“They’ll be looking for ways to become more innovative in soliciting money from supporters. They’d be foolish not to,” said Conservative commentator Tim Powers of the Tories.
Elections Canada released parties’ second-quarter fundraising results last week, covering efforts from April to June. The Conservatives raised $3.7-million from 28,790 contributors. The Liberals raised $1.8-million from almost 22,611 people. The New Democrats raised $1.7-million from 18,478 donors.
The Conservatives raised $8.7-million between January and June, extending their longstanding fundraising lead over the other parties.
The parties also receive a subsidy from the federal government based on the number of votes they receive. Formerly, it was $2.04 per vote, but as of April 1 it decreased to $1.53 and will decline by 51 cents each for the next three years, until it is completely eliminated by 2015-2016.
The program has long been a target for elimination by the Conservatives. Legislation to scrap the subsidy was some of the first the party introduced after it won a majority government last year.
“Anybody who is losing an income stream always looks to replicate that income stream because it’s part and parcel of the calculations they make about their own expenditures they can undertake,” Mr. Powers said.
Mr. Powers said that some cost is inevitable when fundraising.
“You do have to spend the front-end resources if you want to be successful,” he said.
When fundraising, parties spend money on items such as direct mail, phone banks and holding events, to name a few.
“It’s hard to do it entirely on the cheap because at some level there are human and technology expenditures that are required,” said Mr. Powers.
The party is adept at raising money from a broad base of donors who give small amounts. This year so far, 64,969 people have donated to the party.
“For all the parties it’s not a quarter-to-quarter thing, or it shouldn’t be. They’re now trying to put in place the systems that will get them to the finish line, which is the fall of 2015, and to surviving without the subsidy,” said Alice Funke, who writes the popular online site Pundit’s Guide.
Elections Canada handed out $1.86-million less in subsidies during the second quarter of this year, compared to the first three months of the year.
The Conservatives’ subsidy dropped the most, going from just under $3-million to $1.7-million, according to Elections Canada figures. The New Democrats lost about a half a million dollars in subsidy, and so received about $1.7-million this quarter. The Liberals’ subsidy is now just over $1-million after losing $350,000.
The Green Party, which raised slightly over $312,000 from 4,021 donors from April to June got a $218,800 subsidy, while the Bloc Québécois, who raised $41,673.70 from 469 people in the last quarter, got a subsidy of almost $341,000.
The parties say they are adapting to the phasing out of the per-vote subsidy.
“We re-evaluated our fundraising plan and we put together a pretty intense strategy to replace vote subsidy as it’s phased out, really to keep pace with and exceed the money that we would be losing to the vote subsidy,” said Heather Wilson, the NDP’s director of fundraising and membership.
The NDP have raised $3.7-million in the past six months. When combined with the money raised by NDP leadership candidates during that time the NDP have raised more than $5-million in total.
Ms. Wilson said that the party has focused on turning one-off donors from the 2011 federal election into regular contributors as well as on acquiring new donors in traditional areas of support, like British Columbia and Ontario.
“Not only have we increased our fundraising in dollars we’ve also increased the number of donors giving to us overall. Of course, when you have the challenge of only being able to fundraise $1,200 dollars per donor, it becomes a numbers game. You really have to reach out to as many people as possible,” she said.
Liberal Party President Mike Crawley said that the Grits’ fundraising results have surpassed the party’s expectations, especially considering its performance in last year’s federal election and its lack of a permanent leader.
“A lot of people thought that our fundraising activity would simply grind to a halt. In fact, exactly the opposite: we’ve continued to add significant numbers of new individual donors and we’ve shown some pretty healthy results,” he said.
“I think all of that bodes well for our future as we head into an election in 2015,” he added.
Since January, the Liberals have raised $4.1-million from 45,478, according to Elections Canada information. Mr. Crawley said that the party recognizes it will have to live on just what it can raise itself as the subsidy disappears.
“Certainly the fact that the subsidy contribution is going to be disappearing by 2015 is meaning we’re putting a much greater priority on building up a much larger database of individual donors,” he said.
Steve MacKinnon, former national director of the Liberal Party, said that the party has been adjusting to a world post-subsidy.
“Revenues are increasing and I know that costs have been reduced, so I feel very, very good about the prospect of the Liberal Party doing very well under the new system,” he said.
For obvious reasons, the Conservatives have the most to lose with the phasing-out of the per-vote subsidy, said Mr. MacKinnon.
“The Conservatives who yes, raised in aggregate a lot of private donations, but whose costs to raise that money are also high, I expect them to actually suffer disproportionately from the loss of the subsidy,” he said.
Ms. Funke said that the organizational structures of both the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois make them especially vulnerable to the end of the subsidy.
She explained that Jim Harris, who led the Green Party before Elizabeth May, structured party strategy to depend on the subsidy.
“They’ve got some very clear challenges ahead of them,” she said.
The Bloc, too, is somewhat structurally dependant on the subsidy, she said, explaining that fundraising is left largely up to riding associations while the core of the party subsists on the subsidy.
Ms. Funke said that usually riding associations with incumbents are left to fundraise, but with the collapse of the Bloc in the last election, the local organizations would be in flux.
She added that with the recently-called election in Quebec, set for Sept. 4, many of that party’s activists would be focused on the provincial race.
“They’re going to have to consider how to reorganize themselves … and I don’t think that they are going to fully have the answer to how they want to do that until after the provincial election is out of the way,” she stated.
Ms. Funke also noted that historically, while a provincial election is taking place federal parties would back off fundraising in the area to help out their provincial wing.
But the Liberals, the only federal party with a serious stake in that race, won’t be backing off of fundraising, said Mr. Crawley.
“Our intention will be to continue to fundraise as we have before during the next month,” he said.
The NDP’s fundraising efforts in Quebec, while growing, are in their infancy, said Ms. Wilson.
She also noted that while provincial campaigning might pose a challenge to federal parties looking to drum up interest and donations from the electorate, August is generally a slow month for fundraising anyway.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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