Parties and movements
Membership, regular donors, tax designation schemes, major gifts. The continuous fundraising that keeps the structure standing between one vote and the next.
Consulting
Political fundraising.
I raise money for people running for office, for people taking a referendum to the ballot and for people keeping a movement alive. Parties, electoral committees, civic campaigns: brutal timelines, strict disclosure rules, no second chance. It is the hardest discipline in fundraising and it is the one I do best.
Who I work for
Anyone with an election date and an empty war chest.
Candidates and electoral committees
The individual campaign: inner circle, contact lists, events, direct asks. From the first cheque to the final report filed by the campaign treasurer.
Referendums and signature drives
Signatures and money arrive together: whoever signs is your first donor. Funnels, street stalls, digital collection and converting signers into givers.
Civic campaigns and mobilisations
Committees, coalitions, single-issue campaigns. Often with no structure and no budget: everything gets built from scratch, fast.
Political associations and think tanks
Organisations doing advocacy and political education: membership fees, grants, funded projects, relationships with companies and foundations.
Non-profits with a political agenda
Associations that will not stop at delivering services and want to change a law. Fundraising changes accordingly: here the cause is the product.
What I do
From the plan to the bank account, with the numbers underneath.
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01
Fundraising plan
How much you need, by when, and where it can come from. The target split by channel and by week, with the floor below which the campaign does not stand up. No slides: one sheet saying who calls whom, and when.
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02
Small donors and recurring gifts
The small-donation machine: a donation page that converts, email sequences, SMS, social, suggested amounts, recurring plans. Slow to start, and it pays for years — long after the vote.
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03
Major donors and companies
Who they are, who knows them, who makes the ask and in what words. Profiling from public sources, a script for the meeting, the number to ask for. The part almost nobody wants to do, and the one that brings the starting cash.
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04
Membership and tax designation
Campaigns for membership fees and for tax designation schemes: lists, messages, reminders in the right months, measurement the year after. Small per person but predictable — and chronically neglected.
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05
Platforms, data and CRM
Donations, signatures, volunteers and contacts in one place, with receipts and reports that come out by themselves. I build the platform if there is none, or connect it to what you already have.
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06
Transparency and compliance
Recording donations, declaring what must be declared, knowing what will become public. Transparency is not a nuisance: it is the argument that convinces hesitant donors.
The rules of the game
How political fundraising works in Italy.
Giving to a party is legal, and it pays
Private individuals and private companies may fund parties, movements and committees. Anyone giving to a party on the official register is entitled to a tax deduction: a concrete argument to put in the ask, not a detail to hide at the bottom of the page.
Above the threshold, a donation becomes public
Over a certain annual amount the donation must be declared and ends up in the lists the Chamber of Deputies publishes. Anyone will be able to look it up, forever. Tell the donor before they sign, not after: it is a matter of respect, and of trust.
There are caps, and excluded donors
There is an annual limit on what a single donor may give to the same party, and some bodies cannot fund politics at all: public administrations, state-owned companies and other cases set out in law. You check before banking the money, not after.
Tax designation is an income stream almost nobody cultivates
Italian taxpayers can assign 2 per mille of their income tax to an eligible party. It costs the taxpayer nothing, it is worth a great deal to the recipient, and a laughably small minority of people use it. It has the best effort-to-result ratio of any channel.
This is the practical summary I use in daily work. Amounts, thresholds and filing duties change over time and by type of organisation, so every campaign has to be checked with your accountant or campaign treasurer — and outside Italy, with local advisers, because the rules differ country by country. If you want the actual numbers on donations to Italian parties, I put them all online at finanziamentipartiti.it.
In the field
Real campaigns, not examples.
I have worked on fundraising for election campaigns, referendums and civil disobedience campaigns, and I built the tools those campaigns use.
- €212Min party funding tracked and made searchable on finanziamentipartiti.it
- 135,554donations catalogued from the official PDFs of the Chamber of Deputies
- 27languages of the European petition My Last Right, with donations wired to the CRM
Frequently asked
What people ask before we start.
Who can raise political money in Italy?
Parties and movements on the official register, electoral lists, individual candidates' committees, referendum committees and political associations. They can take donations from private individuals and private companies; public bodies and state-owned companies are excluded. Reporting duties differ by type of organisation, and that is the first thing to settle before opening the taps.
How much can someone donate, and what happens to the donor?
Italy sets an annual cap per donor per party, and giving to a registered party earns a tax deduction. Above a certain threshold the donation must be declared and appears in the public lists published by the Chamber of Deputies: public, searchable by anyone, forever. Donors should be told that before they sign, not after.
How long does fundraising for an election campaign last?
The useful window opens well before polling day and closes on it. In practice you need at least eight to ten weeks to build lists, materials and ask sequences. With less time you still raise money, but only from the circle closest to the candidate: family, friends, long-standing supporters.
A few large donors or many small ones?
Both, at different moments. Major donors and the inner circle provide the starting cash that lets you move. Small donations come later, once the campaign is visible, and they are worth more than the money they bring: they are public proof that someone is behind you. A campaign living on large cheques alone is fragile, and easy to attack.
Does a political campaign need a CRM?
Yes, and it does not have to be expensive. You need one place where donations, signatures, volunteers and contacts live together, because the same person is often all three. Without it you lose half the work the day after the vote and start from scratch at the next campaign. I built two of them, Mira and Forager, for exactly this reason.
Do you work on campaigns outside Italy?
Yes. Political finance rules differ country by country, so outside Italy I work alongside your local legal and accounting advisers: they own compliance, I bring the strategy, the machinery and the tools. I have worked on European coalitions spanning 16 countries and on a petition running in 27 languages.
Do you work for any side of politics?
No. I work with people fighting for civil rights, the rule of law and individual freedoms, in Italy and in Europe. It is a choice, not a pose: you only raise money well for a cause you believe in. If we disagree on that, better to say so on the first call.
Got a deadline and an empty war chest?
Half an hour on the phone, free: you tell me the target, the timeline and what you already have, I tell you whether and how it can be done. If I am not the right person, I will say so straight away.