4Me2Win/Campaign and Politician Websites

There are two methods available to you through 4Me2Win for soliciting on-line contributions. Probably the easiest of the two methods is to provide a printable form with necessary FEC (Federal Election Commision) reporting data, particularly the employer and occupation information. The form will include the mailing address of the candidate's headquarters and mailing instructions. Included with the form will be the doner's check, or you may choose to optionally collect the donor's credit card information so that the campaign can debit the credit card transaction the day the form is received. The main drawback when a check is used with this method is that the campaign does not receive the contribution until the check has been cleared by the bank. The following is an example of a printable contributions form:

The second method consists of an on-line form that accepts the donor's credit card information and personal identifying information. This is done via a web technology known as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) which meets the highest industry standard for secure e-commerce transactions and provides a secure on-line credit card transaction. Contributions are protected by encrypting the credit card data and the contributor's personal information. The easiest way you can tell if the HTML pages supporting the credit card transaction is secure is by the URL. You will see "https://" at the beginning of the URL if the page is secure, as opposed to the usual "http://" prefix.

4Me2Win provides two options that incorporates online contributions accepting Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express cards. Both options charge per transaction, and do not require additional up front fees or setup fees. They are as follows:

Aristotle Campaign Contributions provides the most complete package for accepting secure online donations from your supporters. With this service, you will have a customized form that will match your website design, receive automatic notifications when a contribution has been received, and generate online reports with graphs, that list all contributions matching your specifications.

Aristotle's Direct Credit Card Processing (DCCP) system allows your organization to deposit by phone or mail to your account dontations that you receive from contributers. This service also allows you to manage your support information with 100% FEC compliant software.

Also, all contributions are matched against a U.S Registered Voter File of 157 million voters to give you an aggregated demographic profile of your contributors in graphic format. This information will help you refine your campaign with highly targeted banner ads and emails to drive similar supporters to your website. This service is provided to registered political organizations. Some states voter files are restricted to politicalluses and will only be made available to bona fide political organizations for such purpose. For further details on restrictions and eligibility, call (800) 243-4401.

Another important feature with Aristotle is a screening service which alerts you to apossibly embarrassing contributions that you may prefer not to accept. The name of each contributor is screened against the U.S Registered Votor File and you will be alerted to names to which there is no match. This service will help you identify contributors that may not be a citizen or may even be a convicted felon. Again, this service is limited to bona fide political organizations.

The price for this service is 10% of the transaction amount plus a $2 transaction fee. Click here for an example of the form used for this service.
Paypal provides a similar method for collecting credit card contributions online, is secure, FEC compliant, and charges only 2.9% of the transaction amount plus a $.30 transaction fee. Paypal also maintains detailed transaction records required for FEC compliance. If contributor screening is not a requirement for your campaign, this is a good affordable option. Click here for an example of the form used for this service.