We worked with the ever-capable staff at DonorsChoose.org to dump the site's monthly visitor data going back to 2007. Reticence on the part of Comedy Central to release state-level ratings prevented us from completing our task statistically, but with the proper visualization, we can quantify the "Colbert Bump."
Colbert promoted the site heavily in 2007 when his presidential campaign asked potential campaign donors to give to DonorsChoose:
More recently, Colbert entered into a fundraising bet for DonorsChoose with Jimmy Fallon, culminating in Colbert's performance of "Friday" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:
We propose to catalog all of Colbert's DonorsChoose promotion activity. The promotion list will allow for an interactive visualization similar to Column Five Media's Atlantic Interactive. Each selection will show the state-level traffic bump around a Colbert media event.
