By Memorial Day, your political gifts lose half their value.

For political donors, every day counts.

Everyone in politics knows, but others are often surprised to learn: Early donations are much more effective. Early money is more effective in four ways:

1. Early giving leads to “early having.” Even before the money is spent, it’s beneficial in clear but hard-to-quantify ways.

2. Early spending can make later spending more cost-effective (3-5x).

3. Early spending can reach voters more cost-effectively (2-4x).

4. Early giving can support critical infrastructure like data services, best-practices research, and staff training.

These benefits are not realized nearly as much as they could be. Around 75% of political funding arrives very late, beginning in August and peaking in September.¹ That’s just 1-2 months before early voting begins in mid-October.² A group of 40 pro-democracy foundations recently wrote:

…We hear the same thing from our grantee partners after every election cycle: The money came too late.

While everyone agrees on the concept, details are hard to find. How much better is early funding? And how early is early?

I spoke with over a dozen campaign managers, media consultants, and data analysts, and concluded that a good rule of thumb is the headline. But it’s not an exact science, nor a step function; every day earlier is helpful, and giving shortly before the election is still way better than nothing.

Here’s more detail on what I learned.

1. The benefits of “early having”

Just having cash or commitments helps candidates and organizations, even before they spend it. Said one serial campaign manager, “Predictable is more important than early.” I heard widespread agreement that early funding or commitments make candidates and organizations:

• More likely to attract high-quality staff

• More able to make and execute a high-quality plan³

• More able to reserve TV and digital ads before they either sell out or their price increases by 20% to 100%.⁴ (Advertising is the majority of political spending, so these savings are material.)

• More able to engage the best service providers before they book up or increase in price by 25% to 40%.⁵

For candidates specifically, “early having” helps by making them:

• Less likely to attract high-quality opponents

• More likely to receive endorsements, donations, and press attention

2. Early spending can make later spending more cost-effective (3-5x)

Time to develop, target, test, and refine ads can produce content five times as effective as the median ad. Advertising is the majority of political spending, so making it better is a big deal. The worst ads actually hurt your candidate, meaning it would be better to simply light the money on fire. This happens routinely, and testing is critical because professionals have trouble guessing which ads work.⁶

Another example in this category is building lists of potential volunteers and voters. This could include (for example) connecting with influencers who support your candidate, or running ads to build a subscriber base. These lists or other channels can reach voters at 1/3 to 1/5 the cost of finding and reaching them later on, both in the current cycle and future ones. These list-building programs obviously can’t be as effective if they launch shortly before the election. (The smart advisors at Focus for Democracy have been an advocate for these sorts of programs.)

3. Early spending can reach voters more cost-effectively (2-4x)

Long before the election, there’s time to identify the voters you need to persuade or mobilize, and to reach those voters where they are. Late donations arrive too late to seize such opportunities, which frustrates campaign staff. “We’d make different choices with earlier money,” said one; another echoed, “There needs to be more early funding. Late funding drives me crazy because the later in the cycle you have fewer options.” Here are specific examples.

Obviously, the most impactful reminders about voting come from a friend, not a stranger. When well-run, such “relational” programs compound over time as volunteers recruit more volunteers. Just like compound interest, this compounding is powerful; these programs can reach 2-4x as many voters when they start early in an election year. The following chart from the Movement Voter Project Donor Guide illustrates the concept:

Said one program analyst, “The more time you have for organic growth, the more touches you can get for free later, when it matters.” Relational programs depend on infrastructure of technology and techniques that must be developed well in advance of the election (see #4 below).

Another example of cost-effective early money is voter registration and vote-by-mail enrollment. For “site-based” registration like a college campus or street corner, ideally you’d have a presence at large events like concerts and sports games. If ten days of funding arrives in February, you can pick ten days with huge crowds. But if ten days of funding shows up in October, you get ten pretty ordinary days, and the difference can easily be 2x or more.

A less quantifiable use of early money is year-round organizing. “Democrats show up asking for our votes every two years and then disappear,” complain some local organizers. To combat that alienating dynamic, organizations like Movement Voter Project, Flip the Vote, and others fundraise for organizing in disenfranchised communities. Although hard to quantify, advocates say this work has driven successes, some well-known (Fair Fight, founded by Stacey Abrams in Georgia) and others less so (a Minnesota trifecta created in part by local organizations).

4. Early funding supports critical infrastructure

Campaigns benefit from past investments in things like technology, staff training, data maintenance, best-practices research, and more (collectively called “infrastructure”). Improving infrastructure is obviously an ongoing process, not something that can happen right before elections. The benefits of improving infrastructure are obvious but near-impossible to quantify.⁷

Improving infrastructure requires a continuous stream of funding, rather than the boom/bust cycle of political donations. Infrastructure improvements often come from startups, but the rhythms of political funding are an especially poor fit for startups.

Conclusion & Next steps

Now you know that donating early is at least twice as impactful. What will you do?

Don’t let your donations lose more value! Click here to support a collection of projects recommended by large funders’ personal advisors.

Want to give early, but not ready today? Sign up here to get a few reminders of your intention. Pre-commitment is powerful!

If you’re comfortable being a public supporter of early giving, join a group of 40 major donors by signing the newly launched All by April pledge.

Follow me for more on impactful political funding.

Acknowledgements

This essay benefited from many contributors and advisors, especially Haley Bash and Hadar Sachs, as well as Josh Rosmarin, Dave Peck, Matt Lerner, and Jeremy Smith; and from interviewees including Aaron Strauss, Dmitri Mehlhorn, Nick Meier, Josh Wolfe, Conner Johnston, David Wagner, Otis Reed, and Lena Tom, plus many others who preferred not to be named.

1. The weighted average dollar arrives in mid/late Summer, between early July and late August, depending on which donations you count.

2. At dawn on Election Day 2024, roughly half the votes will already be cast. By election day 2020 already 69% of votes had been cast, but that was inflated by COVID. “The final voters really get saturated,” said a media and digital consultant.

3. Here are some campaign-specific examples of decisions that are easier to make with a predictable budget (though organizations also need to make plans):

• How many people should you hire, and when? Can you hire a field director in March, or should you wait until June?

• When and how much should you ramp up your TV and digital ad purchases?

• Should you open offices in only the most competitive counties, or spend more to pursue votes everywhere?

• How many hours of opposition research can you support, and should you also do a pre-emptive “self-research” program?

4. The lower end of this range is most typical for TV ads, around 20-30%, but increases can be as much as 50% or more. Various digital ads can jump in price by 2-3x or even sell out completely.

5. The best campaign service providers book up first. All four vendors we spoke with are mostly booked 3-4 months before an election. Selecting and hiring these firms often takes 1-2 months, so knowing a budget six months out helps campaigns pick and lock in the right firm for them.

6. A recent study concluded, “We find that: (1) political practitioners and laypeople both perform barely better than chance at predicting persuasive effects; (2) once accounting for laypeople’s inflated expectations about the average size of effects, practitioners do not predict meaningfully better than laypeople; (3) these results hold even for self-identified issue experts and highly experienced practitioners…”

7. Even after six years in politics, it’s shocking to me how little funding and attention is devoted to the various components of the Stack. “Data is still garbage; if funders want more concrete results, data is the straightforward shot,” said one campaign manager. I think this is overstated for effect, but it highlights a genuine area for improvement, and the same could be said of many other things.