The Big Problem With Small Political Donor Email $$$ Raising

Big donors are a big problem in political campaigns. Now, the hunt for small donors is, too.

There was a time, not that long ago, when it was illegal for campaigns to poach federal donation reports of others to use in their own fund-raising. The original idea behind campaign contribution disclosure was to highlight suspicious influence buying. Now, legal or not, every campaign seems to be working those donor lists without restraint. If you’ve ever contributed money to any political campaign, your name, email address and text number are likely on it. And your donation email fatigue is rising, with another four months to go before November’s election.

When Every Campaign Wants Your Donation

I haven’t taken the time to count how many emails and texts land in my inbox each day. Dozens. Often multiple times each day from the same candidate. Most are from the high visibility congressional and state campaigns, but now they’re even coming from candidates running for state legislature seats far from DC, where I live.

Add to candidates’ own appeals separate money requests from national, state and local political parties, political action committees and special issue groups and I could spend my days doing little else but reading and responding to all of it. And I’m just a small donor.

The deluge is particularly high in the days before month’s end, when campaigns are frantically building their fund-raising totals to look their strongest in public reports. Money raised is a key metric in how the political world perceives a campaign’s chance for election success. I get it. What I don’t get is how mindless and abusive small donor fund-raising has become.

In the week before this June’s month end filing deadline, I sent online contributions to about a dozen campaigns I favor. Later that same day my email and text boxes were flooded with requests from those very same campaigns for more money, with no acknowledgement of the contributions I already had sent. Only one campaign sent a thank you note, two days later, attached to a plea for more.

Don't Drive Small Donors Away

I know there’s a better way of doing this, because like most of you, I’m also bombarded with commercial advertising. But no commercial entity fills my email box daily. And if I happen to respond, that response is immediately acknowledged. Sure, mass mailings, no matter who sends them, or how personal they seem, are merely digital robots during their job. But the senders are fully aware that if they are too annoying, recipients are likely to unsubscribe. 

It would be disastrous to our election system if small donors, en mass, would say “enough,” and unsubscribe, too. 

I’ve been involved professionally in hundreds of campaigns. I know how hard it is to raise money if you are not personally rich, and unwilling to cave to sources that are. I sympathize with the effort. But antagonizing your supporters by constantly pestering them for more money is not only self-defeating for your campaign, it’s a turnoff for the entire political small donor universe.

What to do about it? How about some lawn-trimming of grassroots fund-raising. Like: Fewer emails, more substance, definitely more creativity, and greater insight into how your stream of messages finds its place among those of other campaigns doing the same thing. 

An army of small donors is a necessary bulwark against the influence of just a few megadonors. Don’t drive small donors away. The technology is there to do it right. Use it. 

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net

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