Digital fundraising strategies to break through the noise
Digital fundraising strategies to break through the noise
Mike Nellis on why campaigns don't need to be scammers to be effective
Welcome to Campaigner, a weekly newsletter exploring the tactics that drive winning political campaigns and highlighting the players pushing the buttons. Produced by Arena & FWIW Media.
Over the past ten years, online fundraising has become the bread and butter of political campaigns on both sides of the aisle. Whether it’s email or text appeals or Facebook ads, voters are flooded more than ever with asks to chip in a few bucks to support a candidate or cause. For this week’s Campaigner, we spoke with Mike Nellis, founder & CEO of leading Democratic digital firm Authentic, to hear his thoughts on fundraising tactics and strategies for campaigns of all sizes.
Q&A with Mike Nellis on online fundraising
Campaigner: Digital fundraising is kind of the backbone of so many campaigns. It’s one of the most important aspects of the work. Can you talk about the importance of having a strong digital fundraising operation, how you manage that, and what you've learned?
Mike Nellis: I think online fundraising has become an important equalizer. There's so much dark money in our politics post-Citizens United and the continued destruction of our federal and state campaign finance laws. Online fundraising lets us organize as large communities of people to make a difference in our politics.
Bernie Sanders basically crowdfunded two presidential campaigns, right? That is not insignificant, and that changed the shape of the Democratic Party. It changed the direction of the country. Joe Biden raised a significant amount of money online that helped him defeat Donald Trump. Our firm used digital fundraising and grassroots organizing to help elevate Kamala Harris to the vice presidency. We did a number of Senate races last cycle for candidates like John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, Mike Espy, and others, and we raised tens of millions of dollars It can have a tremendous amount of power when done right, when done ethically, and when digital staffers are given the opportunity to run the kind of programs that they're capable of. I think it's very powerful, and it's only going to become more powerful as there continues to be a divide between how we're raising our money and how Republicans raise money.
Campaigner: It seems like one of the most concrete, visible impacts that the internet has had on our politics in the past 15 years has been grassroots fundraising, particularly on the left. Can you talk a little bit more about what are the most important tools at your disposal for that? Is it digital advertising? Is it email still? Is it something else?
Mike Nellis: This is gonna sound really cheesy coming from a guy who named his firm Authentic: I think the most important tool we have in our arsenal is authenticity. If a candidate genuinely cares and can connect with people on the receiving end of an email, ad, Instagram video, whatever, they can do really well online.
I remember when we took on John Hickenlooper’s campaign, someone at the previous firm that he had been working with made a comment about how we were never going to raise significant grassroots money for him. And we showed up to that race with fresh eyes and really leaned into what made John interesting. Here’s a guy that plays the banjo, had this dorky sense of humor, and a million dad jokes. I'm always telling my candidates to lean in and be themselves. I think that is more important than literally any other tactic or strategy that we have in our arsenal.
“This is going to sound really cheesy but…I think the most important tool we have in our arsenal is authenticity.”
Beyond that, email is still king - it remains a medium you can raise a significant amount of money. I also think SMS and peer to peer texting are incredibly powerful tools for digital fundraising. Advertising is incredibly important, but obviously diluted by Facebook policies and their restrictions on targeting.
Lastly, tactically speaking, you need a time horizon to raise that money. All of the people that you see that are going to be really successful this year are the ones who invested in fundraising strategies last year. You’re going to find that a lot of campaigns woke up on January 1st looking to build an online fundraising program, and unfortunately, they’re going to be behind the curve a little bit.
Campaigner: And that's just because some candidates have already been building their lists of supporters and sort of growing a kind of grassroots army?
Mike Nellis: Exactly. The market is more crowded than it's ever been. Ten years ago, there were only a handful of well-run digital programs. Now everybody's got one - even the most poorly run digital program is still kind of more sophisticated than most from 10 years ago. So you know, it's evolved a lot. My alderman in Chicago has an online fundraising program, it’s great. But that means people are getting inundated by these types of fundraising messages, and candidates have to get in early, make the investments, and do the work in order to be successful.
You also have these weird anonymous super PAC groups that are just riding a wave to make money for unknown consultants. There was a Business Insider piece about one of these groups recently. It just gets dangerous because these people are removing money from the political process to line their own pockets, while also breaking trust and breaking faith with our supporters and activists.
Campaigner: Let’s talk about that a little bit. You’ve been pretty outspoken about unethical and scammy tactics in online fundraising programs. What are some of the most egregious things you’ve seen, and do you agree with folks who assert that it's necessary to be a little bit scammy to break through and boost the campaign’s bottom line?
Mike Nellis: The topline: you do not have to be scammy in order to break through. I don't believe that at all. I think a number of candidates have proven that over the last couple years and it's not just my clients. I think what this comes down to is that we're living in a world of significant polarization and diminishing norms across the board, and that’s hurting our ethics.
Trump has broken the molds for that, in any number of different ways. That turn towards polarization has created a “win at all cost” mentality. You should have this conversation with somebody who works for a firm that takes a very different approach to this, but often what I hear from those people is they say it doesn't matter how they raise the money. It just matters that they raise the money. It matters that their candidate has X number of dollars in the bank to be able to run TV ads and send mail pieces and hire field organizers. I understand where they are coming from. But I also believe that it does matter how we win.
I think it matters how we treat people both in the short term, because if I scare a senior citizen into donating $25 to my campaign, that’s $25 they might need to put food on the table, pay their heating bill, pay for their medication, that kind of stuff. Shane Goldmacher from the New York Times had a story from a few months ago of all of these people who were scammed out of their money by the Trump campaign and really needed it. It was so sad. To me that's not okay, and political candidates shouldn't accept it as a new norm. The national parties and other consultants should not accept campaigns treating people that way.
It’s bad in the long term too, because everything that we do online in terms of raising money from people is predicated on trust. It's the idea that if I donate $25, it will make an impact on our political process. When somebody donates $25 to Donald Trump, they think they're helping and think they're moving the country in the direction they want to take it. Breaking that trust is bad.
An example I'll give you is this: My parents are very conservative. I could not be more different in terms of my politics than the people who raised me. My mother was very frustrated when Jaime Harrison was attacking Lindsay Graham on the campaign trail a year and a half ago. There was a moment when Lindsay Graham was on TV, and my mom went to go give 50 bucks to his campaign. She got on the donation page and it's got pre-checked boxes for recurring contributions for like, I don't know, 50 years or whatever. (Laughs) She called me and asked if it was normal, and I was like, no - please don’t donate on that page. Obviously, I don't want my mom to donate to Lindsay Graham, but also, more importantly, I don't want her to be scammed. And that moment broke her trust with her party. She'll probably never try to donate again. And there are lots of people who are sitting at home right now - Democrat, Republican, and in between - who are willing to donate to campaigns if they feel like they're not going to get inundated and scammed and scared into donating more.
Campaigner: Shifting gears a bit, one of the best fundraising days of any campaign can be on their launch day. As a digital strategist, what would you advise campaigns to prioritize? What are the top things to prepare or think about ahead of their campaign launch?
Mike Nellis: I think first, it's making sure you've already got your email program set up and running. That's been a huge challenge for many candidates. Inbox placement is a lot harder right now than it's ever been, so if a candidate comes to me and says that “I'm launching my campaign in 48 hours, can you get me an email program?” I usually can’t. Ten years ago, I probably could have done that if I was able and willing, but at this point, it takes consistent effort to run an email program the right way.
I think if you're running a small campaign, it's the little touches that matter. You’re gonna run into everybody you talk to at the supermarket - so making sure that the emails that you're sending are something you're proud of is critical. Some local candidates can afford to hire a firm and some might outsource it to junior staff or a young person that they know. I mean, that's how I got my start.
I recommend figuring out why you're running, figuring out who you are, communicating that to people, giving them a compelling reason to donate, and doing it everywhere - via email, via text. Reach out to potential supporters and treat them with respect. For smaller campaigns, like if you're launching a State Senate race in Kansas, you’re maybe going to receive a couple hundred donations on a really good day for a launch. So if you have the resources and the willpower, call each of those people, reach out to them, and turn them into consistent donors. I think it's easier to drive intensity up with a small group of people than it is to expand your well of audience.
Campaigner: The midterms are basically 9-10 months away. What’s your hot take on what Democrats need to do to reach key voters and win?
Mike Nellis: (Laughs) My hot take is that Democrats should be doing things that make an immediate and substantial impact on people's lives, and then we should be talking about it. That's it. I really don't think that's a bold, new, fresh, exciting idea. I just think like it's the way to win elections.
We spend a lot of time talking about things that don't matter to voters or that people don't care about. We need to spend more time doing things that people care about - whether that’s creating jobs, making prescription drugs more affordable, or eliminating student loan debt. We need to be doing that stuff and then we need to talk about it.
I guess my other hot take is that we need to stop nationalizing races. We need to stop assuming that we can run the same race in all these house districts and all the Senate races. We need to start running campaigns that are more localized to the areas we're running. There's gonna be a series of House districts where job creation is maybe the most important issue. Maybe there's other ones where health care is the most important issue. There's gonna be somewhere gun violence is the most important issue, and we need to stop assuming and nationalizing these races.
In my view, we lost a lot of races in 2020 by trying to nationalize the race and make things about Trump. We made a strategic mistake as a party of trying to make everything about Trump, when we should have been talking about the issues that people care about.
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