Forming a political action committee (PAC) is a great way to support your political candidate or get the word out about an important piece of legislation that’s about to hit the ballot. But if you want your PAC to make a real impact on the political landscape, you need to generate revenue.
With that in mind, here are seven top PAC fundraising ideas you can use to attract donors and obtain funds.
1. Plan a Gala Dinner
While today’s donors largely prefer digital interactions, fundraising dinners are still a powerful tool for obtaining capital. As an added benefit, a gala dinner gives the PAC an opportunity to meet its supporters and build lasting relationships that can span multiple campaigns.
In exchange for a per-plate fee, donors can break bread with community leaders, legislators, and political candidates.
During these intimate sessions, donors can voice their concerns to decision-makers, share ideas, and have their voices heard. Your PAC and its candidates can raise significant funding in return while enjoying a great meal and even better company.
2. Host an Auction
Traditionally, fundraising auctions sell experiences, trips, and tickets to music or sports events. While a PAC can certainly auction off some similar items, it must also be mindful that its audience is unique. PAC donors want the opportunity to meet with high-profile candidates so they can be heard and voice their concerns.
When planning an auction, consider offering an exclusive opportunity for a meet-and-greet, private dinner, or round of golf with a political candidate. Remember, not all donors will be local, so make sure to offer digital meeting options like a Zoom session as well.
3. Schedule a Walkathon
A walkathon is a particular fundraising tactic among nonprofits. PACs can adopt this strategy and transform it into a large-scale parade. Scheduling a parade or walkathon is most effective when you need to raise funds for a particular ballot or bill.
As for the fundraising aspect, charge a small fee so families and individuals can join the parade. The goal is to make the event as accessible as possible, so make it a point to set the participation fee relatively low.
Walkathons are a volume play, meaning you need to attract as many participants as possible to generate a meaningful number of donations.
4. Run a Raffle
Although raffles and auctions are similar, the target audience will generally differ. Like the walkathon, the target of a raffle is smaller-scale local donors. The barrier to entry should be low, and the event should last several weeks.
To maximize accessibility, consider distributing digital raffle tickets instead of paper ones. Also, take steps to promote the raffle across social media, local outlets, and your PAC’s website. Encourage political beneficiaries to do the same to gain traction among the right audiences.
5. Pursue Recurring Donations
Although each donor can contribute up to $5,000 per year toward your PAC, many won’t be able to give nearly that much, at least not all at once. To maximize the giving potential of each donor and generate stable revenue for your political action committee, consider setting up recurring donations.
Under this strategy, donors sign up for weekly, monthly, or quarterly donations that are automatically transferred to your PAC account.
When soliciting funds from your target audience, give them the option to make a one-time contribution or a recurring donation. Educate them on the benefits of making recurring donations, and make it clear that they can cancel at any time.
6. Build Momentum with Small Donations
Every PAC leader loves landing those big $5,000 donations. While these large contributions make an immediate and measurable impact on the PAC, smaller donations shouldn’t be ignored or written off.
Encouraging donors to give small increments ranging from $5 to $20 is an effective way to generate a significant amount of revenue, especially if those donors sign up for recurring transfers.
If you want to maximize the efficacy of this strategy, consider giving donors the freedom to contribute as little as $1 to your PAC. Once you obtain that initial contribution and gather contact data, you can nurture that donor through emails, texts, and other content.
7. Get Mobile
In 2022 alone, smartphone users around the world downloaded a total of 255 billion mobile apps. Everybody loves a good app, including donors.
If you want to modernize your political action committee’s fundraising strategy and reach more donors, consider app-based communication and donation collection. Adding a mobile app to your fundraising techniques makes it easy to process credit card contributions, send solicitation messages, and drive traffic to your PAC’s website.
As mentioned, the vast majority of people prefer taking action digitally these days. The importance of having an attractive, accessible, well-functioning app therefore can’t be overstated.
Support Your PAC Fundraising Efforts with Aristotle
Generating meaningful revenue for your political action committee requires two things: a great idea and access to the right data.
You now have seven great ideas to jumpstart your PAC fundraising efforts. All you need to begin raising capital is some technology to support your idea. That’s where Aristotle can lend a hand.
As a leader in political data, Aristotle provides campaign managers, lawmakers, PACs, nonprofits, and other politically active clients with the tools they need to power their campaigns. Our PAC tools include a donor app, automated communication and solicitation software, and reporting functionalities.
Schedule a demo today to learn more and let Aristotle bring your PAC fundraising vision to life.
