# Will small donations ever be enough to fund a presidential campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 3, 2016, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-small-donations-ever-be-enough-to-fund-a-presidential-campaign/747805 "2016-03-03T04:40:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2016, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-small-donations-ever-be-enough-to-fund-a-presidential-campaign/747805/1 "2016-03-03T04:40:40Z")
If 5 million voters give $100 each that is $500 million, ideally more than enough to run a campaign and would only require about 1 in 12 voters to donate. Is that realistic? I know Sanders is trying to run his campaign solely on small donations, but even with a figure like $100 (which works out to about $10/month for Jan-Oct) is even that realistic? I know John Edwards had a plan that would empower small donors by quadrupling each small donation. I have no idea if any candidates are pushing things like that. It seems like this election cycle is a pushback against money in politics, but in different ways. Sanders has small donors, Trump is self funding (or so he says) and both speak out against the revolving door in politics and business. Plus presidential campaigns are very high on the public radar. Smaller campaigns (which can include house of rep. campaigns, as well as many statewide campaigns) will probably still be too invisible to get by w/o big donors. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2016, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-small-donations-ever-be-enough-to-fund-a-presidential-campaign/747805/2 "2016-03-03T04:50:36Z")
Maybe, but big donors aren’t going to stop donating just because lots of small donors donate. In some ways Barack Obama pioneered significant amounts of financing from small donations made on his website. They were significantly above the norm for small donations in both 2008 and 2012, but in both years once the general came around the big donations represented a larger share of individual contributions. In 2012 the Super PACs supporting Obama was also a significant factor in total pro-Obama spending. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2016, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-small-donations-ever-be-enough-to-fund-a-presidential-campaign/747805/3 "2016-03-03T16:45:27Z")
If 10% of the people who vote gave $100 dollars that would raise over a billion dollars. Plenty of money to run a campaign. It could be easily done if people wanted to give money. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-small-donations-ever-be-enough-to-fund-a-presidential-campaign/747805/4 "2020-09-07T02:54:02Z")
I was going to start a new thread but I made this one back in 2016. In the month of August alone, Biden and the democratic party raised $360 million, of which about $205 was from ‘online small donations’ (not sure what that means exactly). [https://blog.4president.org/2020/2020/09/biden-for-president-announces-august-fundraising-figures.html](https://blog.4president.org/2020/2020/09/biden-for-president-announces-august-fundraising-figures.html) > Today, Biden for President (BFP), the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and their joint fundraising committees announced that they raised a combined $364.5 million in August, which includes over $205 million — or 57% — from online, small-dollar donations. These figures represent the best month of online fundraising in American political history. I’m trying to find the definition of small dollar donations. I don’t know if that means less than $200 per donation, less than $200 total donated per person or some totally different value. I think its \<$200 total per individual. > **[Summary data for Joe Biden, 2020 cycle](https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate/joe-biden?id=N00001669)** > > This page highlights the fundraising details for the presidential campaign of Joe Biden for 2020. For more information, click through the page. large contributions are still a big factor, but if a law is passed with matching funds for small donors, then small donors would drown out big donors. Then again big donors would probably just spend more too and we’d end up seeing Bloomberg esqe levels of ads for months on end for all candidates. > **[Hidden donors - those who donate less than $200 - play significant role in...](https://yubanet.com/usa/hidden-donors-those-who-donate-less-than-200-play-significant-role-in-political-campaigns/)** > > February 10, 2020 – A new Caltech study reveals that so-called hidden donors in a political campaign—those contributors who donate less than $200—can make up a sizable fraction of a candidate’s campaign funds. The study, appearing in the Election Law...