The firm co-founded by one of President Trump’s former campaign managers is looking to change fundraising strategy on the right and warning against the risks that are coming with fishing in a “very, very” small donor pool.
Mike Hahn, a VP of digital strategy at National Public Affairs (NPA), was poached from the NRSC to set up a fundraising department for the full-service GOP shop. After years of hearing fundraising pitches on behalf of the GOP’s Senate caucus, he told C&E he wanted the firm to take a different approach, especially when it came to pricing.
In an interview, Hahn said the firm is charging “significantly lower retainers” and has low pricing on send costs for text and email, as well as lower-than-industry-standard percentages on ad buys.
NPA doesn’t take 3 percent off of its clients’ donor prospecting hauls because of the belief that the charge will put these campaigns into the red. They also scrapped the model of taking three percent on gross raised and instead they take 3 percent on what the client’s house file raises.
Hahn’s signed 35 clients, including nine congressionals, and boasts about their totals.
“Everyone of them is raising more money month over month and raising more money than they did when they were in-cycle in 2022,” said Hahn who noted that his team sets up a quick approvals process and tries to capitalize off of breaking news. “We don’t do any matching whatsoever.”
“Clients need to do a better job of holding their vendors accountable,” he said, noting he sends Monday reports to his entire roster.
“The last thing we want is to hit a client with a bill at the end of the month where they had no clue where they were tracking … We’re giving net down to the percentage of the WinRed fee coming out — not only send costs and retainers so that we can give people a sense of where they’re at.”
