Here are some other excerpts from their How We Did It article:
We reconfirmed in our early focus groups our own views that Californians had a tolerant opinion of gays. But there were limits to the degree of tolerance that Californians would afford the gay community. They would entertain allowing gay marriage, but not if doing so had significant implications for the rest of society.
Schubert Flint recognized they had an uphill battle early on.
Our ability to organize a massive volunteer effort through religious denominations gave us a huge advantage, and we set ambitious goals: to conduct a statewide Voter ID canvass of every voter; to distribute 1.25 million yard signs and an equal number of bumper strips; to have our volunteers re-contact every undecided, soft yes and soft no voter; and to have 100,000 volunteers, five per voting precinct, working on Election Day to make sure every identified Yes on 8 voter would vote. All of these goals, and more, were achieved.
We built a campaign volunteer structure around both time-honored campaign grassroots tactics of organizing in churches, with a ground-up structure of church captains, precinct captains, zip code supervisors and area directors; and the latest Internet and web-based grassroots tools.
We held the campaign’s first statewide precinct walk the weekend of Aug. 16. We had hoped for 20,000 volunteers, which would have been unprecedented in California ballot initiative politics, but were stunned when almost 30,000 people walked their neighborhoods that first weekend.
Information about some of the specific plans and activities supported on the LDS scaffolding for the Yes on 8 campaign are linked to here. Mormon wards began organizing in late July in order to be a force to be seen in mid-August.
Fundraising was also a critical activity of this early period, the success of which enabled us to ultimately exceed our initial voter contact objectives. By this time, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had endorsed Prop 8 and joined the campaign executive committee. Even though the LDS were the last major denomination to join the campaign, their members were immensely helpful in early fundraising, providing much-needed contributions while we were busy organizing Catholic and Evangelical fundraising efforts. Ultimately, we raised $22 million from July through September with upwards of 40 percent coming from members of the LDS Church.
Even though our campaign clearly had the better ads and grassroots operation, the success of the No side’s fundraising effort threatened to undo all our work. Voters were seeing their commercials at least twice as often as ours as the campaign headed into its final 12 days. Our lead evaporated. Frank Schubert wrote an e-mail to our 90,000 online supporters called ‘Code Blue for Marriage,’ letting them know we needed more money to be victorious. This e-mail, along with other emergency fundraising activities, helped produce $7.5 million in contributions from people of faith in the next 72 hours.
The huge influx of late-October donations from Utah, Idaho, New Mexico and Texas displays this last-minute donation tap quite well. A significant amount of these last-minute donations, donations not included in Schubert’s “upwards of 40 percent quote” relating to July-September donations came from Mormons.
Members of the Mormon faith played an important part of the Yes on 8 coalition, but were only a part of our winning coalition. We had the support of virtually the entire faith community in California. Prop 8 didn’t win because of the Mormons. It won because we created superior advertising that defined the issues on our terms; because we built a diverse coalition; and, most importantly, because we activated that coalition at the grassroots level in a way that had never before been done.
Schubert Flint won several industry awards for their work on the campaign, including “Fundraising for a Ballot Measure”
Schubert Flint was recently tapped to get working on Same-Sex Marriage campaigns in Maine.