Why Local Parties need to get serious about fundraising

British Politics is changing. Money buys elections (mostly) and there is no doubt we saw that in May. The Conservatives pumped money and resources in to marginal constituencies and backed by their aggressive national messaging, won.

Being a Liberal Democrat usually means the same old story, lots of enthusiastic volunteers at election time and everything on a shoe string budget, with the big money reserved for a few strategic seats.

Our party is caught in a catch 22 :- money raised by our small and competent fundraising team at HQ is invested in constantly urgent and evolving campaigning needs, ongoing costs and giving a leg up to marginal constituencies that are winning but short of money. That means though that our party, unlike our Conservative and Labour party rivals, doesn't have a fundraising network to support our key seats all over the country. However great our staff may be, a small team of 3 or 4 can never hope to help our entire party organisation.

That's entirely understandable as a smaller party, but it leaves us with a tricky dilemma. If we are being outspent by other parties, even in those seats where money is flush, how can we hope to compete as campaigning moves forwards to more expensive, personalised direct mail?

We can't and so we need to get serious about fundraising.

So what does that mean?

It means thinking about what is a fundraising event and what is a members event, that happens to raise some funds.

In my day job I often use what I call "the minimum wage rule" with the volunteers I work with. If you could have worked the same number of hours you put in to your fundraising event at the minimum wage and made more money, then your event as it stands wasn't worth doing. It either needs dropping, adapting in order to make more money, or adapting to become a members event, that happens to raise some funds. Arguably, we should double that, but we have to start somewhere!

It also means, not reducing all of our fundraising efforts to either a series of events or a series of standing order campaigns, that never quite materialise with the promised riches of "just getting 500 people to give us £5 a month."

Charities and non profit groups get their income from a variety of sources and so should we. Our local parties need to get braver at asking high net worth individuals for money- and not taking an initial no as the final answer.

Our web presence should be geared towards extracting a financial contribution- web pages for US politicians have an initial splash page asking for money for a reason- it works!

Locally we should be networking with businesses, to target both their support and their cash. And finally, we should be having a brave conversation with local members about leaving us a gift in their will.

If local parties are maximising their fundraising revenue streams then 80% of the money will be coming from 20% of their fundraising efforts. That's an approach I use with the fundraisers I support.

On reflection at the minute, we are pretty good at getting that 20% of available cash from 80% of our effort, but we forget, wilfully or not, the other far more valuable slice of the pie.

Without money we will continue to flounder. HQ can't get it for us, we have to get serious and get it ourselves.

* Michael Kitching has been a party member since 2005. He has worked as an organiser for several local parties, including acting as Norman Lambs agent in 2010. He now works as Regional Fundraising Manager for a national armed forces charity.