ActBlue has been the online clearing house for Democratic fundraising since 2004. Through this service,

ActBlue is a Federal PAC that enables anyone — individuals, local groups, and national organizations — to fundraise for the Democratic candidates of their choice. Launched in June 2004, ActBlue created and deployed the next generation of online fundraising technology, and has raised over $37 million for Democratic candidates and committees.

Now, there is a Republican counterpart, called Slatecard. I had an opportunity to watch a Slatecard demonstration by co-founder, David All this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C., and found the service very easy and actually fun to use.

Slatecard...acts as a "conduit" to raise money online to help Republican candidates for federal office in compliance with the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). It is no secret that Democrats are far ahead of Republicans in converting their online presence to offline support. One website which the Left has used effectively since 2004, is ActBlue.com (ActBlue PAC), a site which provides a tool for activists and committees to raise funds for the candidates and causes they support. In fact, millions of dollars have been raised through the site since 2004. It is our hope that Slatecard will level the playing field for Republican candidates and causes by providing an innovative platform for use by the Right kind of activists.

Future plans include:

Our utility is available for use by all candidates running for a Republican federal office and we hope to make this service available to state and local candidates where possible in the near future. Using a commercial vendor to handle our transactions, we are leveraging some of the lowest available rates on the market, which means that by contributing to candidates through Slatecard.com PAC, a larger percentage of the donation will actually end up going to the candidate. Soon, we will work to integrate with PayPal to offer more options to our users.

There is even a new "Causes," section. To see how this works in Oklahoma, I went to the "directory," then filtered by "Senate," and "Oklahoma."

As you can see, Senators Inhofe and Coburn are just getting started on this site. Eventually, Slatecard plans to have pages for the State House and Senate and City officials as well. To find out more, go to Slatecard, or visit the Slatecard Blog.

Labels: fundraising, republican, Sen. Inhofe, Sen. Tom Coburn

Posted at 2/11/2008 10:28:00 AM