➡ ➡ Dem fundraising COLLAPSING? WRONG! Here’s how we’re STILL raising money online [Must See — Don’t Skip]
By: Maya Garcia, Managing Principal, Mothership Strategies
Over the last several months, we’ve ALL READ ARTICLES about how Democratic donors are growing less motivated to donate, and that many campaigns and organizations are struggling to hit fundraising goals.
At Mothership Strategies, we’ve observed a different trend:
In 2023 we’re seeing consistent, accelerating fundraising growth across our clients — maximizing potential for a game-changing 2024 election cycle. Our clients’ early investments in their digital programs will allow them to run enormous grassroots field programs, massive advertising campaigns, innovative candidate training programs, and more from coast to coast.
Mothership’s clients’ fundraising increased by 52% from Q1 2023 to Q2 — and Q3 is projected to end with a 97% increase from the first quarter of the year!
We took a deep dive into our strategies, our successes and our failures to understand why we’re seeing an increase in fundraising among our clients. Here’s what we found:
First off, let’s face it — it is harder than ever to fundraise right now!
- ONE: To state the obvious, donor enthusiasm dropped after Donald Trump left office.
- TWO: Digital fundraising is reinventing itself at an unprecedented pace. This will continue!
- THREE: And today it’s more difficult than ever to get an email appeal in front of prospective donors.
Here’s how it happened:
1. Donor enthusiasm dropped after Donald Trump left office.
When Trump took office, tens of millions of people became engaged in politics for the first time.
Cable news ratings surged. Voter turnout skyrocketed. Political fundraising broke records. Democrats from all walks of life worked themselves to the bone to defeat Donald Trump.
Expectedly, many folks weren’t as motivated in a post-Trump era, and some tuned out of politics altogether.
2. Digital fundraising is reinventing itself at an unprecedented pace.
The channel make-up of fundraising has rapidly evolved over the last four years.
The channels we use to connect with donors are different from a year ago, two years, three years ago and beyond. And we fully expect a year from now will be very different from today.
3. 2021: Digital’s Annus Horribilis
Facebook is dead. For real. Stop trying.
For context, look at spending in the 2020 Election cycle. Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars on direct response Facebook ads and raised even more. Today, after Apple’s iOS 14.5 release, Facebook is all but a ghost town except for the biggest household names.
Email deliverability is HARD (and getting harder!)
In 2021, Democrats suffered a series of devastating blows at the WORST. POSSIBLE. TIME.
- FIRST: NGP bought and killed Blue State Digital — the single most dependable digital platform, long used by President Obama and much of the Democratic Party. It had its flaws, but nothing else came close.
- THEN: All BSD clients were forced to migrate to a new platform.
- THEN (AGAIN!!!): Even worse, Apple ended 2021 with yet another major blow — the release of iOS 15. This release decimated email open tracking — our best and most scalable way to track active recipients.
These weren’t just convenient tools to raise money. They were part of the DNA of the Democratic digital fundraising infrastructure. Combined, their destruction hampered progressive and Democratic groups from raising the money needed to fulfill their important missions.
These problems have been compounding for a long time. And they reached their apex in 2023. We’re in a new reality!
At Mothership Strategies, we’ve been working our tails off to overcome these challenges, and thrive in this new environment. It’s the only way forward if we’re going to make progress on the issues we all care about.
Let’s take you under the hood — here’s what we’re doing at Mothership:
- ONE: Meeting Donors WHERE They Are
- TWO: Optimizing Content Daily, Hourly, by the Minute
- THREE: Mastering Email Deliverability in EVERY corner of the Internet
Meet Donors Where They Are
Today’s challenge isn’t only what to send, it’s also where to send it.
How do you maximize fundraising in an ever-changing fundraising and political environment? You have to take a multi-pronged approach. Leave NO channel (or screen!) behind.
An email-first strategy no longer cuts it — it’s time to be nimble. Whether it’s on desktop or on phones, we need to give donors meaningful opportunities to connect with impactful organizations on the platforms that they prefer.
But a multi-pronged communication strategy doesn’t work if you aren’t religiously testing, targeting, and optimizing. Get deep in the weeds on whatever channel is performing strongest at any given moment. Don’t wait until your monthly client review (we do weekly!) to track performance and pivot. Do it DAILY. (During regular business hours, of course.)
Optimizing Content Daily, Hourly, by the Minute
Democrats respond to what they’re watching on TV, reading in the news, and listening to on the radio. A story that aired the night before on MSNBC strikes a deeper connection than an evergreen issue added to a stale content calendar at the start of the month.
Grassroots Democrats want to make meaningful small dollar donations. But with so many worthy organizations, campaigns, and causes vying for their attention, you only have a nano-second to catch their eye. It’s important to grab your supporters’ attention with the news of the day, make the connection to your mission, and make sure it’s actually working. You have to test all your content — always.
So as a team, we religiously follow the data — we track every email, every text message, every piece of content. Our proprietary tools make nitty-gritty data easily searchable and sortable so we can analyze performance. And we look at everything. Content, performance ratios, engagement, targeting, and more. At the drop of a hat we can reiterate, improve, and test. That process happens daily. Every day is an opportunity to meet the moment — to talk about what our Democratic donors are talking about. There is always a way to thread the needle from current news to your candidate or your organization.
Mastering Email Deliverability in EVERY corner of the Internet
But the best content in the world means nothing if you can’t get it in front of donors.
Email is no longer the only game in town, but it remains a critical cornerstone of every grassroots fundraising program.
It’s time to get deep in the weeds on email hygiene.
We break out data by inbox provider, adjust content and targeting per provider, keep only the most active names in your main list, and re-engage consistently and strategically. There is no one size fits all approach. What works to reach supporters on Gmail won’t translate to reach a donor on Outlook. We take advantage of free deliverability tools like Google Postmaster, run our clients’ lists through list verification services to make sure we only have the most active emails.
And when all else fails, we start over… we’re not afraid of yet another IP warm-up at Mothership — sometimes it’s the only way to move forward!
So you’ve made it this far…
To summarize — fundraising is harder than ever: Digital fundraising is reinventing itself at an unprecedented pace, donor enthusiasm dropped after Donald Trump left office, and it’s more difficult than ever to get an email appeal in front of prospective donors. At Mothership Strategies, we’ve been able to overcome these challenges by: meeting donors where they are, writing timely content that connects, and becoming email hygiene experts.
Our clients are primed to make a bigger impact than ever in the 2024 election.
Mothership Strategies is a group of fiercely passionate, results-driven digital fundraisers working to fuel progressive causes with grassroots donations. We refuse to have any regrets after each Election Day — and we push to leave no money on the table so our candidates and organizations can elect as many Democrats as possible. We know radical change requires everyone to play their part: Our role in this fight is to raise the most money possible to put our clients in the best possible position to be successful. And we have the strongest fundraising staff in digital. If you have a huge vision for your organization’s work this cycle, we’re happy to chat.
Send us a note here: get-started@mothershipstrategies.com.