Hiring a digital fundraising firm is one of the bigger decisions a campaign manager or executive director makes. The firm will speak in your organization's voice, spend your money and handle your supporters' data. A good one becomes part of your team. A bad one can burn your list and leave you unable to tell what worked.
This is how we would choose a firm if we were sitting on your side of the table.
Decide what you need before you talk to anyone
Start with the channels. Most digital fundraising work falls into a few buckets: digital ads that raise money or grow your list, texting (SMS and MMS), the video and static creative that runs in both, and polling to test messages and track where voters stand. Some firms do all of these. Others do one thing well.
Then decide whether you want a full program or a single channel. A full program makes sense when you have no digital operation yet, or when you want one team responsible for how ads, texts and creative work together. A single-channel hire makes sense when you already have strong in-house staff and a gap in one area, such as texting.
Write down your constraints too: your budget for the cycle, your fundraising goal, key deadlines, who on your side can approve messages and how fast. A firm can only give you a straight answer if you give it a straight picture.
Questions to ask every firm
How they attribute donations
Ask the firm to walk you through how a single donation gets credited to the ad or text that produced it. The answer should be specific. On ActBlue, that usually means a unique refcode on every ad and every text, so each contribution is matched to its source. On EveryAction, source codes do the same job.
Then ask whether you can see the underlying records, not only a summary slide. You should be able to trace a reported total back to individual contributions. Ask whether later recurring installments stay credited to the ad or text that started the gift, and what they do with money that cannot be matched. A credible firm counts unmatched money separately and says so. It does not quietly assign it to whatever channel looks best.
Who writes and who approves
Find out who writes your ads and texts, who designs the creative and whether that work is done in-house or passed to subcontractors. Then ask how approvals work. You want a defined step where someone on your side signs off on every message before it goes out, with a record of what was approved and when. A firm that sends first and asks forgiveness later will eventually send something you would never have approved.
Who owns the lists, accounts and data
Settle ownership before you sign. Your ad accounts, your donation pages, your texting list and your opt-out list should belong to your organization. The firm should work in them as a partner with access you can revoke. Ask in writing what you get at the end of the engagement: full exports of your subscribers, consent records, opt-outs and reporting history.
How they handle compliance
Ask how the firm handles paid-for-by disclaimers on ads, platform authorization for political and issue advertising, carrier registration for texting, consent records, quiet hours and opt-outs. Ask who on their team owns compliance and how they work with your counsel. Rules differ between candidate committees, PACs, independent expenditure committees and 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations, so the firm should ask which you are and adjust. If the answer is vague, assume the practice is too.
What reporting you get and how often
Ask to see a sample report or a demo of their dashboard. Agree on a cadence: a live view you can check any time, a regular written summary and a call. Reports should show money raised, donations and recurring gifts by ad and by send, alongside costs and unsubscribes. Rates should come with the number of donations behind them, so you are not making decisions on a handful of gifts.
How fees work
Firms charge in a few common ways: a flat monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, a percentage of money raised, a per-message or production fee, or a mix. Each creates an incentive. A share of money raised can push a firm toward volume and aggressive asks. A share of ad spend rewards spending more. A flat fee rewards doing less. None of these is wrong on its own. Ask the firm to explain its structure in plain terms, put it in writing, and think about what it encourages. If you are a 501(c)(3), check with counsel before agreeing to pay a percentage of contributions, because some states regulate those arrangements.
How to judge their track record
Many firms keep client results confidential, and they should. You will not always get exact revenue figures, and a firm that freely shares other clients' numbers may share yours too. What a good firm can show you is its attribution method, how it reports, and real examples of its work: ads it made, texts it wrote, how a program was structured. References from current or past clients tell you more than any slide.
Red flags
- Attribution that cannot be explained beyond "our platform tracks it" or totals you cannot trace to individual donations.
- No approval step, or approvals that happen after the fact.
- Ad accounts, pages or lists set up in the firm's name, or vague answers about what you get when you leave.
- Fake deadlines, invented matches, guilt-heavy copy and high send frequency with no attention to unsubscribes. These tactics raise money for a few weeks and then wear out your list.
- Guarantees about how much you will raise.
- A pitch that arrives before they have asked about your goals, your audience and your constraints.
What a good first 30 days looks like
The first month tells you a lot about how the rest will go. Expect something like this:
- A kickoff where the firm asks about your goals, voice, audiences, deadlines, past results and who approves what.
- Access set up correctly: your ad accounts and donation pages shared with the firm, texting registration started, a shared opt-out list in place.
- An agreed refcode scheme so every ad and text is tracked from day one, and a reporting view you can open yourself.
- A first round of creative and copy, sent through approval before anything runs.
- Small initial tests across audiences and messages, with spend and send volume increased once results are readable.
- A first report that is honest about what is working, what is too early to judge and what the firm plans to change.
By the end of the month you should know who your contacts are, how to approve a message, where to see your numbers and what the next month's plan is. If any of that is still fuzzy, raise it then.
This is general information, not legal advice. Check specifics with your compliance counsel.
If you want a firm that writes, designs and runs your fundraising ads and texts with your approval on every message and attribution you can check, talk to us.