The Decline of Small Donations

Giving your money to political candidate is a chump’s game. Why would you do this? First, as soon as you do it, you are inundated with emails and texts for the rest of your life. Second, you are funding the consultant-industrial complex, filled with people happy to get paid large sums of money to send you more emails and texts to get you to give more money. Yes, a certain amount of money is necessary to run a campaign, but we have seen repeatedly how people give far more money to candidates than they can ever use and they still lose, i.e., Beto O’Rourke’s bold and worthy run against Ted Cruz in 2018 or Sara Gideon’s utter failure against Susan Collins in 2020. There are plenty of great ways to participate in the political process–working for the local party, doing GOTV efforts on and before election day, even giving to underfunded local candidates who will actually appreciate and use the money. You can also do what I do and invest in left-leaning grassroots organizations to build power for the future that is not connected to any one election.

I get why people give to candidates–their anxiety. But really, don’t do that. Increasingly, people are not. Both Democratic and Republican candidates are seeing a cratering of small dollar donations in this cycle.

In a stark reversal from recent political history, both parties have seen a significant decline this election cycle in the small-dollar contributions they harvest via text and email, largely from rank-and-file voters of modest means. Gone are the days when any candidate could expect to rake in small donations, according to Republican and Democratic digital strategists. Instead, only the smartest campaigns — and the perennial guests on Fox News — see the type of cash influx that was routine five years ago.

“We have squeezed every last penny in a period of time when the pennies are harder to come by,” said John Hall, a GOP digital strategist.

For Republicans, the downturn started in the 2022 midterm election. But Democrats say they are also seeing small donations decrease this election cycle across a range of candidates and liberal organizations.

“I’ve seen it. I’ve heard it,” said Stephanie Schriock, former president of the Democratic group EMILYs List. “It’s definitely been a slowdown this election cycle on small-dollar gifts.”

The change has rocked fundraising for the Republican National Committee, which has seen small-dollar donations — generally seen as contributions of less than $200 — plummet from $39 million at this point in 2020 to $14 million so far this year. But smaller declines are taking place across the country. Strategists attribute the slowdown to a combination of inflation, widespread exhaustion over the state of politics and poor donor maintenance from both parties. The change is remaking budgets, forcing campaigns to refocus on wealthy donors and confront the possibility that they simply might not have as much cash to spend as they expected.

“It’s been really frustrating because for a couple of cycles, clients were getting really used to large sums of money coming in from online,” said Amanda Elliott, a GOP digital strategist. “It was great for a while, and now it’s been tapering off.”

….

Individual House members, including those in swing districts, are also struggling with a dip in small donations. GOP Rep. Don Bacon, for instance, went from about $35,000 from small donors during the first quarter of 2020 to about $25,000 through March of this year.

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan’s small-dollar fundraising dropped from $47,000 during the first quarter of 2020 to $19,000 during the first three months of this year. Back then, a whopping 65% of his contributions were from small-dollar donors — likely due to a surge in interest in Democrats taking back the House. Now, those donations make up 38% of his total contributions.

Small-dollar donations account for a significant portion — typically, 30% to 50% — of a committee’s overall contributions. They are also a signal to campaigns that the party’s grassroots are engaged in a race and will show up to vote.

The shift has shocked veterans of political campaigns. Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, the story of elections has largely been one about candidates raising ever-larger sums of money. Fundraising declines like the one happening this election are rare.

Strategists believe the biggest reason for the drop is that rising costs of living have shrunk donors’ budgets.

I am sure that has plenty to do with it. But fatigue is a bigger factor, I would reckon. I will never give another dollar to any major candidate because of the endless emails and texts. Nope. There’s also this:

Compared to their Republican counterparts, Democratic strategists were less concerned about the problem of over-soliciting their donors. But they say some of the party’s notoriously alarmist fundraising messages nonetheless had, over time, turned off some of their contributors.

“If you tell people for six years that the sky is falling, when the sky is actually falling, they’re not going to believe you,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive group Run for Something.

“I think it’s gotten worse,” she added, “and I think they’ve had to get more desperate and urgent because the old things aren’t working.”

Of course, the sky is actually falling if Trump wins. And I have little doubt that a Trump victory would lead to a big surge in donations for 2026 and 2028, assuming the nation has an election that year. But one can see how this would happen, especially when the message coming out of the consultant-industrial complex is exactly the same over and over.

If you are going to give, OK, fine, but you should give to LGM instead. At least you get what you pay for here: me berating you.