The fundraising report arrives.  Revenue is below budget and new donors are scarce. Someone at the board meeting clears his throat.

“It’s the election.”

Heads nod, shoulders drop as folks relax. There it is: the explanation that asks nothing more of anyone.  Apparently, the candidates have vacuumed up every available dollar, leaving your food pantry, animal shelter, museum, or civil rights organization to live on loose change and the development director’s optimism.

Before we put the election on trial, let’s look at the evidence.

An election can make fundraising harder for non-political organizations because it crowds the airwaves, fills inboxes, and give donors one more urgent thing to worry about. It can also become a handsome little alibi for problems that were already sitting in the room.

Spoiler Alert: There is no dependable election curse.

In 2014, a midterm year, charitable giving rose 7.1%, or 5.4% after inflation, according to Giving USA’s report at the time. In 2018, giving barely grew in current dollars and slipped after inflation. In 2022, it fell sharply. Three midterms. Three different pictures.

Those annual totals don’t tell us exactly what elections did. They do tell us that “midterm election year” is not much of a financial forecast.  Consider 2022; inflation hit 8%,  the S&P 500 fell 19.4%. But in 2022 giving was being compared with the extraordinary generosity of the pandemic years. With the stock market down nearly 20% and inflation at 8% you don’t need a consultant to discover the suspects.

Before declaring donors exhausted, ask them.

Blue State’s 2026 research offers an inconvenient fact for the election-ate-my-fundraising argument.  Donors who also give politically reported giving intent 9.2 points higher than other donors, even after accounting for income, age, and giving history. The research draws on more than 6,000 survey responses across five waves from 2024 through 2026. (bluestate.co)

Although you can’t bank survey response because intentions aren’t gifts the findings should give pause to anyone preparing to write off politically engaged donors as financially unavailable.  This doesn’t mean money is limitless; a study published in Management Science, using American Red Cross and campaign-finance data, found evidence that increased political giving can displace charitable donations.

My point is that both things can be true. Politically engaged donors can also be generous charitable donors and political appeals can also capture money a charity might otherwise receive.

The question, if your organization has declining numbers and you can’t blame it on the elections,  is what you do next?  

First:  Find out what is actually failing.

Email revenue is one part of online revenue. Donations also arrive through advertising, search, direct website visits, and recurring payments. So email fundraising can decline while online giving overall increases.

M+R reports that, among participating nonprofits identifying themselves as not politically active in the 2024 election, online revenue rose 1% compared with 2023, while revenue attributed to email fell 13%. In other words, a struggling email program doesn’t necessarily mean donors have stopped giving. Before blaming the election, find out which part of your fundraising is losing ground.

Making that distinction matters.  If email is stumbling while total online giving holds up, “our donors have stopped giving” is a poor diagnosis. Look at deliverability, response, message, audience, and the other ways people give.  Start with a simple table. Compare revenue by channel, donor type, and month. Mark the weeks when political advertising was heaviest. Then see what actually changed.

And please resist the reflex to cure every shortfall with another email. Donors already have enough strangers announcing that civilization expires at midnight.

Second: Protect the relationships that keep producing.

During the difficult 2022 midterm year, M+R found that monthly giving revenue grew 11%, while one-time revenue declined 12%.   Monthly giving doesn’t make an organization election-proof. Nothing does. It does reduce dependence on persuading the same person to make a fresh decision every time the checking account needs attention.

Established donors matter, too. RKD’s study of 83 food-bank clients found that donors supporting an organization for two or more years supplied 70% of gross revenue in 2024 and the same holds true for the majority of organizations whose data I’ve seen.  Thank those loyal donors. Show them what happened because they gave and call or write to donors who have drifted away. Keep recruiting new supporters, but devote equal or even more resources to giving existing donors a reason to stay.

This is not glamorous work. It is mostly lists, notes, calls, and follow-ups.  None of it becomes less necessary because someone is running for Congress.

Third: Adjust the calendar and the spending.

Political competition can make advertising costly and attention scarce, especially in contested markets, so examine where dollars work and where they don’t.  If a market is expensive in October, test September. If paid social is crowded, try search, direct mail, local media, or a quieter audience. If you cannot measure the result, be careful about calling it strategy.

United Way’s 2024 campaign in southwestern Indiana offers a practical example. Its agency described building awareness through traditional media, then shifting toward targeted digital fundraising before election competition intensified. The message stayed rooted in local services and community impact. An altered schedule and clearer focus. These are some decisions you  can make in planning for 2027.

Fourth: Make your usefulness unmistakable.

A food pantry doesn’t need to dress itself up as a congressional campaign. It needs to explain who needs food, what it can provide, and what the donor’s gift will accomplish.  Say it plainly: “Your gift helps provide 200 meals this week” is better than “Join us in creating transformational change across the hunger ecosystem.” The second phrase may have been written by a committee, but the first tells a person what happens.

An advocacy organization has a different opportunity—and an obligation—to explain its next move.  Earthjustice and its agency, Precision Strategies, prepared strategies for either presidential outcome in 2024. After the election, they connected environmental threats to the organization’s response, tested messages, and recruited continuing support. The agency reports generating more than 1,000 monthly donors through paid advertising.

The useful lesson is preparation. Give donors a credible plan for what happens next.  Before the election, write two versions: one for victory and one for defeat. Keep both grounded in the work. Then, when the result arrives, you are not staring at a blank screen while everyone else is shouting.  After a defeat, explain what can still be defended. After a victory, explain what remains to be done. Neither despair nor celebration pays for the work ahead.

Election season gives fundraisers plenty to contend with: crowded inboxes, costly media, distracted supporters, competing demands.  It also gives us a reason to sharpen the case, strengthen relationships, and investigate our own results.mBefore the board accepts “the election” as the explanation, ask which donors, which channels, which weeks—and what change. Look at the numbers, talk to some supporters and fix the part you can fix.

In short, before you decide donors have nothing left to give, give them a reason.

Roger