Small-dollar online fundraising has transformed campaigns over the past decade, and for Republicans, that transformation has a name: WinRed. I sat down with WinRed CEO Ryan Lyk to dig into their new WinRed Effect report, which looks at how the platform has changed digital fundraising since it launched in 2019.
WinRed was built to unify the GOP’s online giving, and that move has delivered three big outcomes: it’s helped Republicans stand up to ActBlue, it’s raised more money for candidates, and it’s given even the smallest campaign teams tools they couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.
One of the most interesting shifts we talked about is donor behavior. Nearly half of all contributions on WinRed now come from donors with saved profiles. That means giving is easier than ever, and as a result, people are donating smaller amounts more frequently—11 times on average in 2024 compared to just 7 times in 2020. It’s a sign that the GOP’s small-dollar ecosystem is maturing.
Of course, there are challenges. Ryan walked me through the Gmail issue earlier this year, when WinRed links were incorrectly flagged as suspicious because of a foreign vendor. That raised serious questions about election interference. On the texting side, WinRed has rolled out a clever feature called “contact card upsells” to help donors recognize campaign numbers and cut down on messages going to spam.
We also got into donor fatigue. WinRed doesn’t control campaign messaging, but Ryan stressed the importance of balance. Urgency works, but overuse risks turning people off. He suggested campaigns think about creating more value for donors—memberships, calls with candidates, even newsletters—to keep supporters engaged for the long haul.
Looking ahead, Ryan shared some new features coming to WinRed. The big one is a revamped page builder to make fundraising setup even faster. Another is “recurring retention,” which lets donors pause or adjust their subscriptions instead of canceling entirely.
From empowering down-ballot campaigns to improving the donor experience, WinRed has become indispensable party infrastructure. My conversation with Ryan shows just how far GOP digital fundraising has come—and where it’s headed next.