Washington (CNN) – Who says you need a candidate to raise a bundle of cash?
Ready for Hillary, the grassroots Super PAC urging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, raised over $4 million from roughly 33,000 donors in 2013, Seth Bringman, the group's spokesman, said Tuesday.
In a memo obtained by CNN, the group touts a "groundswell" of support in the second half of 2013; the number of new supporters nearly quadrupled and donations to the group doubled from earlier in the year.
This comes as Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016, has yet to declare if she will even run for the office.
"We have exceeded our goals and are ahead of schedule in raising the funds necessary to build a grass-roots army that can be activated the moment Hillary makes a decision,” said Ready for Hillary Executive Director Adam Parkhomenko. “This movement is unprecedented – not because of our staff but because of our supporters – and we will continue to build capacity across the country to put Hillary in the strongest position possible should she decide to run.”
Parkhomenko, who worked for Clinton's failed 2008 campaign against now President Barack Obama, went on to say that the money raised will go toward "list-building, digital advertising and on-the-ground organizing" with the goal to ensure that if Clinton runs, "she will have as many supporters as possible lined up from the beginning ready to help her win."
The average contribution was $82, according to the group, with 98% of donations coming in at $100 or less.
Nearl 18,000 of these donations, according to the group, came from "low-dollar, grass-roots" organizing events where Clinton supporters have come together in cities across the country and paid $20.16 to attend the gathering.
Ready for Hillary was organized early in 2013, shortly after Clinton left the State Department. It is staffed by a number of Clinton loyalists like Tracy Sefl and Craig Smith, both advisers with Clinton ties.
The group has long pledged that its focus is on collecting data, which includes everything from contact information to issue interest, from Clinton supporters around the country. A representative from the group said Ready for Hillary will not be buying TV ads with the money it has raised and instead will invest in on-the-ground organizing and other ways to help grow its database.
"The organization has a very specific mission," Sefl said in December. "Period, end of sentence."
The group hopes if Clinton decides to run for office - a decision she has said she will make sometime in 2014 - those names could be a solid base of early supporters. The plan, according to a representative from the group, would be to make the list available to the campaign through a third-party vendor. If the campaign wanted the names, it would have the option to rent the list, pay a fair market value for it or swap names with Ready for Hillary.
To gather data, Ready for Hillary has held multiple events in states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and California. In the near future, the group plans to hold events in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina and Arizona.
The group said on Thursday that donations came from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and from military service members abroad.