How much time do politicians spend fundraising?
I understand they spend an incredibly large amount of time doing so, but has anyone quantified it? Ideally someone knows the percentage of time spent, or hours per year?
7 Answers
This varies dramatically based upon the scale of the campaign. The scale of the campaign depends mostly upon two factors: Level (Federal House, Federal Senate, State House, etc...) and Competitiveness.
These both are pretty intuitive. Someone running for US Senate will spend more time raising money that someone running for city council. In the same vein, a Democrat running for a seat they have held for 20 years in a +20 Democratic district will spend less time spending money than a Republican who is challenging an incumbent Democrat in a +2 Democratic district.
A caveat to the Competitiveness metric: To be in the congressional leadership, you need congressional allies to vote for you. A congressperson in a safe district with leadership ambitions will fundraise in order to assist other members in the hope of getting their vote for leadership positions.
OK. I realize you just wanted a number. Here is a general rule of thumb for US House incumbents. They need to raise roughly $10,000 a week started the day they are elected. The ways this money is raised at the Federal level breaks down like this (ranked from most to least time spent by the candidate):
These both are pretty intuitive. Someone running for US Senate will spend more time raising money that someone running for city council. In the same vein, a Democrat running for a seat they have held for 20 years in a +20 Democratic district will spend less time spending money than a Republican who is challenging an incumbent Democrat in a +2 Democratic district.
A caveat to the Competitiveness metric: To be in the congressional leadership, you need congressional allies to vote for you. A congressperson in a safe district with leadership ambitions will fundraise in order to assist other members in the hope of getting their vote for leadership positions.
OK. I realize you just wanted a number. Here is a general rule of thumb for US House incumbents. They need to raise roughly $10,000 a week started the day they are elected. The ways this money is raised at the Federal level breaks down like this (ranked from most to least time spent by the candidate):
- Call time: Literally sitting in a room with a phone and a list of past or potential donors. Almost all candidates hate call time, but it is ruthlessly efficient -- both in time and money spent. Disciplined candidates will spend 10+ hours a week on call time.
- Events: Most candidates love events and a properly planned event can bring in a lot of money in a single night. Events do take planning and staff to execute which can be costly and reduce the net money raised. Early in the cycle a candidate might have one event a month. In the last 8 months before the election this can expand to several a week.
- PAC Events: Candidates love PAC (Political Action Committee) events. A PAC consultant throws a party, handles all of the planning, invites all of the attendees and the candidate just has to show up and collect the checks. Easy and efficient, but you'll pay the PAC consultant thousands of dollars a month in retainer. This is a method only available to incumbents, since PACs are interested in buying influence and aren't going to throw money at a challenger that will likely lose.
- Direct Mail: Candidates also love direct mail. Many candidates don't even bother to read the solicitations before they are sent out. Usually you contract with a vendor that writes, edits, prints, mails and processes the incoming donations. This used to be a huge chunk of a campaign's fundraising but is decreasing every year as more people turn to...
- Online Donations: Everyone, Republican and Democrat alike, want to be like Barack Obama when it comes to online fundraising. But raising a significant amount of your campaign budget online takes a significant investment in staff to write, test and track your online solicitations. Not to mention the need to grow and expand your list. As with direct mail, the candidate often expends little to no time in dealing with online fundraising. Whether or not that is a good strategy is debatable.
Congress get Monday and Friday off every week for fundraising, Saturday & Sunday, the entire month of August, and a few week long vacations for national holidays, and half of every Tuesday.
This leaves half of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of every week for constituent services. On average, a Congressman spends 9 days a month in office working. Each legislator works an average four-four workday, meaning a total of 36 hours a month of actual work.
The average state-wide House run costs USD$2M, meaning that it costs ~$20,000 a week for a Representative. Senators cost more around $10,000 a week even with a larger cost (USD$4-6M) thanks to the 6 year term.
Let's extrapolate: The average month has 160 hours of viable workhours without going into 'overtime.' Removing the 36 hours they are busy in office, that leaves 124 hours a month or 31 hours a week that they can (and will) use for fundraising. At 31 hours a week for fundraising, they must raise around $650 an hour to meet their goals for the next election.
This leaves half of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of every week for constituent services. On average, a Congressman spends 9 days a month in office working. Each legislator works an average four-four workday, meaning a total of 36 hours a month of actual work.
The average state-wide House run costs USD$2M, meaning that it costs ~$20,000 a week for a Representative. Senators cost more around $10,000 a week even with a larger cost (USD$4-6M) thanks to the 6 year term.
Let's extrapolate: The average month has 160 hours of viable workhours without going into 'overtime.' Removing the 36 hours they are busy in office, that leaves 124 hours a month or 31 hours a week that they can (and will) use for fundraising. At 31 hours a week for fundraising, they must raise around $650 an hour to meet their goals for the next election.
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At the SF city-wide level, the rule of thumb is that you as a candidate should be spending 6-8 hours a week fundraising, primarily through call time, according to one of the general consultants who came in for a lecture.
Nate Thames answer is excellent and represents the overall answer to this question.
Nate Thames answer is excellent and represents the overall answer to this question.
According to a study released by the Congressional Management Foundation, based on responses from 25 members of Congress, lawmakers spending between 17 and 18 percent of their time fundraising and attending campaign events. And two-fifths of those that responded (43 percent) feel the time they spend fundraising isn't enough. Only 19 percent thought they spent too much time on political/campaign work.
This surely depends on what you mean by 'politician'.
There are plenty of 'politicians' who seek election for office and never succeed, no doubt in part due to the fact that they fail to fundraise (either from principle or lack of ability). Do you consider them politicians? They are centrally engaged in the political process at elections, after all
There are probably some politicians who do get elected despite lack of fundraising - but I imagine there are few who succeed in this.
Undoubtedly though, many do spend a lot of energy trying to raise funds. Many are sufficiently desperate to tailor their policies to the needs of big corporations, in the hope of attracting large funds (famously so in the USA, but no doubt elsewhere too).
There are plenty of 'politicians' who seek election for office and never succeed, no doubt in part due to the fact that they fail to fundraise (either from principle or lack of ability). Do you consider them politicians? They are centrally engaged in the political process at elections, after all
There are probably some politicians who do get elected despite lack of fundraising - but I imagine there are few who succeed in this.
Undoubtedly though, many do spend a lot of energy trying to raise funds. Many are sufficiently desperate to tailor their policies to the needs of big corporations, in the hope of attracting large funds (famously so in the USA, but no doubt elsewhere too).
