If fundraisers are looking for extraordinary inspiration, we should look no further than the Obama '08 campaign.

Obama's campaign has raised a truly staggering $600 million and counting, blitzing all previous records. In two years! And what's more, 90% of this has come from individual donors with the average donation around $86.

According to the LA Times, Obama's campaign 'built a cash juggernaut using the Internet'. But of course it's not just the technology wot did it. As John Baguely points out, Obama's inspirational leadership is the foundation.

It strikes me that Obama's fundraising reminds us that donating money is not an alternative to campaigning. It is campaigning. And it has put power back into the hands of ordinary Americans. So it's democratising as well.

Those donations have funded the kind of advertising blitzes which previously only big-money Republicans could deliver. Obama's campaign (win or lose) is an extraordinary case study in fundraising, led, as John Baguely says, by the most extraordinary fundraiser of them all, Senator Obama himself.

Image courtesy of Joe Crimmings Photography

Steve Andrews