Given that today’s buzz is probably focused on last night’s final US presidential candidate debate, I thought I’d stick to a political theme.

A couple of times recently (here, latest here), I’ve grumped about political fundraising, especially the incessant barrage of emails from various arms of the Clinton fundraising machine. Then I noted (here) the fact that Clinton has been outpulling Trump in small gifts.

No sooner did I do that than my first email pitch arrived from Trump’s son Eric, opening with these lines:

“My father is truly honored and humbled by the grassroots support that powers our campaign.

During the second debate, he even took a moment to praise and thank the hard-working men and women who’ve made generous contributions to our campaign. He called attention to our average contribution of $61.”

As it happens, the Clinton campaign has been conscientiously — for some reason ignoring my complaints — driving its donors upwards toward the legal maximum of $2,700, apparently effectively (although I haven’t seen an average gift comparable to Trump’s $61 claim).

In any event, conservative fundraising inventor and maestro Richard Viguerie saw our comments and sent The Agitator this message, which I’m pleased to share. [Take a look at Richard’s book titles; better still, read a few.] Toward the end, he makes an interesting observation about liberal versus conservative fundraisers.

Roger,

Thanks for the shout-out in today’s The Agitator.

Unfortunately for my side—you’re right.

When I started with YAF in 1961, no one was doing ideological direct mail. By the mid-1970s, I had 75 employees and was mailing 90 million letters a year for 20+ organizations, but I was also starting to get a lot of criticism in the national media, as well as from Republicans and Democrats. But all of the attacks from the media and the political establishment stopped within a few hours—on election night of November 1980. You could almost hear the media and politicians collectively say, “Ah-hah—that’s what Viguerie has been up to!”

As you know, because you helped drive most of it, the Left rushed out to do grassroots direct mail fundraising and marketing. Of course we knew what the Left was doing, but I told my conservative friends, “Don’t worry, it’s taken me 18 years to give us a big lead in building grassroots organizations, and it will take the Left as long, but probably longer, because I am smarter than they are.”

Wrong—in my opinion within 3-4 years, the Left (under your leadership) caught up with the Right, and today it’s clear that liberals are far better marketers than conservatives.

I’m often asked why and the best answer I can come up with is, as a general rule, if you are a young liberal and want to help others, the nonprofit world is attractive. However, a young conservative will more likely be attracted to the private sector for the same reason.

Candidate Obama had 3,000,000 donors in 2008. Trump should easily have matched or exceeded that number.

One of the giants in nonprofit marketing, Jerry Huntsinger, many years ago said, “There’s no shortage of money, only a shortage of ideas.” I would modify that for conservatives and say, “There’s no shortage of money, only a major shortage of professional entrepreneurial marketing talent.”

All the best, my friend,

Richard Viguerie

Now, I don’t know the political mix of Agitator readers, although I have a strong suspicion as I see the organisations you work for, but I’m wondering …

Are liberals better fundraisers?

Tom