Successful Ways to Ask for Campaign Donations

It’s all about building connections

Photo by Microsoft 365 on Unsplash

Asking for a political donation is similar to asking for a donation for a charity.

In both cases, you’re asking someone to believe in a cause, and the money goes toward the community's betterment.

It’s easier than a business person asking for money from an investor because the amounts are generally smaller.

The main principles of asking for money still apply.

When you ask for political donations, you can do it in several ways.

• In-person.

• In the mail.

• On social media.

• Over the phone.

• Through another donor.

Whatever combination you choose, be careful to keep it as personal as possible. Never send a text requesting a donation, and avoid robocalls as they are irritating and have a bad reputation.

No matter how you ask, be sure to always “give information, be transparent, be honest, and give bad news upfront.”

Confidence is important.

• Use words like; partner, give, and support. These words indicate you are entering into a partnership with the person rather than having them simply give you money for your campaign.

• It’s their campaign too, if they believe that you are the best person for the position.

Be prepared.

• The old adage goes — you can never be too prepared.

• Every person you meet has something they’d like to see the government take care of. They have concerns and questions about specific issues that are very personal to them. Find out what they are.

• If there’s an issue that voters are paying attention to, your campaign will need to address it.

• If you keep saying “I’ll get back to you on that, I’ll get back to you on that”, they will lose confidence in you. It sounds like you don’t know the issues and worse, you don’t understand their needs.

• Know your constituency. If you haven’t thought about the specific issues, or you aren’t an expert, bring someone along who can help field technical questions. Get up to speed on the problems you plan to solve.

Know what you’re talking about

• Know the issues and the problems, and know what your competition is saying about them.

• What specific solutions are you prepared to promise?

• Be transparent, and be honest. If you don’t know something, admit it and make a plan to learn more.

• Apologize if you make a mistake.

• Be polite and appropriately modest.

Many small donations are a great thing to talk about in the press, but the larger donations are what makes a candidate’s campaign.

For larger donors