Meet the 20-Somethings Raising Money for Top Progressives

Sathvik Kaliyur and Jonathan Li were still in high school when they volunteered on their first campaign for a Bay-Area school board race.

It was a formative experience, Kaliyur said, recalling how he and Li realized that the “folks who were well connected and had existing relationships always had a head start when it came to politics.” So, he said, they set out to fix that.

“What we wanted to do was to democratize the process a little bit — democratize democracy,” Kaliyur told Campaigns & Elections in a recent interview. “And in order to do that, we looked at how you spend the money, how you raise the money, how you allocate resources, staff and all that.”

Kaliyur and Li are now 24 and 22 years old, respectively, and now run NWF Strategies, a fundraising and strategy shop that’s raising money for some of the most prominent progressive campaigns of the cycle. Their client list includes some of the biggest up-and-comers on the left, including Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign in Michigan and Angie Nixon’s Florida Senate bid. Kaliyur served as finance director for Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign for New York City mayor last year.

NWF’s approach to fundraising doesn’t “prioritize a lot of upfront purchasing.” Kaliyur said, arguing that list acquisitions are often expensive and simply “not feasible” for a lot of campaigns without much cash to start with. They’ll rent lists, he acknowledged, “but only at a guaranteed profit level.”

“Our solution is that we have a list that we build internally — kind of like a starting list of who the best contacts are,” Kaliyur, who serves as NWF’s CEO, said. “Then, we have a strategy based around moments and using those break-out opportunities to expand the list through guaranteed ROI rentals, and we take advantage of those.”

Working in the progressive space is unique, Kaliyur said. A lot of fundraising, he noted, is driven by emotion. Issues, like Palestine or corporate campaign money, are particularly salient. 

“We’ve helped cultivate a donor base that’s different. I think the kind of person that gives to our candidates or lefties in general are different from the historic, traditional donor. They’re particularly issue motivated. A lot of people are giving because of Palestine. A lot of people give, because they want to end money in politics.”

The overarching goal, according to Li, NWF’s COO and co-founder, is to create a sense of personal connection between potential donors and candidates. Text messages, for instance, don’t rely heavily on images or other graphics, and instead aim to read as coming directly from the candidate themselves.

“When we’re working on sending texts and emails, we’re not just going off of vibes, trying to emulate a candidate’s voice,” Li said. “What does the candidate do, how do they behave? That’s how we post these super high ROI numbers and also minimize a lot of risk for the candidate.”

The numbers that NWF has posted so far are serious. According to Li, they’ve raised more than $100 million in races across 25 states. In the case of the New York City mayor’s race, Mamdani became the first candidate of the cycle to reach the city’s $8 million fundraising cap, fueled by contributions from some 18,000 donors. 

NWF may have its hands in some marquee contests now, but that wasn’t always the case. Kaliyur and Li initially founded the firm as a side project straight out of high school. In the beginning, Kaliyur recalled how he “cold called 1,000 people” in search of clients. “One person said yes.”

“We were unproven and untested, and so we understood,” Kaliyur said. “I gave so many pitches that were embarrassing. But we have gotten our business because we deliver. That’s the only way. Our client base is built off of people who recommend us because we deliver for them.”

This is the first election cycle that NWF has worked on top Senate races. And while that’s been a learning experience, Li said, it hasn’t fundamentally changed his approach to the work. 

“It’s all been so gradual that at no point has it been like ‘oh, we made it,’ ” Li said. “We win an election, and that feels amazing on the spot, but the world goes back to what it is.”