There are two things we know for sure about the $47 million President Obama raised in the last three months for his re-election campaign: It’s a lot of money, and it’s far more than any of his potential Republican opponents have raised.

That figure — along with the $39 million the campaign reported raising for the Democratic National Committee –  was the subject of much enthusiasm from Jim Messina, the campaign manager, in a morning conference call with reporters. The call took place after the Obama campaign had released the numbers in a video to supporters.

But there’s much that will not be clear until Mr. Obama delivers his formal paperwork to the Federal Election Commission before midnight on Friday.

* Mr. Messina said that 98 percent of the individual donations came in checks of $250 or less, a figure he said “should end any Washington chatter about whether our grass-roots base will be engaged.” But the campaign will not announce until Friday what actual proportion of Mr. Obama’s $47 million haul came from such checks, during a period when the president attended a significant number of fund-raisers for wealthy donors who typically give thousands of dollars, along with small-donor events. The campaign also made a point of referring to the donations and not the donors, and did not give the total number of donations from a single donor.

* Mr. Obama’s aides boasted of adding more than 260,000 new donors during the quarter, close to half of the overall 552,462 people who gave and more than the campaign had during all of 2007. But what of Mr. Obama’s vast database of donors to his first presidential campaign, numbering 3.95 million, according to the campaign? In other words, while roughly a quarter-million new donors signed on to Mr. Obama’s re-election, the vast majority of those who supported Mr. Obama in 2008 haven’t yet sent the president a dime.

* Moreover, Mr. Obama, who faces no challenge from within his own party, is raising money for both the primary period and the general election; money raised for the election cannot be spent until after he is formally renominated next summer. And while Mr. Obama is unlikely to face a primary challenge, the campaign will need that money to build a ground operation and to respond to attacks from rivals and independent Republican groups. His closest competitor in terms of dollars, Mitt Romney, raised only $18.25 million in the quarter, but all of it is primary money. And while even half of Mr. Obama’s $47 million would be more than Mr. Romney has raised, it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison until the campaigns file with the F.E.C. later this week.

* No Republican candidate has committed to releasing the names of so-called bundlers, wealthy supporters who raise money on their behalf. Mr. Obama has pledged to do so, but not until Friday — leaving uncertain, for now, the extent to which his formidable fund-raising operation from 2008 remains intact for 2012.