If you gave $10 or $20 to political candidates in the 2022 cycle like I did, your inbox was flooded with subject lines like the below today from politicians “humbly asking for $3 before our FEC deadline ends at midnight.”

Tonight (6/30) is the end of the quarter, not just for Wall Street companies, but also for Capitol Hill elected officials.

Over the past few years starting a company, I raised three rounds of venture capital and found it very fun (I’m sure raising in a boom climate helped a lot!). However, up until March I had never raised political dollars before.

In March, I volunteered to help State Senator Scott Wiener raise money for his Congressional Exploratory Committee, because I believe (a) Senator Wiener is the most effective and high integrity elected official in California whose housing bills alone (SB 35 and hopefully SB 423) have led to tens if not hundreds of thousands of units of new housing (b) this Congressional seat is incredibly impactful as the most powerful non term limited seat in San Francisco and (c) early money in a race is especially high ROI.

Here are five learnings / musings from my first time doing political fundraising:

First, there are two main types of dollars for political candidates — hard & soft money

The first type is individual contributions, shorthanded to “hard money” contributions. The second type is political action committee (PAC) contributions, shorthanded to “soft money” contributions. Hard money contributions are capped; for a federal race like this one, the individual contribution limit is $3300; for local San Francisco races (Mayor, Supervisor, etc.), they are capped at $500. Soft money contributions are uncapped — larger dollar donors can give any amount they want — but according to campaign finance laws they are not legally allowed to coordinate with campaigns, meaning PACs will fund independent advertising campaigns supporting their candidate and attacking the opposition candidate. Because PACs can raise much more money, and are more constrained in their use (e.g. mostly for ads), hard money is raised earlier in a campaign cycle. The below is about my experience with hard money fundraising.

Second, the biggest challenge is diversifying the donor base beyond existing donors

When Senator Wiener opened his exploratory committee, we were instantly able to call in dozens of max contributions, because of his deep rolodex of past supporters. Many of these supporters are older voters who also donate to lots of other political causes. Conversely, it is very hard to get people to go from never donating politically to suddenly donating. Too often, people think of politics as being something they don’t want to touch at an identity level, so even if they have money, they don’t donate.

The reality is, when reasonable people don’t donate / volunteer, the loudest voices in a democracy are those with the most extreme or the most narrowly interested views (whether corporations, unions, pissed off nimby neighbors, activists, etc.)

On the flip side, there’s an opportunity: it’s easier than you think to break into the room of political decision-makers and have your voice heard by doing a single max contribution.

Third, the most effective salesperson is the candidate; but there’s room to optimize

By far the most effective call was a call from Senator Wiener himself. But I was shocked by how manual the data & personalization for Senator Wiener’s call list was. My experience in the startup world is sales & marketing systems and data are extremely optimized — you know exactly how many times to text & call someone through automated workflows. I’m also shocked at how formulaic all these political fundraising emails look — at this point all the arbitrage in a clever subject line is probably gone. I think there is a lot of alpha in better data to optimize candidate time — an enriched data set or voter file stitched together from everyone who has ever given to related candidates & causes, and their giving patterns.

Fourth, relational organizing is most effective to activate donors

When I organized flashmobs in college, we organized on a hub & spoke model — we found a group of fifteen people who would each recruit ten people into their group. Similarly, the most effective fundraising involved credible leaders across different networks tapping their networks and asking their friends to give. Specifically, fundraiser events were a big part of this approach. It is uncomfortable and hard to directly ask your friends for money. It is much lower stakes to invite them to an event where they can meet the candidate, and have some nice food and good company. In particular, we found that themed events, like an event we did on artificial intelligence, got extra interest vs. a generic fundraiser.

Fifth, deadlines drive behavior, and there are lot of cross t’s, dot i’s that are critical at the last minute

In the last couple days before the deadline, it was surprising to me how there were people who had pledged earlier, but forgotten, or gotten busy, who just needed a reminder or two to give, like this friend:

Looking ahead, the November 2024 elections are a pivotal election for not just the country but especially for my home, San Francisco.

Within SF, there is not only Scott’s race and a mayoral re-election, but also a number of the board of supervisor seats opening up. There is an opportunity to flip the board of supervisors from a 6-5 NIMBY majority to a 6-5 YIMBY majority and prevent debacles like this last week from happening. And to do that, we’ll need to raise money, and diversity the pool of donors beyond the traditional political establishment.

3 hours before the 11:59 FEC deadline…time to send a couple more emails…