Student Politicians Raise Funds Online

Democrats and Republicans are going online this fall to win the hearts and wallets of college students. In an attempt to fund their political efforts, the Harvard College Democrats and the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) are raising money through links to Amazon.com from their websites.

The political groups both sport small, box-shaped ads for the popular cyber-retailer on their respective webpages. In exchange, the Dems and the HRC receive small percentages of the purchases made after clicking on the advertisements.

So far, the results have brought green to blue-staters and red-staters alike.

“Last year we sold $6000 through Amazon.com, earning the Dems about $360,” Dems Treasurer Harlan M. Piper ’08 wrote in an e-mail. “So far this year, we’ve sold about $1600, though we hope that number will go up as people buy more books!”

The HRC does not have figures for this shopping period yet, according to HRC Vice President Mark A. Shepard ’08.

“It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s significant,” he said, adding that the windfall is enough to fund perks like pizza at general board meetings.

The Dems, on the other hand, are putting their Amazon.com profits toward a decidedly more political cause.

“The money will be spent on our campaign field efforts, working to unseat Republicans like [Pennsylvania’s Senator] Rick Santorum, [Rhode Island’s Senator] Lincoln Chaffee, and [New Mexico’s U.S. Representative] Heather Wilson,” Piper wrote.

Officers of the two groups agreed that their fundraising efforts through Amazon.com made a lot of sense—and dollars. With classes in full gear, students are buying books online anyway and should have the opportunity to contribute to their chosen political cause at the same time, the partisan foes both said.

Not only that, the fundraiser requires “zero overhead and a limited amount of time to organize,” Dems President Eric P. Lesser ’07 wrote in an e-mail.

The HRC first offered the Amazon.com opportunity during shopping period last spring semester, according to Shepard.

Although Shepard said that he did not remember which group thought of the idea first, he added, “I remember it being very close when [the Amazon.com advertisements] came up.”

Close perhaps, but the Dems said they beat the HRC to the punch.

“The Harvard Democrats absolutely did this first,” Lesser wrote. “We first launched the program last year, for the spring 2006 term, and it was a huge success, which is why we’re repeating it this term.”

Even though the rival political groups are using similar advertisements from the same retailer, the parallel fundraising efforts have not become a competition.

“We don’t share statistics with them, so I don’t know,” said Shepard of the HRC.

Lesser wrote, “I don’t know what the HRC’s numbers for their drive are, and I’m not particularly focused on it.”

—Stephanie S. Garlow and Joyce Y. Zhang contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer David Zhou can be reached at dzhou@fas.harvard.edu.