FEC Reports Reveal Sizable Fundraising Advantage
Note - The following press release was sent out by the bi-partisan filing application provider Aristotle last week. I truly consider John Philips, CEO of Aristotle, a friend. Unfortunately, the Aristotle PR team neglected to take the largest Republican fundraising software platform into consideration in their data analysis. When you add CMDI's Crimson to their calculations, Aristotle doesn't quite come out on top.Following is the Aristotle press release, with my corrections/additions marked in bold.
March 31st FEC filings show campaigns with sophisticated software raised $342,430 $2,192,741 more on average ($2 million is a lot more than Aristotle's $342K) --Patent-Pending Data Mining Techniques Powering 2012 Fundraising Success
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2012 -- Reports filed by 1,357 candidates and party committees with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Sunday night show that campaigns using Aristotle CMDI's Crimson software are doing significantly better in fundraising than those who use any one of the three four next most popular products.The results include Democrats, Republicans, challengers, incumbents and open seat campaigns and party committees that were required to file their financial disclosure reports electronically for the first quarter of 2012. The FEC tallies the technology used by each committee to file their reports.On average, of 1357 campaign committees listed, those using Aristotle CMDI's Crimson raised an average of $809,058 $3,001,800. Those using Aristotle raised $808,058, which was on average 73.1% less than Crimson clients. Those using NGP raised $466,628, which was on average 44.7% 84.5% less than Aristotle Crimson clients; FECFile clients raised $135,575 on average; and NetFile clients raised $285,365 on average, according to the reports filed with the FEC."If anyone needed proof that powerful data mining works, this is it," said Aristotle CEO John Aristotle Phillips. "This is a very substantial financial advantage made possible by patent-pending data mining. Show me a campaign that could not benefit from an additional $342,430."We give campaigns the tools to find those who want to give, and make it easy for the contribution to be made, legally. We allow fundraisers to access, mine and harness millions of state contributor records so that no money is left on the table.""I concur," stated CMDI VP of Marketing & Sales Erik Nilsson (and author of this post). "Giving campaigns access to real time fundraising data allows them to make and execute upon the best possible fundraising strategies."Aristotle's platform incorporates detailed state contributor and voter lists with highly accurate consumer databases to illuminate exactly how much a donor has given, how much they can give, and to suggest the maximum they might agree to contribute where allowed by law.CMDI's Crimson also allows campaigns to utilize any and all types of lists. Crimson can super-charge a campaign's ability to raise funds by:
- empowering the campaign to leverage the power of supporters through the recruitment and tracking of volunteer fundraisers,
- real-time tracking of all fundraising activities,
- full integration with WidgetMakr, the premiere online political social fundraising tool.
Aristotle is non-partisan. "Our place is not to pick candidates or parties we may agree with, but rather to provide all candidates and all parties and every advocacy group the tools they need to get their message out, to compete at the ballot box, so the voters can decide," said Phillips. "We are a non-partisan provider because we believe in the democratic process."Conversely, CMDI's Crimson is the backbone to the Republican party. Since 2008, more than 55% of all Republican federal donations were managed through Crimson. To date, $7.5 billion in Republican dollars have been processed by CMDI. In the 2012 presidential cycle alone, Crimson is/was utilized by 6 of the leading Republican candidates.If you are a Republican candidate, do you want your fees going to support the R&D and product advancement of software that will benefit Democratic candidates?"Campaigns using Aristotle's products not only raise more money, we also guarantee compliance," former FEC Chairman and Aristotle Senior Vice President of Compliance Services David Mason said. "The Aristotle system safeguards campaigns against embarrassing stories that could potentially derail a campaign."Over 7,500 FEC compliance reports have been generated and submitted through CMDI. The fact that all major Republican national committees utilize Crimson for their compliance rather than our honorable competitors speaks volumes for the quality and security of the Crimson compliance toolset.