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Giving money early is one of the most basic pieces of advice for political donors. Early money is like yeast—it makes the dough rise. (This saying is how EMILY’s List got its name.) For candidates, fundraising at the outset of a campaign can be the difference between viability and failure. No matter what office you’re running for, one of the first questions you need to ask yourself is “Can I raise enough money?”
For donors, the questions are a little bit different. It’s always better to donate early in the cycle than at the last minute, but there are a lot of other considerations. Here’s a quick guide to how early money works.
Early money is a signal
The reason early donations are so important is that when a candidate is looking to secure endorsements and major contributions from big donors and organizations, that candidate needs to demonstrate that they have a shot to win. An easy way of showing viability is to point to money you’ve already raised. If a candidate raises a particularly large amount of money, it may demonstrate a level of support that competitors can’t match and send the message to donors and endorsers that the race is as good as over before it began. One particularly high-profile example of this was Hillary Clinton’s incredibly strong fundraising start in the 2016 cycle, which helped establish her as the insurmountable frontrunner; the New York Times called her “the financial equivalent of an incumbent president.”
This dynamic creates some notable inequities. It advantages candidates who can either self-fund their campaigns or have access to networks of donors—rich people, in other words, or people who know lots of rich people. Reports from OpenSecrets and the Brennan Center have pointed out that women and people of color tend to have less access to these vital donor networks and so struggle to successfully run for office. And The Intercept has reported that as of the 2018 cycle, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was doing extremely crude tests of candidates’ viability, “rolodexing” them, meaning going through their phones’ contact list to see how many thousands they could tap their associates for—anything less than $250,000, and the DCCC wouldn’t back the candidate. The crowding-out effect that early money can have undeniably privileges the wealthy and connected, and makes it difficult for the Democratic Party to field a diverse slate of candidates. This is why some donors and some organizations explicitly try to support candidates of color or women candidates.
Early money also makes more of itself
Campaigns can also make a lot of practical use of early money. In particular, they can invest in things that make it easier to raise more money. They can hire staff or consultants to help with fundraising, they can start running digital ads and email campaigns that draw in small donors, and they can buy email lists from other organizations or campaigns that allow them to reach potential supporters. (Not everyone thinks buying lists is a good practice.)
A campaign that isn’t able to build up its fundraising operation quickly enough will be at a permanent disadvantage, which is why early money is such a powerful signal—it indicates not just that you know rich people, but that your campaign is competently run and paying attention to the right things out of the gate.
How donors can help—and when they should hang back
If you’re the kind of donor who can contribute thousands at a time, you can have a decent amount of influence on races by jumping in early and giving to your preferred candidates. This will help them raise more money, not least by signaling to other donors that they need to be paying attention to that candidate. Early money can be particularly helpful for first-time candidates who don’t have a Rolodex of donors already.
This requires you to pay close attention to politics, however—keeping track of who has announced their candidacies, reading up on their backgrounds, thinking carefully about why you want to invest in certain races. The vast majority of donors are not doing any of that, in part because donating early in an effective way is like a second job.
The other important factor to consider is that if you’re making early donations, you are likely giving to candidates in competitive primaries. In other words, you aren’t giving in hopes of defeating Republicans, you’re giving to help a Democrat beat another Democrat. So you need to have a clear rationale for why Democrat A is better than Democrat B, which is going to depend on a lot of factors. There’s more to be said about primary giving beyond the scope of this piece, but a fair number of primary campaigns run ads and send emails asking donors to give in order to defeat Republicans, when, in fact, the money raised is going largely toward beating out other Democrats.
If you’re largely focused on helping Democrats win, the simple and easy thing to do is to sit out primaries and wait until a nominee is settled before giving. For larger donors, this means ceding what influence they might have over primaries, but like we said, most donors don’t pay enough attention for primary giving to be effective.
But there are a lot of options for donors who want to give early yet don’t want to get involved in primaries. Swing Left is one group that has “funds” set up that route money to important races. And if you’re wondering how to contribute at this time in the cycle, consider setting up a recurring donation to an organization that operates year-round, like the Fairness Project, which works on ballot initiatives. (Recurring gifts help groups set budgets because they know they can rely on your money coming in regularly.) And set a reminder to yourself to give to campaigns in late June or early July, when primaries will be wrapping up and campaigns are building their war chests for the general elections. Giving money is important, but when you give matters, almost as much as how much.