By Mitch Gingrich
How much does your consultant need to raise? More! A lot more!
What are the most important questions every campaign needs to answer right at the beginning?
How many votes do I need to win?
How much do I need to spend to get those votes?
In the last 21 years of working with political campaigns across the country, from Smallsville dog catcher to nominated Presidential committees, I rarely ran into non-professionals who knew that they should ask these critical questions.
With no clear and intelligent fundraising goals, candidates will rarely, if ever, raise enough to seriously compete for office.
That’s not the end of the world. Legit, serious candidates engage professionals with the knowledge to make their candidacies competitive. Vendors like ISPolitical reach out and ask for their business shortly after a committee is formed. Among the first questions we ask is how much they plan to raise. For the non-pros, this sparks the questions they need to answer. We taught our reps to help campaigns get set up. And, while we couldn’t force all candidates to think about these important questions, generally only the candidates playing politics avoided new technologies and professionals. It was an eco-system that functioned well.
For 20 years the process worked. In 2025, it feels broken. Alarm bells are going off in my head, and we’re seeing clear warning signs that campaigns and professional services in the political campaign space are severely overestimating the value of the dollar.
Vendors are raising their rates. Professionals, for the most part, are not.
We work with a lot of professionals from treasurers and compliance consultants to general consultants and fundraisers. When they ask for a rate, they usually include their fundraising goals. We’re not seeing substantial increases. They talk about money as if it’s the same value it had twenty years ago.
It’s common for professionals coming to us to ask for rates more common to 2005 than 2025. When we ask what rates the pro charges, they usually say the same rate the got for the last decade or more. The best performers are still mostly charging rates common to the late 2010s. I’ve run into almost no firms who’ve substantially increased their rates in the 2020s.
I think we’re seeing an industry of professionals who haven’t adjusted to the changing value of the dollar. And right here is where savvy professionals can stake out an edge.
Whether for a political campaign or your business, the cost of winning is up… a lot!
Political campaigns and their consultants MUST adjust how they value money.
The price of everything a consultant or campaign manager needs to buy is up radically.
Technology campaigns need to win is up. The price of paper and mail is up. The price of email and text messages is up. The price of pizza for your volunteers is up. The price of gas and fast food for your volunteers is up. The price of buying ads on Facebook is WAAY up (and probably a waste of money…). Other digital media prices spiked. ISPolitical costs substantially more than it did 6 years ago. NGP VAN and Aristotle probably dropped their rates in an attempt to compete with us, but that would end up costing you even more.
I did a little research on some campaign staples.
+84.3% – In San Diego County McDonald’s Big Mac is up 84.3% from $4.39 in 2019 to $8.09 in 2025. Say you take your campaign staff of 3 to lunch at McDonalds for one day each week for 9 months, in 2019, just the Big Macs would cost you $513.63. In 2025, that would be $946.53. Campaigns aren’t ever gonna say no to giving their staff caffeine, so you’re buying soda. That will be another $3.99 per staff. That would add another $292.50, up to $466.83 in 2025 from $174.33 in 2019.
+30% – Nationally, the average price of a large pizza is up 30% from $14 in 2019 to $18.14 in 2025. Campaigns involve a lot of later dinners and hungry people. Let’s keep it fairly small and say you need to feed 10 people 2 nights per week for 9 months. In 2019, you’d spend $2,730. In 2025, you’d spend $3,537.30. That would cost you $807.30 more.
+80.5% – In Denver, the cost of a Canvassing Director went up 80.5% from $29,500 to $53,274 annually. While this is only one position, we’re seeing similar increases in related campaign work. It’s nearly impossible to find people willing to come into the office at numbers that used to attract solid talent. And let’s be clear, this specific opening was for entry-level. Campaigns will need to pay $50k+ for entry-level professionals going into the future.
+25% – Price of postage is up 25% from $0.178 in 2019 to $0.223 per piece in 2025. Mail is still one of the most effective ways to get your message across and reach voters. It hits the older demos in ways you can’t with email, sms, and online ads. That’s why it remains a staple of successful campaigns. Old people vote. Let’s just play this out for a committee who sends a modest 100,000 pieces. In 2019, postage would cost $17,800. In 2025, you need to have $22,300, or $4,500 more. But, that’s just postage. The actual price per piece of mail increased a lot more due to paper costs and other increases.
+27.4% – Nationally, the average price of paper is up 27.4%. Direct mail vendors don’t regularly detail out their costs and so it’s tough to show this as a line up. Instead, let’s say your campaign budgeted $100,000 for direct mail spends in 2019. If we’re ONLY factoring in the cost of paper increases, you’re going to now need to raise $127,400 to send the same amount of mail.
+300%+ – Cost of running ads to 1,000 people went from $5 in 2019 to $15 in 2025. If you run many Facebook ads, one thing you’ll know is the rate changes FAST based on a whole bunch of factors. The smaller, more niche your target, the more it’ll cost. Double it if it’s a high-income group. And while Facebook’s effectiveness dropped hard around 2020, it’s rates are DEFINITELY way up. If your voters are on Facebook, you need to plan to spend 3 times or more what you spent in 2019. A decent budget of $50,000 will need to be $150,000+ to get the same results. If you’re looking to raise money on these ads, your CPAs will likely be through the roof here, though that may not be all about the CPM.
+300%+ – Cost of running ads to 1,000 people went from $5 in 2019 to $15 in 2025. If you run many Facebook ads, one thing you’ll know is the rate changes FAST based on a whole bunch of factors. The smaller, more niche your target, the more it’ll cost. Double it if it’s a high-income group. And while Facebook’s effectiveness dropped hard around 2020, it’s rates are DEFINITELY way up. If your voters are on Facebook, you need to plan to spend 3 times or more what you spent in 2019. A decent budget of $50,000 will need to be $150,000+ to get the same results. If you’re looking to raise money on these ads, your CPAs will likely be through the roof here, though that may not be all about the CPM.
You already knew prices are up for… pretty much everything. So, what’s the point?
We’re not seeing fundraising totals and the rates political professionals charge increase at the same rate.
To the extent that political consultants raise or charge more, these increases don’t come close to matching inflation.
In 2020, the average winning US House candidate raised $2.3 million. In 2024, the average winner raised approx. $2.6 million. That’s a 13% increase. Most of these would’ve been incumbents with sized war chests already in place as insurance against unexpected increases in costs. Looking at what the average loser raised doesn’t help much since so many of the losers raised nothing. So, let’s use experienced industry veteran impressions.
Casey Hauser, National Sales Director for ISPolitical says,
“We’re not seeing any increases in stated fundraising goals at the federal, state or local level. The consultants we talk to every day are giving us pretty much the same figures they gave us for the same offices over the last 7-8 years. Our clients tend to be smarter about this, but the problem is everywhere. ”
My experience is much the same.
Campaign consultants aren’t factoring inflation and cost increases.
Campaigns are won and lost by fundraising totals. Outspending almost always means winning an election. Not always. Generally, it’s true. If you look at US House incumbents, they scraped close to the edge and left the door open to competitors capable of raising more. Open seats candidates raised more. But neither kept up with increases in costs. The trend is worse down ballot where they almost never have big bank accounts ready to pay those increased costs.
The door is open for candidates and professionals who properly assess how much it takes to win. As our industry begins to recognize that the numbers all changed, all competing sides will adjust and the gap will close. It’s unlikely that one side of the other will take advantage of this gap enough to change policy.
The real shift will be in the consolidation of local and regional players into large, national firms.
As tech makes the early adapters and most sophisticated uber efficient, they’re gobbling up more and more clients. Big consulting firms keep taking the clients from the little firms. Profitable, winning consultants get the best paying clients, and they use better rates to grow and take on even more clients. The professionals who adjust their fundraising goals to the new reality of what a dollar buys will grow, and the professionals who keep fundraising totals roughly the same will retire or maybe give TikTok a try. Technology started the trend. Inflation inflates its importance.
If you’re a political campaign professional, take away two important points:
You need to tell your clients to raise more, a lot more.
You need to start charging more for your services.
The campaigns you’re running, consulting for, working on will need much more money to win than just a few years ago. Set reasonable expectations for the cost of winning office.
You won’t win by setting the same fundraising goals you had in 2019.
My biggest concern is for the consultants.
Political treasurers, compliance consultants, fundraisers and all committee staff probably need a big raise just to maintain their 2019 standard of living. Treading water isn’t the point. Thriving and growing is! Raise your rates. Stay ahead of inflation and the dramatic rise in living expenses. Pay your staff well enough to do the same. Take care of yourself and your team. And, grow your business. If you don’t have enough cash to invest in trying out new technologies, you’re going to lose clients to a firm that does.
You can’t do any of that if you’re charging the same rates you charged in 2010.
Since the early 2000s, I worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes and would love to share what I learned. If you’d like to get my feedback on your rates, businesses processes, and how we could help your firm grow, let’s talk.
