal to online contributors and raised more than $1 million in one minute.
 
To achieve this success, the Obama campaign has used two different strategies.  One is to tap into large donors, the kinds of contributors who can write checks for $2,300 (the maximum allowed by federal law) in the primary campaign, and renew their commitment in the general election. This is the traditional method of raising money for political campaigns, one used by all of the candidates in this election.
 
The second strategy, the one that sets Obama apart, is his use of the Internet to generate contributions from hundreds of thousands of small donors, many of them first-time contributors to political campaigns, who write checks for $25, $50, and $100. In all, more than one million people have donated money to Obama’s campaign, with the average donation just under $100, according to Federal Election Commission records.
 
“That has been the genius” of the Obama fundraising operation, said Kneeland Youngblood, a Dallas-based Obama finance committee member and the founding partner of Pharos Capital Group LLC, a hedge fund which recently completed a $65 billion buyout of American Airlines’ pension fund.  “It’s not the people like me.  We’ll be around, regardless of who’s running.
 
“What Barack has been able to do is bring new dollars to the table. What he has done is tapped into working class America, black folks, white folks, Latinos, women and men, who can give a little bit of money.  First of all, he’s communicated with them and said, ‘We want your money, your money makes a difference.’ The real story is the school teacher who gives a little bit of money.  That’s the stuff that changes the paradigm.”
 
Obama’s use of the Internet as a vehicle to build relationships with small donors is a key to his campaign’s success, said Chris Womack, an executive with Atlanta-based Southern Co. and an Obama contributor.
 
“One of the things he has done so well is, once you make a contribution, you get an email blast, so you know where he’s going today, what he’s doing today.  You get inside the campaign strategy, you feel like you’re part of the team,” Womack said.
 
“Most times when you give a contribution, the only time you hear back is when they want another contribution.  This movement is different.  It just keeps building and building.  People feel like they’ve been a major part of the success that’s been accomplished.”