Federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair greets participants at the annual Labour Day parade in Toronto, Monday, Sept.1, 2014.Adam Miller/The Canadian Press
Thomas Mulcair's New Democrats are taking a page from Barack Obama's playbook in a bid to close the fundraising gap with the Conservatives and Liberals, ramping up their digital fundraising push as Canada's political parties face the end of taxpayer subsidies.
This year, the NDP hired Blue State Digital – a firm with ties to Obama campaigns – and its own in-house digital director to boost the party's online fundraising and outreach. The moves come as the NDP trails its two main rivals in total fundraising, but also as digital campaigns carve out a bigger share of party efforts.
A key pillar of digital campaigns is e-mail fundraising, which all three parties now widely employ. A recent NDP e-mail, sent through Blue State Digital, targeted Stephen Harper in a bid to solicit donations from NDP faithful. Meanwhile, the Conservatives regularly send out their own fundraising e-mails, with recent ones invoking a need to fight the "media elite." Some such e-mails are also designed to build detailed lists, such as a Liberal offer of a free sticker for people who handed over a mailing address, e-mail and date-of-birth.
For the NDP, the digital push is most sorely needed: the party has brought in $16-million in donations over its past eight quarterly reports, compared to the Liberals' $22-million and the Tories' $36-million. The party also had, on average, 10,000 fewer donors every quarter than its rivals and is about to lose a key income stream: political parties will receive their final taxpayer-financed per-vote subsidies in January.
Fundraising will now have to sustain the parties. The NDP's digital push is being led by Michael Roy, 32, a former B.C. NDP spokesman who became the federal party's first digital director in June.
"We're past the point of, 'well, let's see if we can get a staffer to dabble in this.' [Digital strategies] are core components of fundraising, mobilization and marketing now. And that was part of the move for the party in establishing a digital department," Mr. Roy said in an interview. "...Certainly, for us, digital fundraising will be a piece of closing the financial gap with the other parties."
The Liberals and Conservatives have digital departments, though each party has a single fundraising boss. Jaime Girard is the Conservative director of fundraising and membership, though the party declined to detail its approach.
Christina Topp is the Liberals' senior director of fundraising, overseeing online and traditional fundraising efforts. Ms. Topp said digital fundraising made up one-third of Liberal fundraising revenue in 2013 (a figure that can't be confirmed through public Elections Canada figures). Online donors are often younger, though not always, and tend to be "higher value," she said.
Digital campaigns are "relatively inexpensive, and they're responsive and nimble," Ms. Topp said in an interview. It also allows parties to test responses "to see what works with different kinds of people, then you can adapt your message," she added.
Conservative e-mails are typically aggressive, attacking the Liberals, NDP or media to drum up support. "As a fundraiser, I can only assume they're doing it because it works," says Ms. Topp, who said the Liberals instead find more success in prying loose donations with positive messaging.
Mr. Roy said one key to digital fundraising is to "not to be afraid of asking – and asking again and asking again" for support. "Chipping in $20 as a response to something your opponents do, or as support for a policy of yours, is a really meaningful way for a lot of people to engage an otherwise closed process of politics," Mr. Roy said.
Mr. Roy said NDP digital fundraising has grown in double-digit increments each quarter since the start of 2013 (a figure that can't be confirmed through public Elections Canada figures). He drew similarities between the Obama and NDP campaigns. "The lightning in the bottle that Obama had in 2008 was gone in 2012. They had to work a lot harder for it. So, with what Jack Layton brought in 10 years of campaigning, we're going to have to work a lot harder this time. The stakes are much higher," Mr. Roy said.
Josh Wingrove is a parliamentary reporter in Ottawa.