Last weekend, Magorn posted a diary about Scott Walker's new deer czar, brought in to make sure that Wisconsin's public lands and deer herds are managed for private profit. On Tuesday, I decided to put up a website about the issue and run a few Facebook ads to promote it. I thought other kossacks might be interested, so I put up a diary about it on Wednesday morning. That's when things started getting crazy...
The diary got interest - a lot of interest. Over 200 recs, and the first diary I've had hit the rec list. A number of people in the diary asked if they could contribute towards the ads. Slinkerwink and 2laneIA messaged me and got involved; they did most of the work in talking to people at the GAB (Government Accountability Board) to find out what the requirements were for spending money. Thursday evening I got everything filled out, notarized, and turned in. Friday morning the donation page was live and I got a confirmation from the state; my little website project had now turned me into the treasurer of a registered PAC.
Friday is my long day and I wasn't able to spend a lot of time online, but after I let Slinkerwink and 2laneIA know that we were good to go, they ran with it; our goal had been to get this in front of people before the end of the week, but we had to take care of the GAB requirements first. 2laneIA put up a diary early yesterday afternoon, and slinkerwink followed up with another diary yesterday evening.
A bit after midnight, I had a chance to check Facebook, and I had a note from slinkerwink telling me that her diary was up and I should check my email. I had set a goal of $800, since that was what we felt would be needed to run an effective campaign. We blew right past that; when I got to bed around 2 am, we'd taken in over a thousand dollars (my exact words on seeing the total: "HOLY CRAP!", plus another $200 that was sent directly to me before we got the donation site up. I woke up this morning with nearly $1400 in my paypal account - closing in on double our goal, in less than 24 hours! We would have taken in even more if we'd gone with ActBlue, as many people didn't care to fill out another form; unfortunately, I'm not currently in a position to be able to put up all the money up front and wait for a check, so we had to go with the site that would transfer the money immediately. Next time!
So what's next? My wife and I spent the morning fixing up the site - thanks to your donations, this is going to be a LOT bigger than I originally expected, so my quick little site obviously was not going to do - and we're preparing to go live with a Facebook campaign on Monday. We're keeping expenses (images and the domain name) to a bare minimum so that almost all of the money goes straight to advertising.
So how can you help?
1) Go to www.saveWIdeerhunting.com and click the social media (Facebook, etc) sharing buttons. If you see any (ugh) typos or have any specific suggestions on things that should be included, let me know.
2) Rec this diary so we can keep this on everyone's radar.
3) As you probably know, the comment area of most news sites and political blogs are overwhelmingly right-wing (even the liberal sites, for some reason). Find discussions on Walker and bring this up as an issue. Counter the lies - there are plenty of diaries here on Kos talking about the damage Walker has done to the state. Keep it polite! This may be the most effective way, other than donating money, for out-of-state Kossacks to help with the election.
4) We blew past our fundraising goals, but you're still welcome to contribute. We'll keep running ads at least through June 4th. You guys REALLY came through on this; we were looking to spend at least $250 on this, and now we're approaching $1500, all in less than 24 hours. Seriously, people - way to go!
6:51 PM PT: I want to thank the people who have been making suggestions about the website; we've considered all of them and changed the site to reflect many of them. Your feedback is definitely helpful!
Sun May 27, 2012 at 9:45 AM PT: The ads have been live since last night and have already been seen by thousands of people. We won't post full numbers until after the election, for obvious reasons, but I'll probably have a short diary up about what we're doing either today or tomorrow.