Slatecard Takes Major Step for Online R Community
Make your own slate of candidates and start fundraising
By Adam C Posted in 2008 — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Slatecard.com is now live. It is a Republican answer to ActBlue, which allows individuals to select from a full list of all Rs running for national office. You can then title your slate and get a direct link to it. This allows you to pick your favorite challengers and incumbents and solicit small donations for all of them. It empowers the individual rather than a top-down list selected by the site itself as RightRoots did last year (with 20 site selected candidates).
For example, I have created a "Close Senate Race" slate here. If you would like to donate to the close senate races, that link provides you a quick opportunity to do so. I will be changing my signature to direct people there.
I encourages RSers to create their own slates based on whatever issues are most important to them. Then use RS, other blogs, and social networking sites to direct your friends and fellow politicos to your slate of candidates. This is a big step for the online GOP. Congrats to Slatecard for making it happen.
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Slatecard Takes Major Step for Online R Community 12 Comments (0 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
They are both fine sites, but they do something very different. Slatecard is the first one that I am aware of that really empowers individuals to take ownership over the fundraising, not just giving a one-stop-shop for donating.
Rightroots has all the candidates but you can only donate, you can't make a slate and try to attract others to donate to that slate at a single link.
Bigredtent has a ways to go. It has a short list "The Slate" that it seems to be encouraging donations to. When you click on donate it only lists those top-down pre-chosen candidates. That's very similar to RightRoots last year.
What is great about slatecard is finally someone set up a site without thinking they were more qualified to choose who should be getting donations. It is just a tool to be used by individual online GOPers. The right is behind the left online, but this is one step toward narrowing that gap.
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Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard
The power to create your own slate has always been part of the plan for Rightroots.com. Stay tuned -- you might be surprised.
Releasing parts of the site over the time and allowing community feedback to inform the rest has been a successful approach for us. It empowered the blogosphere to raise $300,000 in 2006 with an admittedly limited toolkit. Since going live less than six weeks ago, the new Rightroots.com has raised over $20,000 for Republican candidates and causes, including over $15,000 for Jim Ogonowski in the critical MA-5 special. The other day John Kerry even tried to demonize us in a fundraising appeal for Niki Tsongas.
If that's what we can do with a limited set of tools, I definitely feel good about the impact we can have by really unleashing the community through user-created slates.
This competition will be a healthy thing. While the left stagnates, market forces will enable us to step up our game heading into 2008.
Thanks for the post folks. We're glad you like the site and are excited to add new applications and tools to improve your experience.
BTW Adam - here's the widget for your Slatecard which you can grab from your Slatecard. I'm noticing a bug when I try to embed it here which likely means a PHP-based issue that we'll need to fix so give us some time to fix it.
Should you have suggestions, you can email us at anytime at team@slatecard.com. We'll hear ya out.
On Patrick's note about competition, I agree. The best will rise to the top and that'll likely happen before next September when the action will really heat up which is good news for candidates. And we're in it to win it.
Keep up the good work Redstaters.
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David All
Slatecard
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Having seen both sites, I think it could well be a Coke v. Pepsi thing. Both can be successful, and it'll just be a matter of user preference which site they use.
Stay engaged here. It is fun.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Glad to be back.
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David All
Slatecard
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But, to be fair, I was talking to Patrick.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Patrick, I look forward to similar functionality at RightRoots. I'm just glad it will be available somewhere this cycle. Best of luck with the RR efforts.
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Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard
these kinds of sites for easy reference.
Don't forget Rightroots.com and Bigredtent.org