Sometimes to go big, you have to go small.
In their effort to raise the millions needed to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention, officials with the Denver Host Committee are actively reaching out to small businesses.
Previously, the effort to raise the $55 million in cash and services has focused on large corporate donors.
But Thursday, the committee’s top officials and fundraisers appealed to about 100 small-business owners at a gathering at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, asking them for donations that match the city’s signature altitude in dollars.
The pitch: For a pledge of $5,280, you too can join the 2008 Summit Club.
“We’re here to talk today about the bottom part of the pyramid,” said Mike Dino, the host committee’s chief executive.
The move comes as the committee approaches its next fundraising milestone Dec. 14, when it has committed to the national Democratic Party committee that stages the convention that it will have collected – in cash, not just pledges – at least $15 million.
The committee missed its first cash-in-the-bank milestone of $7.5 million last spring. In fact, the committee remained $1.5 million short at the end of June.
Recently, a source close to the process said that cash donations now exceed $7.5 million.
In interviews after Thursday’s fundraiser, Dino and Steve Farber, a powerful Denver moneymaker and partner in the Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck law firm, said total pledges were now just under $17 million of the $55 million needed.
The officials declined to say how much of the money had been banked.
A handful of factors have slowed actual collections, the officials said. Though many donors have made pledges, most of them are waiting until the next fiscal year to write the checks.
Some would-be donors are waiting to see who will be the nominee before donating.
Another concern cited Thursday was the lack of specificity about how many skyboxes at the convention site – the Pepsi Center – the host committee could offer big-money donors.
“When you’re asking people for money, it’s a fair question for them to ask, ‘How am I going to participate in the convention?”‘ Chris Gates, former state Democratic Party chairman and a participant in numerous national conventions, said in an interview.
The access perks can come in the form of floor passes, VIP passes, access to parties and also access to skyboxes.
But Democratic National Convention Committee officials control access to the assignment of skyboxes, and those won’t be made for some time.
And if the past is any guide, even larger venues, such as the Staples Center that hosted the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, don’t always allow for much private use of luxury suites.
Though the Staples Center has 160 suites, most were assigned to media and Democratic officials. Within days of the opening of that convention, the local host committee had been granted only three of them to offer donors.
The Pepsi Center, meanwhile, has only 95 suites to offer.
The would-be members of the 2008 Summit Club won’t get perks anything like that, but Leanna Clark of the public relations firm Schenkein, who handed over the first check for $5,280 on Thursday, said the bigger perk is the expected long-term impact to the Denver economy.
Clark played a key role in developing the host committee’s pitch to small businesses.
“It’s a chunk,” Clark said of the donation. “It’s more than we give to other organizations. But we do look at it as an investment.”
Barry Osborne of The Denver Post research library contributed to this report.
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
