Five Reasons Small Donors Can Have a Big Impact in This Election

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In an era when politics is so saturated with big money, it can be easy to doubt that small donations matter. 

But they do. Donors who give under $200 play a growing role in elections and, this year may have their most significant impact yet. Here are five reasons why:

1. All those small donations add up. The rising power of small donors has been reshaping elections since the Obama era, but today, we’re seeing crowdfunding in overdrive. Harris has now raised over $600 million, including $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate. Nearly half of Harris’s haul has come from donors giving $200 or less. The best way to think about donating small sums is that it’s much like voting: no one person can have a decisive impact, but together, we can win elections. 

2. Every dollar counts more in very close races. We live in an era of razor-thin voting margins, and this election may be the closest since 2000, which was decided by hundreds of ballots in a single state. Because smart donations can translate into more Democratic votes, photo-finish elections give donors more influence. For example, Biden won Arizona and Georgia in 2020 by a combined vote total of 23,000 votes. If these states are that close again—and it looks like they will be—donating to top voter groups in AZ and GA is a great way to have impact. (See our recommendations here and here.) 

3. There are more down-ballot races that are very close and important. It’s not just the top of the ticket where margins are so close. Democrats lost the House in 2022 by just 6,675 votes across five districts, and control of that chamber may again hinge on a tiny number of votes. If that’s true, giving for GOTV work in swing congressional districts can have a big impact. (You can donate here.) In 2022, Blue Tent readers contributed over $26,000 to help Kris Mayes win her race for Arizona Attorney General, a critical office in a state filled with MAGA nutcases. She pulled it out by 280 votes. 

4. Small donors have better options than ever for high-impact giving. To be clear, not all political donations matter. But if you tune out all the spammy fundraising texts and do your homework, you’ll be able to have confidence in your giving. Blue Tent’s top recommendations are a good place to start, but there are good options elsewhere, too: Movement Voter Project to support grassroots voting groups; Focus for Democracy to donate to evidence-based GOTV work; and Oath to give to highly curated lists of candidates. 

5. Most small donors can give more than they realize. Those of us who give modest sums for elections nearly always have the potential to dig deeper—if we can shift our thinking about such investments. I argued a few days ago that we should view political giving like insurance—buying more when the risks are higher. And right now, the risks of bad things happening are very high. Remember, we won’t get a time machine to go back and buy the insurance we should have bought before the storm hit. We need to buy it now, a lot of it—enough that we won’t have any regrets if the worst comes to pass.

In these scary times, I often return to a favored maxim: Control what you can control. And, as it turns out, we can have more impact than we think in this big, expensive national election through our collective action as donors. We can use our money to influence how many young Black people are encouraged to vote in Georgia (donate). Or how many doors get knocked in Western Pennsylvania (donate). Or whether immigrant AAPI voters in Las Vegas get contacted in their language (donate). Or whether moderate white women in Blue Wall states hear a strong, tested pitch for Harris (donate). 

We have power in this election. We just have to use it.