Politics

The Republican National Convention Tampa Bay Host Committee brought in nearly $55.3 million in contributions: $44.9 million in cash and $10.4 million in donations of goods or services. The host committee had 18 donors who gave $1 million or more. Those included hedge funds and their founders, high-tech companies, industrialists, CEOs and several charitable trusts. Altogether, those 18 donors accounted for 60 percent of the money raised for the RNC.

President Barack Obama's campaign says it has surpassed 4 million donors, a record for a presidential campaign. The president's field director Jeremy Bird announced the total in an e-mail to supporters Saturday night.

Obama's campaign has relied on small donors to boost its fundraising totals through the summer and fall. The campaign raised $181 million in September, its biggest haul of the cycle.

The modern political campaign has fully embraced social media to reach voters, but President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney are still spending massive sums on a more traditional form of communication: snail mail. Mailings are used to attack opponents, make policy promises, solicit donations and help supporters register to vote.

President Obama announced a fundraising haul of $181 million in September, the highest monthly total of his re-election campaign as 1.8 million people contributed. The September numbers include contributions to a joint fundraising unit through the Democratic National Committee. The September total tops the $114 raised in August.

In a conversation with reporters on Monday, one of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chief advisers, Ed Gillespie, hinted that the campaign was hoping to bank enough money in the coming days so that Romney would no longer need to spend as much time courting donors.

Fundraising reports filed last week by the presidential campaigns show President Obama with a slight advantage in fundraising last month, while Republican Mitt Romney has the edge by some other measures.

In cash on hand, the overall Romney organization finished August with more than $168 million — that's $43 million more than the overall Obama organization.

But Obama outraised Romney, especially when you look at the campaign committees themselves. Donors gave nearly $71 million to Obama for America in August, while Romney for President raised only $27 million.

Republicans meeting in Tampa, Fla., adopted a platform that vowed to protect tax incentives for donors, but they have otherwise offered few clues about how a Romney-Ryan White House would affect nonprofits.

The platform made no mention of what would happen to national-service programs, nor does it talk much about other programs that support charities directly except for touting the value of aid that foundations and charities provide overseas and calling for an overhaul of domestic antipoverty assistance.

United States consumers will soon be able to donate to their presidential campaign of choice by texting a keyword to a short code on their mobile phones for the first time.

Text donations were expected earlier this summer but were held up by the wireless carriers — key participants in the programs — as they sought legal protections over fraud and profitability. Both the campaigns for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have reportedly said the capability will be enabled soon.

Mitt Romney's success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a data-mining project that sifts through Americans' personal information — including their purchasing history and church attendance — to identify new and likely wealthy donors, the Associated Press has learned.

CForward, a political-action committee that was set up last year to promote candidates who pledge to stand up for nonprofits, has made its first endorsements. They include five contenders for state legislatures and one each for city council, mayor and the U.S. House of Representatives.