Looks like waiting did not hurt Fred's donations

Check out the first 12 hours.

Enroute to another campaign stop in Iowa, Team Thompson provided an update on how former Tennessee senator and now presidential candidate Fred Thompson’s “Tonight Show” and Internet video launch has been received.

Since midnight, some 13,195 people have registered at Thompson’s Web site, and he’s raked in more than $300,000 in online donations. The site has received 126,000 unique visitors and Thompson’s 15-minute announcement video was seen 110,000 times, Thompson aides report.

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal "Washington Wire"

I bolded what stands out to me - 13,000 volunteers and over $300,000 in donations in less that 12 hours, in the middle of the night! And all that without a concurrent telemarketing or mailing campaign to support the website launch, just word of mouth and an appearance on Leno. Thats all grass roots!

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Fred Thompson Fundraising Report for June

Pretty good numbers for a single first month - and no organized drive, just a website and a couple of fundraisers.

• Time covered: June 1-30
• Total Raised: $3,462,355.05
• Total expenses: $625,745.97
• Net: $2,836,609.08
  
• Biggest Single Expense: Web hardware $66,750
• Payroll total (including taxes): $106,852
• Burn rate: 18.0%
• Fundraising events included: 2
• Number of donors: 9,167
• Avg. contribution: $369.87
• Number of online donors: 7,534
• Total online donations: $771,783
• Number of donors under $200 (small donors): 6,888
• 75% (6,888) of the contributors gave less than $200.
• Contributions came from 50 states and D.C

Notables:

• Peyton Manning- Super Bowl winning Quarterback from the University of Tennessee
• John M. Dowd — a Washington, D.C., attorney and former John McCain backer — donated $2,300 (his wife Carol Dowd donate the same amount)
• Eugene Volokh — prominent UCLA law professor and libertarian blogger — donated $750
• Al D'Amato — a former New York senator who endorsed Mr. Thompson on NY1 earlier this year — donated $2,300
• Douglas J. Feith — a former undersecretary of defense and architect of the Iraq war — donated $2,300
• Kirby Wilbur — prominent conservative Washington State radio host — donated $2,300
• Fred Malek- president of Thayer Capital Partners and a huge fundraising poobah, and one of Sen. John McCain's finance chairmen, his wife, Marlene, is listed as donating $2,300 to the Thompson effort
• Mack Mattingly- former senator from Georgia who endorsed Thompson
• Johnnie Byrd- former Florida House Speaker and 2004 Senate candidate

Thats only an 18% burn rate. And most of his money is small donor and online. Meaning he can go to the well again for that. And thats with practically no staff for fund raising - remember, in June he didn't even have a campaign aide making public appearances with him until late in the month. Compare and contrast to Romney, who, despite burning over 70% of his first quarter $25 Million he raised (including millions he funded out of pocket to his campaign) and many millions more since then, still languishes at 9% nationally, and has wasted untold money on a meaningless straw poll in Ames. Not as well as hoped, but a good start - and the color of the money, a good chunk of it online, and a majority of it grass roots, and small donor, bodes VERY well. Of course you are not going to hear that part of it, only the gross amounts and how it wasn't 5 million that some (including myself) were bandying about. If he kept that up in July, at a similar burn rate but a slightly reduced intake (or same intake and higher burn), that means he is hitting August with $5 million or so available.

So riding in second place in most polls, big in key states of SC and FL, sitting on 5 million, and he has barely started to do real retail fundraising and has not started to campaign. Not a bad place to be.

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Web Analysis - Thompson Tops ALL of them!

Impressive! According to Alexa web stats, Fred Thompson's site outdrew all the other candidate sites at launch. Whats more impressive is when you consider it was done without a large campaign prep and advertising, like the others - this was just a drop of the hat and word of mouth. Hit the link for the graph.

Ordinary Coloradan: Of course, its starting to tail off somewhat. Whats going to be interesting, at least from a blogger/net-geek standpoint, is how the Thompson folks want to go about sustaining the web presence. No disparagement intended, but they really need to get more content up there. And get the off-line donation form available (as a PDF) along with instructions - it wasn't there last I checked. I've had to supply those in a cut-n-paste format here on my blog (look for that in the commenst section of one of the posts below). For people who still don't feel comfortable donating on a web page, thats a vital thing to have handy.

Courtesy of Alexa Web Stats

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I'm With Fred!

The Official Fred Thompson site is up!

Courtesy of I'm With Fred (Friends of Fred Thompson)

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Thompson Campaign is now Official

Donators, Start Your Checkbooks! - New pic of Fred and his wife Jeri to celebrate this!

Lawyer-actor-politician Fred Thompson this morning formed a fundraising committee for his presidential ambitions. Friends of Fred Thompson Inc. filed papers this morning with the Tennessee secretary of state’s office to incorporate in Nashville. The company’s initial headquarters will be the offices of Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis law firm, Suite 2700 of the Nashville City Center building at 511 Union St. downtown. Its registered agent is lawyer Joseph A. Woodruff, a partner in Waller Lansden who served as legal counsel for Thompson’s successful 1994 and 1996 campaigns for U.S. Senate from Tennessee.

Keep that checkbook handy - I'll be linking to an online donation site soon.

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Fred Thompson begins fund raising effort

Sounds like they have done everything except hand the check over. Read below the fold for how Fred has frozen donations to other candidates. Money talks...

... today he did begin raising money for a prospective bid, USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page writes. She continues:

In a conference call with about 100 people -- many of whom have urged him to jump in the race -- Thompson asked for their help in raising funds for a testing-the-waters committee, which is likely to be formed next week. That money could be used for a campaign when and if he's ready to run.

[The Rest of the Story]

Carl Ricker, a Republican fundraiser and real estate developer from Asheville, N.C., who was also in on the call, says he has delayed giving to other presidential candidates. "I guess there are people out there I could live with," he says, "but there's not anyone who made me smile and feel warm inside like Fred does."

Courtesy of Mark Memmott on USA Today Political Blog

This may put a crimp in other candidates fund sources.

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