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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is making an unusual fundraising push in an effort to qualify for the first GOP presidential primary debate. And it appears to be working.
Burgum offered a $20 gift card to 50,000 donors who contributed $1 to his presidential campaign last week, and the campaign announced that more than 20,000 cards had been distributed in the effort’s first 48 hours.
The novel push could help Burgum reach one of the Republican National Committee’s requirements to participate in the first primary debate, which stipulates that campaigns have at least 40,000 donors. Brett Kappel, an attorney who specializes in campaign finance, said it appears that Burgum’s effort does not run afoul of campaign finance law.
But legal questions aside, the unique effort underscores just how challenging it is for Republicans to grow their ranks of grassroots donors.
Only one Republican presidential contender, Chris Christie, brought in more than 30 percent of his money last quarter from donors who gave less than $200 — and that's at least partly due to Christie's relatively light support from big donors.
“We are in a five-alarm fire to grow the small-dollar donor universe of the party,” said GOP digital strategist Michael Duncan.
It remains to be seen if these new donors will actually help Burgum’s campaign — and the Republican Party — in the long run.
”These kind of incentive programs you see where we’re going to give you $20 for donating $1 fail to understand why donors give to campaigns,” said Eric Wilson of the conservative Center for Campaign Innovation, which has studied donor motivations. Wilson said “it’s not about the reward” for these donors, but it’s more about their passion for a candidate and his or her beliefs.
Wilson argued that both parties face challenges when it comes to building their donors lists. He pointed to Democrats Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg spending millions of dollars on social media platforms, especially Facebook, to reach the donor threshold to qualify for the 2020 primary debates.
But Republicans do have a smaller group of donors who have engaged in grassroots fundraising. A recent national NBC News poll found that while 30% of registered voters said they have donated to a political campaign in the past two years, that number climbed to 37% among Democrats and fell to just 26% among Republicans.
“It’s very hard. And you either have to do it over time or invest a lot of money,” said longtime GOP strategist Becki Donatelli said of growing a small-dollar donor list.
For campaigns, their challenge is not just to grow their donor lists but ensure these donors become loyal, regular contributors.
That’s a tall task for Republicans in part because President Donald Trump has dominated small-dollar fundraising with aggressive tactics, sending multiple emails and texts urging donors to open their wallets.
“Every candidate is fishing off the same pier,” said Duncan.
“You’ve got a universe [of donors] that is much smaller, it’s older, it’s less wealthy and the last guy they contributed a lot to is still asking them for more," Duncan later added. "So the universe is stretched thin.”
It's in that context that campaigns like Burgum's have decided to innovate.
SOS America PAC, an outside group backing Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, launched an effort last week encouraging supporters to donate $1 to Suarez’s campaign to enter a lottery for a chance to win a “free year” of college tuition, up to $15,000. Suarez also teased a raffle for contributors to win a pair of tickets to see soccer superstar Lionel Messi play for his new team, Inter Miami.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy also launched a new fundraising program this week giving supporters 10% commission on the amount of money they help raise for his campaign.
“You got to try everything,” Wilson said.
