The Republican fundraising platform

Conservative fundraising,
done honestly.

No pre-checked recurring boxes. No buried fees. No dark patterns. Built for campaigns, PACs, and committees that deserve better rails than what came before.

Federal  ·  State  ·  Local  ·  Candidates  ·  PACs  ·  Party committees

< 3%
Platform take rate
Below the 3.94% the dominant platform charges per credit card donation.
0
Pre-checked recurring boxes
Hard-banned at the platform level. The donor opts in or they don't.
Same day
Payouts to the committee
Daily payouts on a Stripe Connect sub-account. No waiting two to four business days.

What broke

The last generation of fundraising rails has receipts.

We're not pitching against a strawman. These are documented numbers from NYT, CNN, and the FEC record, plus the platforms' own pricing pages. The pitch starts here because the donor base already knows.

$122M
refunded in a single cycle

Pre-checked recurring and pre-checked 'money bomb' multipliers drove the dominant platform's 2020 operation to refund more than 10% of what it raised. State AGs in NY, CT, MD, and MN opened consumer-protection probes. The default is still optional today.

3.94%
headline rate, no donor tip needed

Standard credit card donations on the dominant Republican-side platform run 3.94%. That's deducted from the candidate. The opposing side charges 3.95% to the candidate AND pre-populates a separate donor tip on top.

2 to 4
business days for many payouts

Most committees on the other side wait 2 to 4 business days to see their money. For a campaign in the final 72 hours, that's a problem you can't fix with a better email.

Opaque
receipts that don't add up

Donors who try to read the breakdown find it hard to tell what reached the candidate, what was a tip, and what was processing. Trust in the rails is downstream of trust in the receipt.

Sources: New York Times (April 2021), CNN (July 2021, January 2022), Al Jazeera (July 2024), platform pricing pages (current).

What we built

A platform that earns donor trust on the first transaction.

Honest checkout

Recurring is OFF by default. Toggles are large and friendly. No second pre-checked surprise. Donors see exactly what the candidate will receive.

Sub-3% platform take

Stripe pass-through plus a flat platform fee that's published in plain English. No bundled processor opacity. No mandatory donor tip on top.

Same-day payouts

Each campaign gets its own Stripe Connect sub-account. Funds settle to the committee's bank on a daily cadence, not weekly.

Full coverage scope

Federal candidates, state and local candidates, PACs, party committees, and IE groups. One platform across the whole stack you actually raise on.

Embed anywhere

Drop the donation widget on any campaign site, Substack, X landing page, or static HTML. One <script> tag. Mobile-first checkout under 30 seconds.

FEC and state exports

One-click CSVs that match the format your treasurer already files. We don't file for you. We make filing twenty minutes instead of two days.

One-tap mobile checkout

Apple Pay and Google Pay native at checkout. ACH for high-dollar gifts at 0.8% capped. The donor finishes giving in under ten seconds on a phone.

Peer-to-peer pages

Any supporter can spin up their own donation page raising for the candidate. Friend-to-friend asks convert at multiples of cold links. Track who brought in what.

Petition pages

Capture name, email, and ZIP before the donation ask. Build the email list first, ask for money second. The strongest list-building tool in fundraising.

How it works

From committee paperwork to first donation in an afternoon.

01

Onboard the committee

FEC ID (or placeholder, finalized within 48 hours), KYC on the principals, Stripe Connect sub-account provisioned. About fifteen minutes start to finish.

02

Accept donations

Hosted donation page, embeddable widget, split-donation links, or a clean API. Donors get a receipt the moment they confirm. No surprises.

03

Get paid and file

Stripe pays out daily to the committee's bank account. One-click FEC and state CSV exports. Refund tools and donor portal included.

Inside the dashboard

What the campaign manager actually sees.

One screen. Live feed of donations as they land. Every active page you're running. Exports the treasurer needs. No menus to dig through, no consultant required to read the numbers.

freedomraise.com/committee/friends-of-john-smith

Today

$4,280
87 donations · 12 new donors

This week

$31,415
612 donations · 89 new donors

This cycle

$284,022
4,108 donations · avg gift $69

Live feed

live
  • $50Mary LambertEaston, PA · via P2P (Mary Smith for John)
  • $25J. PatelAllentown, PA · widget on johnsmith.com
  • $5K. DoeBethlehem, PA · QR on yard sign
  • $250R. GarciaReading, PA · hosted page
  • $10A. NguyenLancaster, PA · petition → donate

Active pages

  • johnsmith.com embed
    top performer this week
    $18,402
  • Defend the Border petition
    1,803 emails captured · $4,212 raised
    $4,212
  • PA-12 endorsement slate
    split across 3 committees
    $9,801

One-click reports

Formats match what your treasurer files. We don't file for you. We make filing twenty minutes instead of two days.

Phase 2 · Supergod tools

upgrade
  • · Daily talking points pushed every morning
  • · Auto speech writing in the candidate's voice
  • · Per-donor enrichment (employer, voting history, persona)
  • · Aggregated audience trend dashboards

Bundled for partner committees during launch. Sold as a campaign-manager seat afterwards.

Mockup with representative numbers. Actual data shown after committee onboarding and first donations.

Pricing, openly

Two ways to pay. You pick the one that fits.

We're letting our launch partners choose the model. Both are listed below in full so the math is visible. You can tell us which one should be the default in the deck further down this page.

Option A

Per donation

Pay only when you raise. Nothing fixed.

2.9% + $0.30Stripe pass-through (visible to the donor)
+ 0.9% FreedomRaise platform fee
Total under 3.9% on standard cards. Under 3% on donations over $500. Below the 3.94% headline rate we benchmark against.
  • · Stripe Connect sub-account per committee
  • · Same-day payouts
  • · All compliance exports included
  • · Donor portal and refund tools included

Option B

Flat SaaS

Predictable cost. Zero platform take on donations.

$0 / moThrough launch, for partner committees.
+ Stripe pass-through only (no platform take)
Every dollar above processing goes to the committee. Targeted at high-volume committees and party operations.
  • · Everything in Option A
  • · Custom subdomain and theming
  • · Priority support and onboarding
  • · First-look on Phase 2 AI tools

For comparison: the dominant Republican-side platform charges 3.94% standard, 3.2% on donations over $500. The opposing side charges 3.95% to the committee plus a pre-populated donor tip on top.

Coverage

Everything you raise for, we support.

One platform across the whole field. Per-candidate FEC cycle limits, state contribution caps, and reporting formats handled at the checkout layer. Your treasurer still files. We make the filing trivial.

Federal candidates
House, Senate, presidential. FEC limits enforced at checkout.
State candidates
All 50 states, each contribution regime supported.
Local candidates
Mayoral, judicial, school board, comptroller, sheriff.
PACs
Federal and state PACs, including connected and non-connected.
Party committees
National, state, district, and county committees.
IE groups
Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s with appropriate disclosures.

Trust & security

Donor data treated like the secret it is.

A breach of a political donor database is not a normal data incident. It's a list of who funded whom, exposed to retaliation, doxxing, and bad-faith reporting. We treat security as the most important feature, not a checkbox at the end.

We never see card data

Stripe Elements handles every donor's card directly from their browser to Stripe's servers. The full card number never touches FreedomRaise infrastructure. PCI scope: SAQ-A (the lightest available).

Minimum data, maximum encryption

We store the smallest set of donor information the FEC actually requires. Everything is encrypted at rest and in transit. Sensitive fields are tokenized. We never sell donor data.

Magic-link auth, mandatory 2FA

No passwords for campaign managers. No passwords for donors. Anyone with refund or payout permissions must use an authenticator-app 2FA on every login. No SMS-only MFA on critical actions.

Row-level access controls

A campaign manager for one committee cannot read, query, or accidentally see another committee's donor list. Postgres enforces this at the database layer, not the application layer.

SOC 2 vendors only

Stripe, Neon (Postgres), Vercel, Resend, Twilio, Sentry. Every vendor in the stack has a current SOC 2 Type II report. We review them annually.

Pentest before launch, annually after

An independent firm tests this platform before the first real donation. We run another every year. Any committee with security questions gets the latest report on request.

Responsible disclosureFound a vulnerability? We want to hear from you privately first. Email security@freedomraise.example with details. We commit to a response within one business day and a public-credit policy for responsibly disclosed findings.

Phase 2 · SaaS upsell

Make your campaign managers supergods.

The fundraising rails are the price of entry. The defensible product is the layer above: an AI workbench that turns a single campaign manager into the operating capacity of a full consulting bench.

Auto speech writing

Trained on the candidate's prior remarks, the day's news cycle, and the room they're walking into. First draft in 90 seconds. Edits, not blank pages.

Daily talking points

Every morning the manager gets the three things their candidate should say today, with the source links, sorted by which donor segment they move.

Curated intel feed

District-level news, opposition signals, donor activity, social momentum. One scroll instead of forty open tabs.

Per-donor enrichment

Every donation gets enriched with public records, voter file, employer, prior giving, and AI-inferred persona. Roll up per district, age band, ZIP, profession.

Audience trend dashboards

Where is the money tilting? Who's softening? Which message is moving them? Aggregated trends from the donor base, not a polling firm's guess.

Email and SMS copywriter

Generates compliance-checked outbound. Caps per recipient. A/B tests subject lines automatically. Honest unsubscribe handling, no dark patterns.

v1 surface

Polished web, mobile-first.

Every tool ships as a fast, responsive web app. Works the same on a phone in the green room as on a desk at HQ. No App Store review. No install friction.

When volume justifies

Native iOS and Android.

We'll ship a native campaign-manager app for push notifications ("$1,000 just landed from a new donor in PA-12"), live donation feeds for rallies, and AI talking points on the go. Donor checkout stays web-only forever; donations come from shared links, not apps.

Phase 2 is the premium tier. Bundled for partner committees during launch. Sold as a campaign-manager seat afterwards.

Tell us what you want first

Decide with us

The open questions. You answer. We build.

This platform is being designed with the people who'll actually use it. Below is the working list of decisions still in front of us. Pick what you'd want. Your answers save automatically and get sent to the founding team when you submit.

Progress0 of 5 key questions answered

Your draft saves automatically in this browser. Nothing leaves your device until you submit.

Question 1

How should this platform actually make money?

WinRed and ActBlue both take a cut. The right answer for us is the one our launch partners endorse.

Question 2

What should the recurring-donation default be?

The WinRed pre-checked recurring box is the single most-cited dark pattern in political fundraising.

Question 3

What committees should v1 support?

Question 4

Would you pay a SaaS upsell for AI tools that make a campaign manager into a 'supergod'?

Phase 2 idea. Speech writing, talking points, curated daily intel feed, donor enrichment, audience trends.

Question 5

How aggressive should donor data enrichment be?

We can deduce demographics, employer, voting history, prior giving, social profiles, and roll it up into campaign-level trend dashboards. Where's your comfort line?

Multi-select A

Which v1 features are non-negotiable for you?

Pick all that have to ship in the first release. The longer the list, the more we'll need to phase.

Multi-select B

Which Phase 2 AI tools would you want most?

The 'supergod' upsell. Pick what would justify the subscription.

Free response A

What would close the deal for you to switch to this platform?

Free response B

What's missing, wrong, or naive about this pitch?

You

How do we follow up?

Answers are saved to your browser as you go. Submitting sends a copy to us so we can act on it.

Live demo

See the donor experience.

Click through the full donor flow. No real money. No real signup. No pre-checked boxes. Just the product as it'll ship.

freedomraise.com/demo
1. pick amount [ $25 ] [ $50 ] [ $100 ] [ $250 ] [ ... ]
2. donor info name, email, address, employer, occupation
3. payment card . exp . cvc . zip
4. confirm no pre-checked anything
5. done receipt sent, exact split shown
30 seconds end to end on mobile. Same flow on desktop.

A note from the founders

Built by people who actually use it.

The pitch is simple. Conservative donors deserve rails that don't trick them. Conservative campaigns deserve a platform that pays them on the day they raised the money. Conservative managers deserve tools that match what the other side already has. We're building all three, on a foundation of honest defaults. If that sounds right to you, answer the deck above and we'll talk this week.