Conservatives are catching up to the Left when it comes to digital donation prowess. While the Left is known for employing the fundraising behemoth ActBlue, Republicans increasingly have their own formidable fundraising platform called WinRed.
Ryan Lyk, the CEO of WinRed, described the organization’s mission as helping, “Republican candidates raise more money online, grow a strong small-dollar donor network, and, most importantly, to help our candidates win.”
ActBlue has no doubt contributed to keeping Democrat positions and candidates ahead of Republicans in fundraising numbers in the past, but WinRed is working to close that gap. The organization has seen massive state-level growth with an increase in first time donors of 802% from 2020 to 2024 and an increase in unique emails collected of 884% over the same time period.
Additionally, the group has seen a nearly 60% increase in the number of account sign-ups for campaigns from January to June 2025 compared to the same months in 2021. It raised $1.8 billion from 4.5 million donors during the 2024 election season. ActBlue maintains an impressive lead for now, generating a whopping $3.8 billion during the 2024 election cycle.
WinRed has now been rapidly adopted by major players in Republican politics including 81% of GOP primary winners and 97% of GOP general election winners in 2024. The organization’s services are open to any Republican candidate running for office in local, state, or federal elections as well as conservative oriented PACs, C3s, and C4s.
The group has processed $5.6 billion for campaigns and has 8.8 million individual donors. It touts its customer service reporting that it does not send any text messages to donors or make donor data available to be purchased. Instead, only the campaign the donor has given to gets his or her data. WinRed has a 3.2% flat processing fee for donations of $500 or more, and it also has the capacity to set up special accounts for campaigns to track high-dollar fundraising. Its grassroots processing fee rate is 3.94%, which is comparable to ActBlue’s 3.95% processing fee.
ActBlue has come under scrutiny in recent months over its governance and operations. The Republican chairmen of the House committees on the Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, and Administration wrote a letter in April requesting documents from the group and testimony from two of its members. The House Republican leaders said they were investigating, “ActBlue’s fraud-prevention policies and practices, which may allow bad actors to make fraudulent political donations, including from foreign sources.”
Replying to an inquiry by The Daily Signal, an ActBlue spokesperson said, “As we have historically done, ActBlue will continue to respond to requests from the House committees.”