Politico: GOP online donation platform tweaks fees, sending millions more to midterm campaigns

By ALEX ISENSTADT

09/16/2021

WinRed, the widely used Republican online donation service, will lower its fees in January after negotiations with party leaders.

Republicans are making a small change to their online fundraising program that could have a big impact on the party’s finances heading into the 2022 midterm election.

WinRed, the GOP’s principal small-dollar donation processor, is lowering the fees it charges candidates and committees for each contribution they receive through the platform.

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Fox News: WinRed pulls in $146M for Republican candidates in third quarter, passes $400M for the year

10-12-2021

The Republican online fundraising platform WinRed helped GOP candidates raise $146 million in the third quarter of 2021 as the midterm elections and a chance for Republicans to take back the House and the Senate near.

The total is $15 million more than WinRed’s second-quarter tally and brings the total raised on the platform so far in 2021 to $401 million, according to numbers first shared with Fox News.

“Up and down the ballot, WinRed continues to exceed expectations and deliver real results for campaigns and committees across the country. Ahead of the 2022 election, WinRed is putting the GOP on the right path to raise more money than ever before,” WinRed President Gerrit Lansing said in a statement.

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New York Times: WinRed, a fast-growing Republican fund-raising site, passes the $1 billion mark.

Oct 13, 2020

WinRed, the donation-processing digital platform created last year to help Republicans catch up with Democrats’ online fund-raising, announced this week that it had passed the $1 billion mark in only 15 months.

The for-profit site, founded by Republican strategists, processed $623.5 million in the third quarter of 2020. Its Democratic counterpart, the nonprofit platform ActBlue, which was launched in 2004, processed about $1.5 billion in that time frame.

Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, wrote in a memo that Republicans were closing the gap on the Democrats’ online fund-raising advantage: “A critical problem grew continuously for 15 years, reshaping how politics was financed — and a solution had previously proven elusive.”

On its single biggest day, Sept. 30, WinRed raised $24.8 million. ActBlue did not hit that mark until this June, 15 years into its existence. (On Sept. 30, ActBlue processed more than $65 million.)

For four consecutive quarters, WinRed has doubled or nearly doubled the amount raised in its previous quarter — an enormous rate of growth that has been driven mostly by President Trump and the Republican Party using the platform. It has raised $1.2 billion in total.

Mr. Trump cheered the site’s success on Tuesday in a tweet.

The site did not break down how much various candidates and campaigns raised last quarter but will be required to do so in filings later this week with the Federal Election Commission.

Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro Desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign.

Fox News: Republicans raise $2B on WinRed fundraising platform in less than 2 years

12-15-2021

WinRed, the GOP‘s premier fundraising platform, bragged Tuesday that it has raised more than $2 billion since it was founded in June 2019.

By contrast, ActBlue, the Democratic Party‘s main fundraising platform that preceded WinRed, reached the $2 billion milestone in 14 years between its founding in 2004 and 2018, Republican officials said.

“WinRed’s success would not have been possible without President Trump’s support,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement to Fox News. “The platform played a critical role in Republican victories in November, and I have every confidence that it will continue to be a key tool for our candidates for elections to come.”

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