This is the second part of a three-part post about lessons Irish politics can learn from the Obama campaign. The first part dealt with organisational lessons and can be found here.
Fundraising
It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, or what type of political activity you’re involved in – it’s very difficult to run effective campaigns without some financing (this applies just as equally to non-profit organisations as it does to political parties). Sure, you can organise a conference on a shoestring budget, use free blogging software to give yourself an online presence or shop around to find a cheap conference room for a press conference, but sustained political campaigns require funding at some point.
Politicians in the US benefit from a different political environment in relation to donations. Like us, there are limits on the amount any one donor can donate to a political campaign (though they do get around this through the establishment of political lobbying groups who campaign effectively in support of particular candidates). However, donations to political parties get tax relief (similar to charitable donations here), and the idea of having registered voters (as distinct from party members) also allows political parties to relatively easily tap their voter bases.
There are three aspects of US fundraising that could be imported to an Irish context I believe: professionalism in fundraising, asking for donations, and incentivising donations.
Professionalism
Professionalism in relation to fundraising is a key weakness that has really hurt both Labour and the Greens over the years. Unlike the other parties, both parties possess very strong moral consciences in relation to political donations, and while these consciences have guided them well politically (note the lack of scandal emanating from either party), the resulting haphazard approach to fundraising has damaged them financially. Certainly, in Labour’s case, we need to hire a professional fundraiser to train the party and individual candidates in effective methods of fundraising. We need to adapt our policies to accurately reflect the political reality. For example, I totally sympathise with the sentiment behind a ban on political donations, but if a local shop sponsors a prize for a local table quiz, does this amount to corporate donation? I think we should refuse to accept donations from any corporate body which has a turnover of over €1Mn per year, and we should reserve the right to refuse donations from any organisation if we feel it to be inappropriate. Once we define a coherent policy in relation to donations, we can be serious about attracting fundraising. Only employing an experienced fundraiser will give us the professionalism we need in this area – look at the team of professional fundraisers employed by Obama in order to help him raise that astonishing amount of money.
Asking for money
Irish politics is not accustomed to regularly asking our members and supporters to give money. Sure, we charge (usually very low) membership fees, and we’ll hold the odd raffle etc. to wring a few extra quid out of people, but there’s little or no coherent strategy to asking people to donate a small amount of money to us. Where are the donation buttons so prevalent on the Obama and British Labour websites? Where are the regular email newsletters to members including requests for small donations? Where is the list of friends and supporters (not necessarily members) who might be interested in donating to a political party? Again, the development of a comprehensive party database (as mentioned in my previous post – something I’m just going to have to keep harping on about) would go a long way towards providing an analysis of the national electorate to provide some insight into potential targets for additional fundraising.
But there are other ways to raise money, and one of the great successes of the Obama campaign was in empowering individuals to act on behalf of the campaign. The average donation to the Obama campaign was about $80 or so. Compared to that, the Labour membership are pretty generous actually (I don’t have the figures to hand, but if memory serves the average amount paid by individual members is about €100 a year or so – must check out the exact figures later). For example (and for the sake of complete transparency), I donate €180 per annum to the national party, with other donations made to individual accounting units of the party (to constituencies, candidates, Labour LGBT etc.) of about €1K a year. Where we fall down is in asking others to donate to the party.
If all 6,000 or so members of the Labour Party were able to solicit €100 in donations a year from members of the public, we would have an additional €1.2Mn in the war-chest for each election (assuming a Local or General Election every two years on average). Which of course would provide an enormous boost to our campaigns. But, what often goes unrecognised, is that people are more likely to vote for a party/candidate they have donated to – in getting people to donate time, money or expertise, you make them feel a part of your political movement.
Incentivising donations
I can almost hear the collective gasp as readers expect me to start waxing lyrical about the FF Galway tent or some such nonsense. Of course, I don’t approve of ventures such as that, but there are plenty of other ways of incentivising donations to political parties. For example, is there any problem with asking the wealthier members/supporters to cough up €200 for a Christmas party with the leadership of the Labour Party in attendance? If that is the only opportunity members have to mix with the leadership, then I would say yes. But if it’s one strand of activity within their schedules, I don’t see an issue with it at all. Similarly, if you’re going to have a raffle, charge a decent amount of money for a ticket, but make the prize enormous (see the FG national draw for a solid example of how to run such a fundraiser). You could also provide access to certain types of event notifications etc if someone is willing to donate a certain amount (again, using the caveat that donating large amounts of money is not the only way to gain access to the leadership of the party). Or, you could provide free election materials to the candidate whose electoral area contributes the most to the party coffers.
Raising money is always difficult for Irish political parties, and even moreso for parties of the Left. But it’s time we lost our squeamishness about it, and accepted that we need to be well funded in order to be well organised. And we need both of these strengths in order to get our messages across.
Which nicely brings me to the end of this post. The final post in the series, on communication lessons we can learn from Obama (including an analysis of his message) should be posted tomorrow. Do please comment on whether you think my analysis is right or wrong, or whether you think I’m totally missing the picture from the Obama campaign?!
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Continuing the Discussion