Due to testing,the site may periodically be down.
Facebook
TwitterWUM Raises Nearly $1.8M in August; Total Nearly $7.3 million from Over 13,800 donors
Washington United for Marriage (WUM), the broad coalition working to defend the state’s marriage law, today announced that more than 5,000 new donors helped raise $1.758 million during the month of August, raising the total campaign treasury to $7.290 million.
WUM now has 13,866 individual contributors, believed to be the largest number of donors in any Washington state ballot campaign. According to the Public Disclosure Commission’s online records dating from 2000, only 2008’s I-1000 came close, with approximately 9,500 contributors.
The average median gift in August was $50, with 84 percent of those donations coming from Washington state. Additionally, those 5,000-plus new contributors in August constitute a 47% increase over the 8,900 individuals who had donated to the campaign by the end of July.
“We are so energized by the confidence so many people and organizations have placed in our campaign and the drive to defend our marriage law in November,” said Zach Silk, WUM’s campaign manager. “With the campaign season now fully in gear, we’ve got a broad and deep field organization in literally every corner of the state and none of that would have been possible without the generosity of our donors.”
At the same time that the campaign set statewide fund raising records, WUM’s field effort continued to build into one of the largest ever launched in a statewide ballot measure. Among the field highlights are these:
— 33 field staff are operating out of seven offices statewide, including three new operations in Tacoma, Shoreline and Bellevue.
— Volunteers are calling voters across the state from 50 separate phone banks every week. The number of calls to voters in August increased 300% over the number placed in July.
— The total number of active volunteers now exceeds 2,800.
Among the highlights of August’s fund raising for WUM are these:
— Over $208,000 was raised online, with the average gift being $73.
— House parties were held at 38 different locations across the state, netting $85,964.
— The largest single gift of $525,000 came from Freedom to Marry, with the Human Rights Campaign contributing $260,000. T-Mobile also donated $25,000 in August.
— Millions for Marriage, a fund raising program that brings family, friends and co-workers together to raise money for the campaign, brought in nearly $128,000.
###
