The profile in today's Boston Globe on the Left's ActBlue is yet another reason to make sure you're on the list to receive updates from the Right's counter to ActBlue, Slatecard...:

Internet-based PAC driving Democratic push
Small donors fuel big support drive

By Scott Helman, Globe Staff | August 7, 2007

CAMBRIDGE -- The new headquarters of ActBlue, with its tangled cords, leftover Deval Patrick signs, and 20-somethings tapping on white MacBook laptops, is what a political campaign would look like if it shared space with a dot-com start-up.

ActBlue is in fact both -- an Internet-based political action committee that is quietly becoming one of the biggest forces in Democratic politics. Its founders aim for nothing short of revolution, and they are already partway there.

The PAC, operated from a former architecture studio on Arrow Street near Harvard Square, functions as an online clearinghouse for campaign contributions to Democrats of all stripes, allowing anyone in the country to donate any allowable amount to any candidate with the click of a mouse: You send the money to ActBlue (actblue.com), and ActBlue funnels it to the campaigns. This gives local, state, and national Democratic candidates a cheap, efficient means of building a base of supporters over the Internet.

This simple but transformative concept has raised $25.5 million and counting since its creation in Cambridge in 2004, when two computer-savvy scientists with liberal leanings set out to take political action in a new direction. They believed that armies of small donors, mobilized effectively, could be more potent than the "bun dlers" who have dominated fund-raising by amassing checks from wealthy contributors. (Read full story.)