Political fundraising: How to raise money for your campaign
From grassroots supporters to major donors, it takes a village to fund a successful political campaign. After all, mailers, advertising, and events are just a few of the many campaign expenditures you have to cover. That’s why a thorough political fundraising strategy is vital to securing the support you need.
In this blog, we’ll define political fundraising and share strategies to raise money for your campaign. Plus, we’ll explain compliance laws and guidelines you must know before fundraising. Let’s start with the basics.
What is political fundraising?
Political fundraising is the process of raising money for a political campaign or cause.
Whether you’re raising money through in-person events, online advertising, or SMS and email campaigns, the ultimate goal is to raise enough money to execute campaign operations effectively.
Political fundraising and campaign finance laws
Before you create a political fundraising strategy, get familiar with the laws governing it. While political fundraising laws vary from state to state, there are a few general topics to understand:
Contribution limits and compliance laws
Along with federal campaign contribution limits, most states limit how much money an individual, organization, union, or corporation can donate to a campaign. Failing to follow these limits can result in hefty fines or worse.
Compliance laws ensure that your campaign accurately and transparently discloses who is funding it. These laws vary from race to race, so check with your relevant election authority to ensure you’re following the proper laws for your campaign.
Types of contributions you can accept
Campaign finance laws dictate who you are and aren’t allowed to accept contributions from while fundraising. For instance, federal campaigns can accept contributions from:
- Individuals
- Trusts
- Party committees
- Certain types of PACs
- The candidate
- Other federal campaigns
These campaigns, however, cannot accept contributions from corporations, labor organizations, or nonprofits.
Check with your relevant election authority to verify which types of donations your campaign can accept. Additionally, learn the regulations about including proper fundraising disclaimers in your communications. For example, you may need to list who paid for the message (your campaign), your candidate’s name, and the office they’re running for.
Filing campaign finance reports
Campaigns must file finance reports to share how much money they’ve raised and spent within a certain reporting period. Reporting timelines vary between campaigns, so again, make sure you know your relevant filing deadlines so you can file your reports on time to prevent violations or fines for late or inaccurate filings. Compliance software can help you efficiently manage data and file accurate, comprehensive reports.
Essential political campaign fundraising strategies
Now, let’s dive into a few effective fundraising ideas to raise money for your political campaign.
Call time fundraising
Preparing a list of potential donors and calling them to ask for donations is called “call time.” Call time is a tried-and-true fundraising method for political campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Connecting through one-on-one conversations enables you to build rapport with donors, address any concerns they may have, and make a personalized ask.
Call time simply requires a donor list and a phone (and volunteers, depending on the size of your team). By making these calls, you can quickly build up your donor network and raise the money you need to run a competitive campaign.
With Call Time Mobile, NGP VAN’s mobile fundraising app, you can make this fundraising method even more efficient by making targeted donor calls from anywhere.
Digital fundraising
Emails, texts, social media posts, and ads all fall under the umbrella of digital fundraising. Online fundraising serves as a valuable fundraising stream for campaigns up and down the ballot. It’s a great way to communicate with a wide audience (faster than call time), which helps scale fundraising operations.
Simply put, digital fundraising helps you build your donor lists, raise more, and increase engagement among new and existing donors. While it primarily leads to low-dollar donations, these gifts typically occur at a higher volume than the higher-dollar donations received from call time. Many low-dollar donors will also likely make multiple donations throughout the election cycle when re-solicited digitally.
Fundraising events
Campaign events take many different forms, from small house parties to grand galas. While they may take more time to plan and can get expensive quickly, they also help you grow your network and reach donors you would not have otherwise.
Use events as opportunities to get to know potential donors and deepen relationships with them. Have your candidate or an organization leader speak about the campaign and encourage supporters to donate one-on-one.
Text banking
Similar to call time, text banking is a dedicated time for political campaign volunteers or staff to text potential donors and ask for contributions. Text banking is much faster than making phone calls, allowing you to reach more supporters in less time.
To simplify the process and keep track of your text conversations, use a political texting service like NGP VAN’s Mobile Messaging. This tool lets you create and segment donor lists, automate messages, and more. Plus, you can easily integrate your text messages into multichannel campaigns to create more donor touchpoints.
How to start a political fundraiser
Think you’re ready to start fundraising? First, you need to build a finance plan and a campaign budget. Your finance plan details how much money you plan to raise through which channels, and your budget tracks how money gets allocated to different parts of your campaign (staff costs, advertising, etc.).
There are two thought processes when creating these pieces of your campaign plan. You might:
- Start with costs. Outline all the potential costs of running a campaign or organization the way you think it needs to be run. Budget out every single expense needed to win and then fundraise to match that budget.
- Start with a fundraising goal. Determine how much you can realistically raise, and then set your budget to match that fundraising goal.
Whichever method you choose, you’ll need a comprehensive finance plan and budget to hit your goals and generate enough money to cover your expected costs.
You also need a user-friendly donation page where supporters can give with just a few clicks. Then, choose and start planning your fundraising strategies.
Supporter-led fundraisers
Remember that avid supporters can start their own political fundraisers for your campaign, too.
To encourage supporter-led fundraisers, create guidelines or a virtual guide to help event hosts understand how to plan and execute a fundraiser. Set a fundraising goal with them to ensure you use your time wisely and inspire hosts to help your campaign reach its goals.
These events can take many forms, but each one is a collaboration between the hosts and your campaign. Working together, you can create a successful political fundraiser that engages donors, builds your supporter network, and raises money while following all relevant campaign finance laws.
Political fundraising tips to help you raise more
No matter which fundraising strategies you pursue, following these best practices will put your campaign in the best position to succeed.
Start early.
Starting your fundraising early can help you raise more money over the course of the election cycle. Capitalize on your campaign launch to earn a fundraising boost at the start of the election cycle. Then, plan to ask donors to give multiple times throughout the campaign.
Take a multichannel approach.
Every donor has preferences regarding how they want you to communicate with them. By taking a multichannel approach, you can connect with more donors and discover what channels to use for future fundraising appeals. Test and optimize these channels to learn what strategies work best and improve them throughout your campaign.
Say thank you and ask again in the future.
Every time a donor gives, make sure to say thank you! Donors who feel like their contributions are appreciated and making a real difference are more likely to give again later in the campaign. Plus, donors who have already given to your campaign once don’t need to be convinced to support your campaign — they just need to be convinced to give again.
Start your political fundraising today with NGP VAN!
NGP VAN has helped Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations raise billions of dollars in our over 25-year history. Our technology serves as the gold standard for political fundraising and compliance software, helping campaigns and causes track fundraising progress, engage donors, and raise more money to win elections.
To learn more about our campaign tools and how they can help you boost your fundraising success, contact our team.
