Three key trends on grassroots fundraising this election year

2024 has been an unusual year for political digital fundraising. Online giving has followed anticipated trends in some months and then bucked those trends in others. But the end-of-quarter grassroots fundraising results in June are a cause for optimism for what we might expect as we near Election Day.

Here’s what we’ve seen so far in political fundraising trends in 2024,what we anticipate the next few months will bring for campaigns and committees, and how campaigns should be preparing as we get closer to 100 days out from the election:

Q1 Performance Held Steady

The year kicked off with a strong Q1. Revenue was trending slightly above Q1 of 2022 – which is exactly what we’d hope for in a presidential election year. The quarter ended with a fantastic spike in March revenue.

Early Q2 Began Trending Downwards

The momentum we gained in March started to dwindle by April, however. Compared to 2022, April revenue this year was just about flat, and then May giving decreased by nearly 17%.

Late June Response Took Off

While June began slowly like April and May, in the last few days of the month – just after the presidential debate and ahead of the EOQ fundraising push – we saw a resurgence of grassroots fundraising. Response increased so much in the final days of the month that we were able to make up the ground we’d lost earlier in the month and end June 2% higher than June 2022, when the Dobbs SCOTUS decision came down.

What This Tells Us

With an incredibly busy news cycle focused on the anticipation of blockbuster SCOTUS decisions coming down and the presidential debate, we saw a huge increase in interest from grassroots donors just in time for the critical FEC end-of-quarter deadline, bucking the overall trend of a softer Q2 and finishing the month on a high note.

We often see June as our fundraising bellwether during an election year – a soft EOQ would have been cause for concern heading into Q3, but the strong response from grassroots donors to finish out the quarter has us optimistic as we look toward the last four (and most important) months of the election year.

Making the Most of Q3

July marks the start of an incredibly important window for online fundraising: How much your campaign’s fundraising grows over the next six to eight weeks could be one of the biggest determinants of how big fundraising war chests can get this year.

In 2020 – a historic and unprecedented year for grassroots fundraising – our biggest campaigns saw online revenue grow by an average of 458% from Q2 to Q3. In 2022 – a down year for fundraising compared to 2020 – our biggest campaigns saw their revenue grow by an average of 78% from Q2 to Q3.

With that in mind, the best thing you can do to set your campaign up for success coming off of a strong June EOQ push is to keep your foot on the gas. Investing in list growth will help you maximize your fundraising potential to make sure your campaigns are ready for those peak moments.

Here’s how you can make the most of the next few months, to leverage the present energy and momentum for your campaign or committee:

Prioritize making continued investments.

Right now, donors are more tuned in than we’ve seen this cycle – offering an important opportunity to invest in list growth efforts that will build off of EOQ energy and be ready to pay off in the coming months as momentum grows ahead of Election Day.

Stay nimble.

As we saw in June, one moment can turn a slow week into your best week. Always stay alert (and even plan ahead) for the next potential fundraising opportunity and be ready to scale up when the moment demands it!

Keep testing and optimizing.

When the next big moment comes, there won’t be time to test and optimize without risking leaving critical revenue on the table. Make sure that you’re continuing to test, re-test, and optimize your donation forms, transaction language, and core audience segmentation – especially when things are slow. These incremental improvements will pay off big time the next time your ActBlue spikes!