Every so often I see a post that makes it high up the rec list complaining about the Democratic Party’s fundraising strategy. Why don’t they ever ask you to do something other than give money? Why don’t they use it to inform or motivate or drive public opinion? As a former Major Gift Officer for a large public university, this is one of the rare instances that I feel I have useful knowledge and perspective to contribute. After I saw another one yesterday hit #1 on the rec list I decided to share what I know and why political fundraising is so dysfunctional.
So first, let’s talk about what good fundraising should look like. The most influential text in fundraising circles is, in my experience, The Generosity Network by Jennifer McCrea, Jeffrey C. Walker. This book is a great outline for how modern SUSTAINABLE fundraising programs are built. The core tenants expressed in that book are:
What Sustainable Fundraising Looks Like
1. Fundraising Is About Relationships, Not Transactions
A good fundraising program builds a connection to your donors. No matter if it’s a six figure major gift or a $25 monthly ask, you’re more likely to get a gift if the donor feels like you are part of their community. They should feel personally connected to your mission, and ideally you as the person who is making an ask.
2. Shift From “Asking for Help” to Co-creating Partnerships
Donors are more likely to respond to your asks when they feel like they’re part of your organization, which means for every time you ask for money, you should have asked a different kind of commitment at least two times. Talk about volunteer opportunities, ask people to make phone calls, ask people to share stories, ask them to come to an event, ask them how they think you’re doing. If all you ever ask for is money, you alienate your donor base. Donors are not an ATM. They’re a partner in your work.
3. Know Yourself, Know Others, Know How to Ask
What is the core concern of your organization? What does a gift mean to you? The answers to those questions tell you how to frame asks for donations that are meaningful to you and meaningful to your donors.
4. Authentic Storytelling Builds Trust
Real stories motivate donors, false stories break trust. If you tell your donor that something is going to happen and it doesn’t, why should they believe you next time you ask them for something?
5. Build Community Around Your Cause
There should be a variety of ways your donors can contribute, and you should acknowledge them all as important. People without disposable income may be able to volunteer. People who can’t run in your 5k for health reasons can volunteer to hand out water. Don't make any kind of participation feel less important, because all avenues of participation bring value.
6. Emphasize Abundance, Not Scarcity
For decades, nonprofit organizations operated off of emphasizing an idea of scarcity of resources. We don’t have enough of everything! Instead of organizations focusing their fundraising on what they don't have, they should look for what resources in their community they have in abundance, and find a way to tap that to fill their needs.
7. Practice Tactics for Deepening Engagement
Every time you talk to your supporters you should be doing it in a way that makes them feel more connected to your cause. After taking an action to support you, they should feel good about what they just did. That feeling will carry over to the next ask.
Why Does Political Fundraising Feel Predatory
Probably reading the list above you immediately see that political fundraising does basically none of this, and violates practically every guideline and best practice laid out. This is what makes political fundraising feel predatory.
- Political Fundraising Feels Transactional. You are not a person. You’re a phone number or an email address. A gift today just means 10 more asks tomorrow, and no acknowledgement of your support in any meaningful way.
- Political Asks Make You Feel Bad. The sky is always falling. We’re always on the verge of catastrophe. The message is always negative, never positive.
- Political Fundraising Relies on False Urgency. We need x number of donations by tomorrow night or we’re doomed! Messages build a huge sense of immediate and urgent need, and when that doom doesn’t come to pass, we feel betrayed.
- Political Fundraising Makes Promises They Can’t Keep. “If Senator Goodboy is elected, he will make sure abortion remains accessible in our State!” But Senators don’t write state laws, and people who donated to Senator Goodboy are going to feel betrayed when their Republican Governor passes abortion restrictions.
- Political Fundraising is Always About Money. It’s always money and it’s never enough. Kamala Harris’ campaign was begging for emergency donations, after raising more than a billion dollars. And then they kept asking for money even after she lost. According to the fundraisers, there was never enough.
Why Do Political Fundraisers Not Follow Sustainable Practices?
So, if all of these are the cardinal sins of fundraising (and they are!!), why does every campaign do them?
It comes down to a simple idea:
You can shear a sheep many times, but skin it only once.
-Amarillo Slim Preston
Sustainable fundraising is about shearing the sheep. A gift today builds the bridge to a gift tomorrow. Ideally a bigger gift. You don't clearcut the forest, you take trees out strategically, to maintain the health of the ecosystem.
But this is not the incentive structure that political campaigns operate on. They want to skin their donors. They want to clearcut the forest. They want to squeeze every dime they can get, and tomorrow be damned.
But why?
Political Fundraising is Consultant-based, and that creates a skewed incentive system.
Most campaigns rely heavily, if not exclusively, on outsiders for fundraising. This is the root of all of the problems.
1. That consultant gets the job by promising the biggest total at the end of the campaign for the smallest overhead. The incentive is to promise a huge number, which means that consultant will have to squeeze as hard as they can to reach it. If I’m a senatorial candidate and I have 2 companies to pick from and one tells me they can get me twenty million dollars in six months, and the other says they can get me 5 million every six months for the next five years, sure, the second is more money. But if I don’t win the election in six months, next year is meaningless. Which brings us to…
2. Consultants can earn money fast because they have the resources, expertise, and structure already in place. If I’m a candidate what makes more sense: try to build a fundraising organization from the ground up, or tap into a proven and reliable one that can make me money today? Fundraising is hard and expensive and time consuming, and an established firm has a huge leg up. They can start generating returns today and in a campaign, every day matters, because...
3. Political campaigns have an expiration date. After the election, donations don’t matter anymore (especially if you lose). On top of that, even if the candidate wins, there is no guarantee they’ll continue to keep a contract with that company. So the consultant wants to get as much as they can before the finish line. There is no tomorrow as far as their concerned. The current campaign is all they will ever need you for. And so they go all out because…
4. Predatory tactics work! Until they don't. The fact is, those hair-on-fire emergency asks have higher donor engagement, and that’s all the company needs. They have internal numbers on how much money a series of 7 flashing red alert emotional pulls will draw. It’s going to be diminishing returns, each one will earn less as fatigue builds, but it’s going to be more money for less investment than trying to organize a virtual town hall or volunteer event. Those have a higher engagement, but also a higher overhead. And the diminishing returns are fine because remember, there is an expiration date on the usefulness of those donors. But how can they hit the ground running and churn through these donors? How did they even get your name in the first place? Well, it turns out...
5. The consulting firm didn’t earn your attention so they don’t care if they burn you. Years ago nonprofits figured out a new way to generate income for their cause without having to ask donors for money — they sell or rent their donor’s information. Campaigns also often share lists with each other as a way to give a new candidate a head start. You donate to an anti-abortion organization or an established politician. A firm hired by Senate Candidate Goodboy buys or rents that donor list. Win for the anti-abortion org, they got probably tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars! Win for Candidate Goodboy, now he can start raising money right away. But it’s not a win for you, because that firm that bought your name didn’t have to work to get your attention, all they needed was seed money. They turn that cost into a profit by getting as much money as they can from that list as possible. And the thing about lists is, there’s always another. When that anti-abortion org’s list is bled dry, they’ll move on to the list they bought from the food bank or from the environmental org or whatever. They keep bleeding every list dry, because that’s how they make a name for themselves. Because...
6. Consulting firms build rep among those that hire them from short-term gains. Firms build their reputation by meeting huge fundraising targets in a short amount of time. It makes them look like miracle workers! Predatory tactics might only work once, but they do work. They can generate huge hauls, even while they alienate donors. At the end of the campaign you will hate them! But the firm doesn't care because…
7. Consulting firms are invisible to donors, so when they break your trust you don’t even know who did it. You donated to Senator Goodboy and it turned out he sucks. All those fundraising promises were smoke and mirrors. Lesson learned! You won’t donate to Senator Goodboy again! Instead you’ll donate to Senator Honestlady. What you don't realize is it’s more likely than not the same firm making the ask. You end up giving more money to the org that burned you, because you never even knew the name of the firm asking you for money on the Senator’s behalf.
So the consulting firm found a way to skin you multiple times after all.
So What Should We Do?
Like most problems, when you dig in, there is no easy answer. Stop donating to all campaigns? That’s going to hurt candidates who really do need the money. Encourage the DNC to build a donor-centric in-house fundraising system? That’s costly and takes years, if not decades. And it probably won’t generate as much money in short bursts that candidates really want. The system is working for them right now, so why invest a ton to build a new system?
It would be wonderful if we could limit the amount of money campaigns raise. Or move the funding public. If every campaign wasn’t a race to see who could drum up the most money, the incentive structure would fall apart. But because of Supreme Court decisions, that would require either overturning those rulings (unlikely with the current Supreme Court makeup) or a Constitutional Amendment (impossible in the current political climate). So that’s pretty much out.
One thing is true: The less we incentivize bad fundraising practices, the smaller the returns these firms will see. In the short term that would likely hurt Democratic candidates. But in the long run it’s probably necessary to bring sanity to the system.
For now we’re stuck with a system that no one is happy with. No one except the consulting firms, whose heads make huge salaries by skinning all of us sheep over, and over, and over, and over.
