A fundraising shift may very well be starting on the right. After years of “burning down” lists, and employing fake matches and auto-clicked recurring contribution buttons, practitioners are seeing campaigns consider a softer approach.
Amanda Elliott, a GOP digital consultant who’s working with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s 2024 presidential bid, said she’s witnessing a “sea change” in the way many Republican strategists are approaching fundraising heading into next cycle.
“As a consultant class, I think we’ve been having this conversation amongst ourselves now for a couple cycles. And I really sense a sea change this year of digital operatives and fundraisers realizing that we have to change things in order to grow our donor base,” said Elliott.
Part of the shift, according to Elliott is due to the fact that the midterm cycle wasn’t a great one for online fundraising on the right.
“It was a huge wakeup call,” she said. “We’ve made this pivot toward being more respectful of supporters, not just burning our lists to the ground, and not just hitting them up 500 times a day with donation asks. And it seems to be working really well so far.”
While at the RGA back in 2021, Elliott launched the committee’s online fundraising program, building its donor house file from scratch. While it’s now No. 1 on most campaign fundraisers’ white boards, bringing new donors into the fold is a going to be a challenge for any digital team, she admits:
“A lot of cash is going to be spent on prospecting for new donors. … Any prospecting campaign is going to take a lot of testing, a lot of optimization,” Elliott said. “You have to take the long view of it. In the short term, it might seem like you’re just throwing money down the drain. In the long term, it will hopefully pay off to bring in new people — however you can bring them in.”
Has anything replaced Facebook for prospecting? Not really, according to Elliott, especially for down-ballot races. Facebook remains king when it comes to prospecting for new donors, but there are other platforms and alternate tactics worth experimenting with.
“There’s a lot you can do with device IDs and matching mobile device ID targeting to try and find new people based on their interests and whether they would be likely to donate to your campaign,” she said.
Elliott said she hasn’t incorporated AI into her practice yet. But between those new tools and influencer marketing (she likes the Urban Legend platform), either one could help define the presidential cycle’s digital strategy.
“2024 being the AI election or the influencer election, I think either one of those could be accurate,” Elliott said. “And then along those lines, watching for viral social media content. We’re starting to see campaigns and candidates put a little bit more thought into posting really sensational and authentic content on these platforms to stand out among the crowd.”
