WinRed is a for-profit fundraising platform built for the GOP. It was built to compete with the older Democratic platform ActBlue. The GOP, the Trump re-election campaign, and other state-wide and local-level races across the United States used the platform as of late 2019, with nearly 800 campaigns using the platform by May 2020. Unlike ActBlue, WinRed does not publicly disclose donation levels. WinRed merged Revv, a GOP payment processing firm founded in December 2014 by Gerrit Lansing, and DataTrust, the party's voter data repository. The platform allows one-click donations.
History
noted that a contributing factor to Democratic success in the 2018 midterm elections was the party's ability to take in online small-dollar donations, in part through their platform ActBlue. WinRed was built to allow Republicans to compete with this capacity. GOP leadership began discussing the possibility of building a competitor to ActBlue within days of the 2018 midterm results. WinRed was called Patriot Pass in its initial announcements, with an expected release date of February 2019. The name was changed following Robert Kraft's complaints that the name resembled that of his football team, the New England Patriots. In 2019, the RNC and the Trump administration applied heavy pressure to incentivize all Republican campaigns to use the platform. In April 2020, the platform expanded its previous representation of only federal-level candidates, opening support to state- and local-level races.
Revenue
WinRed took in $30 million in its first three months after launch, $100 million in its first six, and over $130 million in the first quarter of 2020. Donald Trump was the largest beneficiary, with six senators raising at least $1 million each. Gerrit Lansing, the founder of WinRed, as well as well as various Republican operatives, attributed some of this success to the impeachment effort at the time. In the day afterTrump's impeachment was announced, the Trump campaign and the RNC received over $5 million. Lansing reported that Trump had received 52% of overall donations as of May 2020.
Competitors
As part of party negotiations to launch WinRed, the platform Victory Pass was expected to close. The nonpartisan platform Anedot was not involved in discussions among party leadership. The Trump administration sent a cease and desist letter to WinRed's rival Anedot. The Republican State Leadership Committee revoked access to the "Give.GOP" website, which re-branded and re-launched in July 2019 as "Right.us". Any Republican candidate or lawmaker who uses Anedot or Give.GOP no longer receives support from the Republican Party.
Reception
Following the aggressive push for Republican campaigns to use WinRed, many party officials, fundraisers, and campaign operatives criticized the effort on several grounds. Some critiqued the requirement that campaigns use WinRed, arguing that the effort pushed aside older services preferred by campaigns like Anedot or Give.GOP. Others expressed concern about profits, noting that it was unclear who stood to gain from use of the service and comparing the higher fees of WinRed to those of competitors. In the weeks following launch, state officials and campaign operatives pushed back against the Republican party's consolidation behind WinRed, arguing that the party's acceptance of a monopoly over fundraising violated free-market principles. In addition, they expressed concern that the platform might constitute a money and data grab.
