An August 22 fundraising email from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's PAC to the Future asks donors to step up to meet an arbitrary deadline with a seemingly random cash target exemplifies the manipulative way some groups ask donors for money.
The appeal, ostensibly authored by Pelosi herself, asks donors for $15 to help her and her team "raise $2,390 before tonight's End of Week Deadline in 10 hours."
While the justification for the ask is an important one—defending the Democratic majority against GOP attacks in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms—the qualifications used to give the request added urgency are ridiculous and clearly false.
First, the deadline: A 10-hour cap to meet an end-of-week deadline at 3:17 pm on a Sunday in the middle of August is insulting to the intelligence of the donor. That puts the final donation at 1 a.m. EST, too late, or 10 p.m. PST, too early. The call is trying to have it both ways, but in doing so, fails to make a case for either.
Second, the totally fabricated—but highly specific—amount needed to be raised, $2,390, appears aimed at ensuring it's reachable to the average donor while still being large enough to give a sense of shared sacrifice.
PAC to the Future raised $11,691,308 in 2020, mostly from large donors—taking in $1,080,000 from 216 $5,000 donations of a total 2,225 donations over $200. The $15 requested from smaller donors in the email is a proverbial drop in the bucket for PAC to the Future and the relative pittance of $2,390 as the number to hit flies in the face of all reason, given that hundreds of donors regularly give nearly double that to the PAC.
When donors receive emails like this promising to hit deadlines with narrowly defined cash targets, they should feel suspicious: it's probably bullshit.
Small donors have to play an ever more important role in Democratic politics. That's a good thing. What's not OK is how these donors—many of whom don't know much about the dark art of political fundraising—are routinely lied to and manipulated.