bigmouthmediaI've heard a lot of buzz today about the apparent bursting of the social media bubble for campaign purposes.

Just as I was forming my own thoughts around this, coming up with the example of Barack Obama's grassroots online fundraising success, I came across this article in Slate, which also points to the Obama campaign as an example of success.

The article refers to the recent Case Foundation fundraising contests (which we've blogged about here), skeptically asserting:

"The amounts involved show that Case understands these endeavors are more social experiment than nonprofit sweepstakes. Sure, prizes of $50,000 matter for the winning organizations, as do the overall dollars raised... But the denominations of the donations remain small, and it's not clear that one-off contests will lead to more. Any fund-raising professional knows that most nonprofit organizations secure the bulk of their money from a relatively small number of large contributions, either from wealthy individuals or institutional sources. Those gifts demand personal cultivation, and an online nudge doesn't usually do it."

But what about Barack Obama's stunning fundraising model of reaching out to many online donors online, asking them to contribute small amounts? This fund raising pool has proven to be more successful than the traditional large individual donors model other candidates have depended on.

Now, granted -- a political campaign is somewhat different from the typical campaigns nonprofits employ.  But doesn't this show the real potential of viral, small donation campaigns in cultivating large online communities?

Slate asked Jean Case, who with her husband, Steve, established the Case Foundation and launched the Giving Challenges. She says, "Small amounts of money given by large numbers of individuals can be combined to do great things." But, according to the article, she understands that it will take time to cultivate this type of engagement and results.

That's the point, really: cultivation. In order for the small donations to add up, the community has to grow. And not only grow, but persist. A key to Obama's model is that his campaign goes back to his grassroots donors multiple times.

So I wanted to open this discussion up to the NTEN community: will this "social experiment" of many-to-many and social networking campaigning prove a bust, or can the Obama model be replicated by other organizations?