Good news from Lib Dem Chief Exec Tim Gordon in our inbox this morning. Yesterday, the party raised £50,000 in just one day from members and supporters. That’s half as much as it raised during the whole of January. Nick Clegg’s appearance on The Last Leg may well have stimulated a good old shot in the bank balance for the party.
What’s particularly good is that the £150,000 raised from members and supporters will be matched by major donors, giving the campaign a £300,000 boost.
This news, combined with the recent news that Liberal Democrat membership rose for the sixth quarter in a row shows steady progress.
Because they are a polite bunch, Tim’s email even produced a small video of people saying “Thank you.” The fundraising team at LDHQ, headed up by Emma Cherniavsky, has been doing a great job, working in a variety of different ways to bring in the money both centrally and for the seats who need it most.
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9 Comments
This sounds good. Let this be a whistle for everyone connected with the Lib Dems to get into campaign mode. There’s too much idle debate going on at the moment. 😀
Of course we should still debate, but we can have too much of it.
hear, hear
Well said Eddie.
Are we not able to debate AND campaign?
I have been out with John Pugh and fellow Southport Lib Dems three out of the past four weekends. Yes, we need to win in our respective seats but it is also vital that we engage in the ‘idle debate’ concerning what OUR party will look like post the GE and beyond.
I personally would not be willing to give up my free time walking the streets in close to zero temperatures to campaign for non-Preamble, ‘anchored firmly to the centre’ and or economically sub-Thatcherite Liberals.
I do hope that is not a too pedestrian comment for anyone.
The next party political broadcast should be devoted to Mental Health. A chance to put a stake in the ground that this is an election issue top of Lib Dem’s priorities.
This was a campaign which specifically promised that “major donors” would match what was donated by individual members and supporters. Now, why should “major donors” want to work in this way? Why not just donate anyway? Why is it meaningful, if you are in any case making major donations, to try to link those donations to anyone else’s donations?
Well, it encourages Lib Dem members and supporters to believe that “major donors” are a good thing.
The principal “major donor” to the Lib Dems in the period leading up to the 2010 election (according to Donnachadh McCarthy’s book “The Prostitute State”, see page 82) was a private health insurance firm, Alpha Healthcare. No doubt the Lib Dems delivered value for money when they provided the crucial support required to enable the Tories to privatise the NHS.
David: the piece you commented on gives the very answer to your question “why not just donate anyway?” Because by offering to match other people’s donations, you encourage more other people to donate – so the cause you support ends up with more money than if you just donated directly. It’s all there in the very story above.
Nice alibi Mark. Not true though, is it? Large donors want to big up their own contributions, not anyone else’s.
They will have been persuaded by this scheme only because of the argument that it makes big donors look friendly and helpful. Whereas, as we all know, big donors are in fact a menace to political life.
David: wrong, it is true. I’d offer two pieces of evidence – (a) my own past experience talking to people to set up matched funding schemes for the Lib Dems at various levels – some of who are people I’ve known for decades, and (b) the matched-donation idea is a popular one with donors outside politics too, such as for charities which don’t have controversies over the sizes of their donors – and hence this demonstrates the genuineness of the motivation.