The Manor in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night had the ambience of a raucous Saturday. A massive crowd, pressed against the long bar, waved dollars at the slammed bartenders; a man on the side frantically shucked 50-cent oysters. People went out of their way to reserve the tables on the balcony—the kind of tables that traditionally go to bachelorette parties.

But Tuesday was different. Tuesday was the night that Senator Bernie Sanders would, as the pundits described it, introduce himself to America at the Democratic primary debate. And nearly 250 people came out to the Dupont Circle bar to watch his turn onstage—people who’d kicked $5 and $10 occasionally to his campaign in support, but more often dedicated hours of their lives to his campaign.

According to Matt Webster, the Sanders organizer in charge of the event, he simply created a Facebook event and people came: “You never just put something up on a site and people show up,” he said.

Some people, such as Carol and John Hazekamp, came from as far away as New Hampshire, a state constantly besieged by presidential wannabes. They were visiting their son in Arlington, but dragged him to the Sanders debate-watching party. “I realized that a lot of messages he had really resonated with me,” said Carol, who regularly follows election politics and said she was won over by his crusade against Citizens United.

The two said they’d wait on their donation until they’d seen how Sanders performed (generally, said Carol, they donate about $250 to campaigns), but already started volunteering in phone banks: “I actually called a woman who was 74 years old,” said Carol. “She goes, ‘If you asked me a couple weeks ago, I would have told you he has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected, but now I’m interested.’” (Carol’s daughter, she added proudly, runs “Boilers for Bernie” at Purdue University.)

The rest of the Sanders supporters interviewed donated much smaller amounts—$5 here, $10 there, or however much money it took to purchase a T-shirt “so that I could show my support for him as often as possible,” said Alex Atkins, a student at the Georgetown Law Center who started a pro-Sanders club on campus. (He wore the shirt in question—bright green with a graphic rendition of Sanders’s glasses and trademark wild hair—under his corduroy blazer.)

Several people, such as Sanders volunteer Jake Stevens, said they subscribed to an automatic donation service—in Stevens’s case, paying $5 a month to the campaign. “I’m trying to bring down that average donation number that he likes to talk about,” he joked, waiting by the stairs to hand out leaflets after the debate. “Seems like a win-win.”