Here's the odd problem for non-profits in our system-- they can't take responsibility for electoral victories (legally because of non-profit status rules), so they can't fundraise on election organizing. And because electoral organizing is inherently multi-issue, even those groups that do electoral organizing have trouble claiming the "credit" that pays off in organizational growth. It is far easier to hype some amendment to some bill that no other group has paid attention, lobby like hell on it, and then take credit for it in direct mail if you win, since you know that your organization "owns" the issue.
Elections are inherently multi-issue and victory has many fathers and mothers, so it is terrible for fundraising in the traditional non-profit model. I wrote an article many years ago called "Market Leftism: Money, Machines and the Left's Decline" on the way fundraising imperatives divide the left, based on my own experience as a telephone fundraiser. It's at http://www.nathannewman.org/other/cross-marketleftism.html from an issue of the left magazine Crossroads.
-- Nathan Newman