One thing is for sure, if there’s a good idea, sooner or later the politicians will claim they invented it.  Check out these clips from a recent Marketplace radio piece called A campaign fundraising revolution?

Obama raised more than $55 million. The campaign says 90 percent of that money came from folks who give in increments of $100 or less. …Hillary Clinton raked in $35 million. The average donation there was $100 dollars, and 80 percent of the cash came in online.

Ok, we know that Firstgiving isn’t available for political fundraising (yet?) so we can’t take credit for it either, but it’s nice to see that the idea of raising money online from lots of individual donors has some legs.  In fact, the piece goes on to note the power of Person-to-Person fundraising:

But Joe Graf, a professor at American University, says recently both Democratic presidential candidates have figured out how to raise big money from average folks.

Joe Graf: They’ve said to their activists on the street, "Thanks for your $20 dollars… can you get 10 people to give $20 dollars, too?"

Graf says small donors are more important than ever, in part because the ‘Net makes it so easy for these donors to build their own local fund-raising networks.

Thanks, Joe, you’re singing our tune!