WinRed Has a New Competitor. Not All Republicans Are Sold On It

There’s a new player in the Republican donation processing space. But for now, at least, consultants are staying on the fence.

The new platform, called PSQ Impact, launched last month as the first real competitor to GOP small-dollar fundraising clearinghouse WinRed, promising fundraisers lower processing fees and more transparency in how it handles contributions.

The company also has some powerful backers within the MAGA movement. PSQ Impact is owned by MAGA-aligned online marketplace PublicSquare, which counts Donald Trump Jr. among its board members. The new fundraising platform is being helmed by Alex Bruesewitz, the former Trump campaign aide and conservative influencer.

But in interviews with Campaigns & Elections, several GOP fundraising consultants said they’re in no rush to migrate over to PSQ Impact.

“We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, and if a client says they want to go over to PublicSquare, we’ll move over to PublicSquare to test it out,” said Mike Hahn, the president of digital strategy and operations at Frontline Strategies. “We’re not in anyone’s camp on this one. We’re going to do what’s best for the client.”

Hahn, like other digital fundraising professionals who spoke to C&E, said that he’s not opposed to the new platform, adding that having new competition in the space is good for the industry. But for the time being, it all “comes down to what the client wants,” he said.

WinRed, which launched in 2019 as the political right’s answer to Democratic donation-processing behemoth ActBlue, has dominated the GOP digital fundraising ecosystem, processing $1.8 billion in contributions from 4.5 million donors in 2024 alone.

And some Republican fundraisers argue that sticking with WinRed has some clear advantages. The platform, they say, has a proven track record and is already fully integrated into the conservative ecosystem. Many small-dollar donors already have recurring contributions set up through the platform.

Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and the executive director of the GOP-aligned Center for Campaign Innovation, said that part of the reluctance among some fundraisers to switch over to PSQ Impact is rooted in the fact that WinRed already has a foothold in the donation-processing space. In other words, he said, donors and fundraisers already trust the platform.

“I think the thing that’s important to keep going back to is that the challenge with online fundraising is not the payment processing, setting up a form to collect credit card numbers,” Wilson said. “It’s getting the donors through that experience, trusting a brand and getting the whole ecosystem comfortable with it. And WinRed has a big head start on all of that.”

What’s more, WinRed is also run by some influential figures. Last year, it added President Donald Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita, pollster Tony Fabrizio and longtime Republican operative Matt Lira to its board of directors.

Still, some Republican fundraisers have complaints with WinRed. They argue that the platform’s 3.94 percent processing fees for standard fundraising pages are too high. At the same time, they say, WinRed’s dominant position in the GOP ecosystem has made it slow to address the needs of fundraisers.

“They have zero urgency to address any of our needs,” said one Republican fundraising consultant, who, like most people interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to speak candidly about the processing platforms. “They’re just suffering from the fact that there’s no competition.”

WinRed did not respond to C&E’s request for comment.

In an email to C&E, PublicSquare CEO and founder Michael Seifert pushed back on the notion that Republican fundraisers were reluctant to move over to PSQ Impact, writing that “some of the biggest names in the conservative movement and Republican Party, both organizations and individual candidates, are now actively fundraising on the Impact platform as we’ve entered the new year.”

Seifert declined to provide preliminary numbers on how many candidates and groups are fundraising on PSQ Impact, noting that the company would share more during its upcoming Q4 earnings call. He said that PublicSquare is “well-capitalized” and added that its status as a publicly traded company offered more transparency into its finances.

“I would simply say that while we certainly respect the efforts of WinRed over the years, we are confident that their ‘dominance’ in this space is quickly coming to an end as donors, campaigns, committees, and fundraising agencies that power the conservative movement have hungered for a true competitor for years now,” he wrote.

One fundraising consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there’s one thing that could set off a scramble to join PSQ Impact: President Donald Trump’s political operation. Trump-linked committees are still raising money through WinRed, but if they decide to take their business elsewhere, other Republicans are likely to follow suit, the consultant said.

“We’re not really seeing the switch yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not coming,” the consultant said. “I think it’s going to be a big conversation come ’28, when the presidential starts to heat up.”