Are you ready for another election year?

Sigh. Next year is another presidential election year in the US.

All that noise, bluster, and distraction.

It’s tiring.

But is it bad for fundraising?

Analytical Ones isn’t worried. See the post Election Year Giving.

Let’s just go straight to the chart:

This shows September through December giving for a large and varied group of organizations for ten years, starting in 2013. There are two presidential election years in there (2016 and 2020 — both contentious and noisy). Can you see those election years among the cluster of lines?

If those elections had lowered response, the yellow CY16 and the brown CY20 lines would be lower, right.

But they aren’t. We also can’t pick out midterm elections.

With one notable exception, every year raises more than the previous year. Election year or not.

The exception is that CY22 is lower than CT 20 and CY 21. You know what was going on in those years. There was an election year — but more important, the pandemic. Note also that while CY 22 is lower than the previous two years, it’s higher than all the years previous.

As the post points out:

… all this noise on LinkedIn about fundraising being broken or bad is simply untrue. If you take out the abnormal pandemic years, fundraising is working rather well, thank you very much.

So then, my recommendation for fall 2024 is: full speed ahead. Fundraising is working now. It will work during the next election year.

The thing most likely to hurt your results in 2024 is you freaking out about the election year, and cutting back on your year-end fundraising.

Don’t do that, and you’ll be fine.