The Republican digital platform WinRed processed $623.5 million in online contributions for GOP candidates in the third quarter, pushing the GOP’s competitor to the Democrats’ ActBlue past $1 billion raised less than two years after launch.
President Trump and the major Republican committees approved the creation of WinRed last year after Democratic fundraising aggregator, ActBlue, left the GOP massively outgunned in the 2018 midterm elections. After getting off to a slow start with $30 million raised in the third quarter of 2019, WinRed has basically doubled the number of donations processed for candidates and committees every quarter through the three-month period ending Sept. 30 of this year.
WinRed is a central online platform that processes and distributes small donations from grassroots contributors to Republican candidates and party committees.
“The rapid success of WinRed is testament to unprecedented party unity behind the need to take on ActBlue — quickly and aggressively,” WinRed President Gerrit Lansing said in a press release.
Democrats have used the ActBlue platform since 2004, the early days of small-dollar online fundraising. The money collected and distributed by the website has steadily increased over the years. But it has accelerated with Trump in the White House as grassroots liberals look for ways to blunt his agenda and win back seats in Congress lost under former President Barack Obama.
Although ActBlue’s third-quarter numbers were not yet available, the platform processed more than $485 million in August from 4 million donors who funneled more than 10.6 million separate contributions to Democratic candidates and committees.
That kind of firepower motivated Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to greenlight WinRed. The $623.5 million the platform processed in the third quarter came from more than 11.6 million donations that averaged $53 each.
In addition to being a central clearinghouse for grassroots conservative donors, WinRed shares digital best practices with Republican campaigns and committees for increasing contributions. It says that among the more motivating messages with the grassroots are “donation pages that included the word ‘impeach’ or ‘impeachment’” and pages that included the word “Trump.”
