Election Briefing: Donor Fatigue Is Real. Fundraisers Say the Answer Isn’t More Emails, It’s Better Ones

As attention turns away from primary season and to this fall’s general elections, campaigns across the country are shifting their fundraising operations into high gear.

Ahead of this year’s midterms, two leading fundraisers told Campaigns & Elections one of the biggest challenges campaigns face is earning and keeping the attention of donors who are increasingly skeptical about where their money is going and more selective about when they’re willing to give. 

The campaigns that succeed between now and November won’t necessarily be the ones sending the most emails or texts, said Nisha Desai, a senior director at the digital firm VNCS and a former fundraising director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  They’ll be the ones that tell a clearer story and make a stronger case for the impact of those dollars. 

“I think really switching from sugar-rush programs to programs that are explaining the mission, the work of each PAC, or if we’re working on a candidate program, their platform and agenda [improves performance],” Desai said earlier this week during an online discussion on fundraising, which was part of C&E’s Election Briefing Series. “What has been really helpful for us … has been outlining what donations go to, whether that’s knocking doors, registering voters, etc.” 

Coming off a record-setting presidential cycle in terms of dollars raised online, the expectation among many strategists was that this year’s midterm election would prove more of a challenge. Republican Dave Purkert, an executive vice president at TAG Strategies, which counts several Senate Republicans as clients, said what’s top of mind for his team is how to keep donors engaged.  

“How are we going to be able to carry them over into 2026, and how are we going to grow our files?” Purkert said. “Really trying to move past any sort of ‘this is transaction by transaction’ and more of, ‘How do we really maintain this relationship?’” 

His prescription isn’t sending more messages, it’s sending better ones: ”The most important thing that we can do each day is have great copy and have great creative,” said Purkert. “It’s really making sure that we’re letting the donors know the value they’re giving because our donors haven’t gone away.”

The need to rise above massive email and text volume has also pushed firms to think differently about their creative, argued Desai, who noted that her team increasingly studies commercial brands and nonprofits for ideas about how younger audiences consume content and make decisions. 

“We’re not just looking at political emails,” she said. “We’re looking at emails from the Gap …  We’re looking at nonprofit emails. There’s a new level of creativity that we need to unlock.”

You can watch the full conversation above.