YARDLEY, PA- Cars slowly fill in the parking lot of that serves the cluster of buildings that make up the Lower-Makefield community center just as the sun is starting to set on this Thursday evening. Inside the municipal building locals, mostly faces you would expect to see at the high school PTA meeting,  much on a spread of coffee and doughnuts and catch up on town happenings and family events, the few teenagers present joke around with each other before their meeting is official called to order.

Karen Vaner Lann, the chair of the Lower-Makefield Democrats stands at a table in the front of the room and calls for everyone to take their seats. The room settles and the meeting’s usual business is conducted, it the final stretch until the state primary in just two weeks, there is a call for volunteers to canvas the neighborhood, or work at the local phone bank.

Once a volunteer sign-up sheet is sent around the treasure of the club Zachary Rubin, stands and announces the prices of dues, $25 per member, or $35 per family.

“Where does the money from dues go,” ask a new member joining the meeting for the first time that night. Rubin explains that if the club votes to endorse a certain candidate, part of their dues money will be donated to said candidate, the rest is held in reserve to cover the cost of booking meeting space and endorsing other candidates should the organization decide to put that to a vote.

One such candidate is present at this meeting; Perry Warren is hoping to hold the seat for State Representative for the 31^st district in Pennsylvania’s statehouse. He is unopposed in the Democratic Party but that does not mean campaign fundraising is any less important.

“Well the first step when running office, at almost any level but at the state level in particular is to write out a list of everyone in your personal network and a dollar amount you are comfortable asking them to donate, and then start making phone calls,” said Warren’s campaign manager David Marshall. Personal connections and receiving donations from potential constituents and voters makes a significant impact on statehouse politics.

Another strategy that Marshall has found useful in his experience with campaigns is to reach out to donors who have given to similar candidates in neighboring districts that are not a part of the current election cycle, its highly likely that will contribute to similar candidates, or candidates of the same party in order to gain allies within the statehouse after the election.

“A major key in obtaining any kind of funds at all, for any campaign, weather its politics or not is that you have to create a campaign that people will support,” said Marshall, “so in this case its creating a platform that constituents and donors can support.”

In Pennsylvania there are no contribution limits, so individuals, companies, PACs, and special interest groups can donate as large of a sum as they would like to a campaign, without having to go through or set up a Super PAC.

Having no limits to monetary amount a group can contribute has been very useful to the Warren campaign.  Marshall reports that they have been able reach to special interest groups and PACs that have similar demographics to the constituents they are trying to reach. Disclosing the names of these special donors to constituents also proves to be a useful campaign tool, as when residents see that an organization they support also supports a specific candidate it may sway them to vote along the same lines.

“I’m happy to report that we have hit all of our fundraising goals each period this cycle,” said Marshall, “we well exceeded our goal at our last fundraiser and we received an endorsement from the House Democratic Campaign, which I predict will only further add to our success.”