We Matter, I swear! Now Please Give Us Money!

It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money. But patting yourself on the back as part of the “wonderful, kind, generous people in the world” because you want to spend someone else’s money on the social causes you support is a bit extreme, not to mention pompous? Such was the theme of a year-end fundraising email from The Agenda Project, the left-wing activist group known for obnoxious web videos and receiving funding from who knows where (their donors are not listed on their website, so much for openness). The group became known for their web video of a Paul Ryan look-a-like throwing a grandmother off a cliff and assembling “Patriotic Millionaires,” a tiny group of rich people who want higher taxes but refused to lead by example when given the chance. Now they've complied a list of their “accomplishments” for the year in an email seeking, you guessed it, money from people so they can advocate for more of your money to government. So what did they “accomplish” this year? One is “650,000 YouTube views for Romney Girl.” That’s right, they’re cutting edge! You’d have to so mentally deficient after “Obama Girl” in 2008 as to be qualified to be Vice President to not realize you can get people to watch anything if you take a presidential candidate’s name, throw “girl” on the end of it and post a video to get a lot of hits. But when another accomplishment that warrants a year-end mention is 500+ Facebook likes for a political cartoon, you realize just how low the bar is set. Another accomplishment they claim is “3+ million impressions from Erica Payne’s (their founder) Twitter in the last six months.” Congratulations Erica! Too bad those “impressions” have led to a grand total of 1,205 followers. Well, maybe they went to the Agenda Project’s Twitter feed…nope, only 676 followers there. Not sure what “3+ million impressions” means exactly, but if it doesn’t involve not getting even ½ of 1% of those people to care what you have to say and hit a simple “follow” button, I’m not sure I’d brag about it to my rich donors. Then again, considering typical donors to these types of organizations are filthy rich AND incredibly old, throwing big, meaningless numbers around with words they don’t understand about social media they don’t know how to use isn’t the worst strategy. As any big money fundraiser will tell you, use buzzwords about technology their grandchildren talk about and big numbers and hope they don’t ask anyone who isn’t you what they mean. It’s “Rich Donor Fooling 101.” When you look at the “accomplishments” listed in the email with some knowledge of the Internet that escapes the average multi-millionaire 70 years or older, it’s a pretty big fail. It’s not all that worse than others I’ve seen, but most others aren’t for organizations advocating for higher taxes while plugging donations that are tax deductible.

Fishbowl

We Matter, I swear! Now Please Give Us Money!

Piranhamous

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