On Tuesday night, several hundred Republican donors gathered in the Presidential Ballroom at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue for a fund-raiser to unofficially kick off Trump’s 2020 re-election. Trumpworld eminences including Vice President Mike Pence, campaign manager Brad Parscale, and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway were on hand to pitch donors to sign on as “bundlers” that would leverage their networks to help the Trump campaign raise Parscale’s stated goal of $1 billion by Election Day. The event was the brainchild of longtime Bush family supporter Jack Oliver, who pioneered the bundler model for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election and has been tapped by Parscale to win over establishment donors that shunned Trump in 2016. Donors that raise $100,000 will qualify to join the “Builders Club” and earn perks such as campaign dinners, briefings and “commemorative Trump Victory gifts.”

It’s going to be a hard sell. According to sources, Trump campaign officials are sounding the alarm over the president’s early fund-raising hauls. Trump’s son Don Jr. has privately warned donors that Trump only raised around $30 million in the last quarter, and pointed out that the number fell far short of the roughly $45 million Barack Obama raised in the second quarter of 2011 for his 2012 re-election bid, according to a source briefed on the conversations (A source close to Don Jr. disputed this). “They need more money, and there’s no enthusiasm. They need to amp it up,” a Trump donor told me. “Wall Street never liked Trump from the beginning. Goldman is filled with people who were Obama fund-raisers,” another Trump donor told me. In 2016, Trump raised only about $351 million. Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign took in $483 million.

Sources say the anemic fund-raising is being driven by several factors. The biggest is Trump himself. Trump’s shambolic governing style and endless tweeting are exhausting donors. “There’s Trump fatigue,” the longtime Republican donor told me. “The 2020 bumper sticker should be: ‘Same Policies, but We Promise Less Crazy.’” Then there’s Trump’s difficult re-election pathway. According to a source, some donors aren’t stepping up because Trump’s numbers in must-win states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin continue to disappoint.

Another problem is the dysfunction in Trump’s donor-outreach effort. Simply put, donors feel ignored. “There’s no follow-through,” said a donor who’s interacted with the campaign. “They don’t return favors,” another donor said. One former administration official said some donors are upset at the slow pace of confirming ambassadorships and political appointments. “Donors are not being taken care of,” the official said. “All these people were supposed to be ambassadors by now, but they’ve been slow-rolled. Trump is furious.”

Tempering these concerns is the fact that’s it’s still early, and Trump has assembled a small-dollar donor machine. Since January 2017, Trump has raised $150 million, a source close to the campaign said. On top of that, the 20-plus-candidate Democratic field will likely drain Democratic donors’ coffers while Trump can sit back and build his general-election war chest. And the Democrats’ leftward drift may inspire Republicans to hold their noses and donate to Trump. “The Dems’ lurch to the left and A.O.C. talk has rocked Wall Street,” a prominent establishment Republican said. “We find a lot of people who were on the sidelines are donating,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told me. “We have a very robust high-dollar effort led by Todd Ricketts at the RNC. Our bundling program, which we didn’t have in 2016, just kicked off. It’s going to be fruitful. Jack Oliver is providing excellent guidance. We are pleased with our fundraising apparatus.”