Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced a new initiative Monday that will give his followers a cut of the action if they prod their friends, family, and social media followers to help fill his fledgling campaign’s coffers.
His most ardent supporters will now be able to join a program called "Vivek’s Kitchen Cabinet" and share a personalized donation link as widely as they wish. If their entreaties are successful, they will get a commission equal to 10%.
It remains to be seen if donors will be eager to openly split their donations between their friends and the candidate, but it is being billed by the campaign as a way to revolutionize grassroots political fundraising. Ben Yoho, Ramaswamy’s campaign head, told Yahoo Finance in an interview much of the inspiration came from the candidate's own time in the business world.
"Like anything in business and in campaigns, you see what works and what doesn't," Yoho said of the new effort. He said the program is an attempt to further engage supporters on a variety of fronts — from donations to campaign fieldwork to turning out on election day.
"I believe this will break the dam open," he added.
In addition to cold hard cash, the campaign says the program will also include other elements, like a personal digital dashboard to track progress, free campaign merchandise, access to special events, and calls with the candidate.
A novel approach to fundraising
There are limited public examples of campaign programs of this nature.
Professional campaign fundraisers most commonly are paid with salaries or monthly retainers for their services. Performance bonuses could be linked to the amount of donations that he or she solicits, but less common are fundraising arrangements that give the solicitor such a direct cut of the money they shake loose.
But it’s far from unprecedented.
A 2015 New York Times investigation into the world of donor advisors — some of whom have earned commissions from the donations they line up — highlighted the practice but also a key downside: Donors often get turned off when they learn that not all of their money is headed to the candidate.
Overall, the campaign hopes it can capitalize on recent trends like influencer marketing to, as Yoho put it, "bring some folks across the line for us" as a supplement to the campaign’s more traditional fundraising methods. The Ramaswamy campaign promises that the program will abide by all existing laws and Federal Election Commission regulations and train people who sign up on the law.
Ramaswamy finds himself currently fighting for public attention as he aims to position himself as a viable alternative to current frontrunner Donald Trump. He has gained traction with a message focused largely on assailing corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives.
One recent poll raised eyebrows and found Ramaswamy sitting third, just six points behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Other surveys have shown him lower but still competitive with much better-known figures like former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence.
His campaign also says he has received money from over 60,000 donors, more than enough to secure a spot on the all-important first GOP debate stage on August 23.
Why should political fundraisers 'monopolize political fundraising'?
Ramaswamy made a fortune after he founded a biotech company called Roivant Sciences (ROIV). He stepped down as CEO in 2021.
At Roivant, Ramaswamy became known for his practice of buying up the rights to drugs that had been discarded by other companies. He would then build teams around them with lucrative incentives to bring drugs to market as quickly as possible in that highly uncertain industry.
It's a practice that Yoho says has partly inspired this move in the political sphere, noting that "when [Ramaswamy] first built Roivant, that came out of the idea that the scientists weren't incentivized."
Not all attempts were successful. Ramaswamy's most public move was around an Alzheimer’s drug candidate. He purchased it from GlaxoSmithKline for just $5 million and then helped spin it into a company called Axovant Sciences (AXON) that was initially valued at nearly $3 billion.
The drug later failed in a large clinical trial, and the valuation of the company — which had since been renamed to Sio Gene Therapies — didn't hold.
Of this week’s announcement, Ramaswamy said in a statement that "as a political outsider and first-time candidate, I was stunned to discover the degree to which the political class cashes in on the electoral process. I found out that most professional political fundraisers get a cut of the money they raise — why should they monopolize political fundraising? They shouldn’t."
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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