Yesterday marked one year till the 2012 elections—meaning we now have 364 days to elect President Obama and Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. Even with a year to go, our supporters are already fired up and ready to work hard, as they demonstrated across the country yesterday. Thousands of volunteers participated in a day of action, laying the foundation for victory in 2012 and 2011—after all, tomorrow is Election Day for many.

Kouri C. Marshall, director of OFA D.C., shares the amazing organizing work their volunteers did this weekend to help get out the vote for Democratic candidates in Northern Virginia:

Even though our team faced an uphill battle—since we invited volunteers to join us at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning—we had an incredible turnout. Volunteers began to roll in around 8:00 a.m. As time went on, they kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling right on in, ready to take our message to the field. We had more than 80 chairs set up, and by 9 a.m. every chair was filled, and a crowd was standing along the walls. I was particularly excited by the multiple groups of local college students who joined us—early on a Sunday, no less—for our day of action.

Since this was a one-year-out event, we set aside some time to hear stories from volunteers willing to talk about where they were on November 4, 2008—the day Barack Obama was elected president. One volunteer talked about how he was 17 and not able to vote yet but volunteered on the campaign anyway. Another talked about how he cast his ballot while he was finishing his service in the military. The stories continued, with one volunteer sharing with us how she cried throughout the day because of the emotional connection that she had developed with the campaign. Afterward, we sent out our fired-up volunteers to knock on doors on behalf of Democrats in Northern Virginia—and share their stories with voters.

The day before, volunteers met at our office and called more than 2,500 Virginia voters, asking them to exercise their voting power on Tuesday. Throughout the day, volunteers continued to come to the office looking for ways to support our efforts—they were excited to be on the phones, entering data, and monitoring the field.

We could not have asked for a better weekend or group of volunteers—but one volunteer in particular stood out. Alberta is a 75-year-old woman who reminded us that we can’t wait to organize, and the 2012 election depends on what we do now. She made calls until we shut down the shop and was literally the last volunteer standing—and that's inspiring.

You can get involved in our 2012 efforts too. Commit to volunteer here.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent an email this morning with big news: 982,967 people have donated to the President's campaign—and between the DNC and Obama for America, we've raised more than $70 million just in the past fundraising quarter.

That's a big deal. It will go a long way toward fighting the special-interest money that the Republicans are amassing to take down not only the President's re-election chances but also the reforms and economic recovery we've worked so hard to put in place.

Messina shared the facts and figures they'll be reporting to the FEC:

• In the third fundraising quarter of this year, 606,027 people donated to this campaign—even more than gave in the record-breaking previous quarter.
• Those people gave more than 766,000 total donations—98 percent of them $250 or less, at an average amount of $56. That's more than twice as many donations than we had at this point in the historic 2008 campaign.
• We are focused on building infrastructure that will help us win in 2012. And each quarter we set a combined goal for the campaign and our allies at the Democratic National Committee. We far exceeded our goal of $55 million this quarter between the two organizations.
• Together, Obama for America and the DNC raised more than $70 million. And it all happened during a summer when the President was focused on doing the job he was elected to do—a summer when we had to cancel a series of fundraising events and ask everyone to dig a little deeper.

He wrote, "If I could sum up this last quarter in a few words: Supporters like you came through."