Sample email to send to prospective dinner guests

Dear [friend/relative/teammate/coworker/beloved family pet],

[insert personal note here]

I'm writing to invite you to attend an Obama fundraising dinner that I'm hosting as part of an exciting new viral fundraising movement called Hungry for Obama (www.hungryforobama.com).

Here's the concept: you can help raise many thousands of dollars for Obama — and all you have to do is come to my dinner, make a contribution to the campaign, and host a dinner of your own.

Specifically, if you come to my dinner you'll make two commitments to me:

1. At my dinner, you'll use your credit card to make a personally meaningful contribution directly to the Obama campaign (the recommended amount is $100, but a smaller contribution is great, too, as long as it's at least $20).
2. The following week (or as soon as possible), you'll host a dinner of your own at which you ask your guests to make the same two commitments.

So it's like a pyramid scheme of miniature Obama fundraisers — except, unlike traditional pyramid schemes, it works! After just -7 days, Hungry for Obama has raised $50,577 from 151 dinners — and there are already another 0 dinners scheduled for the upcoming weeks. See the home page at www.hungryforobama.com for the latest statistics.

The most exciting part is that after you host a dinner, you'll be able to look on our website and see how much impact you've had in aggregate — the money raised not just at your dinner, but at all of the dinners that your dinner spawned, and the dinners that those dinners spawned, and so on. The growth of your influence is exponential as each round of dinners happens.

To put it another way: even though you're only making one contribution, the difference between your participating and your not participating is literally many thousands of dollars. If you don't participate, the pyramid of dinners spawned by your dinner will never happen. You have the opportunity to make a major impact on this election — without spending a major amount of money.

If this sounds appealing to you, please come to my dinner. If you're excited about the idea but you can't make my dinner, you can go ahead and host a dinner of your own — or join forces with a friend! And please pass along this information to other friends and family who might be interested, especially in parts of the country (and world) where the Hungry for Obama movement hasn't yet spread.

We have only 55 days until the election, so time is short. To maximize the benefits of the pyramid's exponential growth, we're encouraging participants to schedule their dinners as quickly as possible — and ask their guests to do likewise.

[closing]