With $80 Million July Haul, Trump Narrows Fundraising Gap With Clinton 
 
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 The fundraising gap between the Clinton and Trump campaigns shrank in July. Altogether, the Trump campaign and affiliated joint fundraising committees took in around $80 million last month, the campaign reported Wednesday, plus $2 million from Donald Trump himself. In contrast, Hillary Clinton's organization and committees brought in about $90 million in July, that campaign reported on Tuesday. 
 
 That's a significantly tighter gap than in June, when Trump's total was $51 million to Clinton's $69 million. 
 
 Those figures include the fundraising of both the campaigns and their joint fundraising committees, which allow rich donors to give hundreds of thousands of dollars, which then gets divided up among the campaigns, the national party committees and state parties. 
 
 The Trump campaign has been boasting of how many small donations it has been receiving, saying in a Wednesday statement that those donations were up by 69 percent in July. At a Monday campaign event, Trump said his campaign had raised $35.8 million in small donations over the course of a month. 
 
 Clinton's campaign committee itself reported it raised about $63 million in July. Trump's campaign release doesn't break down exactly how much the campaign itself brought in. The full July fundraising reports from both campaigns must be filed at the Federal Election Commission by Aug. 20. 
 
 Clinton still has significantly more money in the bank than Trump; her campaign has $58 million on hand, compared to Trump's $37 million. However, this is a big improvement for Trump over just a couple of months ago. At the start of June, Trump had only around $1.3 million on hand, compared to Clinton's $42 million. 
 
 Trump's stronger fundraising could help even out the massive advertising gap between the two candidates. Thus far, Clinton's camp has aired $68 million in ads, compared to Trump's $6 million, NBC News reported on Tuesday. Even more staggering, Clinton had reserved $98 million in TV ad time, compared to Trump's $817,000, NBC also reported. ||||| Moreover, Mr. Trump’s surge is coming very late in the campaign, at a point where advertising rates climb and the chance to invest in a long-term digital and campaign infrastructure is long past. 
 
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 And Mrs. Clinton’s own fund-raising operation is rapidly expanding as well. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said that her campaign and a joint fund-raising operation with the Democratic National Committee had $102 million on hand, not including cash held directly by the party. 
 
 But Mr. Trump’s announcement suggests that after months of dithering and false starts, he has begun to exploit an opportunity: marrying his powerful credibility among grass-roots Republicans with targeted small-donor fund-raising, particularly online, where Mr. Trump’s website features buttons soliciting $50, $25 and even $10 contributions. 
 
 At the end of May, Mr. Trump reported barely more than $1.3 million in cash, alarming Republicans, who feared a financial rout by Mrs. Clinton. 
 
 Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee and a wealthy man in his own right, was never able to stoke intense enthusiasm among small donors and relied disproportionately on big ones. During July of that year, for example, Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee reported raising a total of just $19 million from contributions of less than $200. 
 
 Mr. Trump was able to ramp up quickly in part through a digital operation set up by the R.N.C. since that campaign. Even before Mr. Trump was the nominee, the party built out its email list and tested ways of targeting small donors. 
 
 With that in place, party officials unleashed a pent-up desire by rank-and-file Republicans to donate to a candidate who has bluntly attacked lobbyists and big donors. While Mr. Trump accepted online donations during the primary season, he did not send out an email solicitation until late June — which brought in $3 million alone, an indication of the well of money available to him. 
 
 The campaign has also raised money by promising to match small donations out of Mr. Trump’s pocket, a tactic available only to wealthy candidates. 
 
 “There was always that potential, but you didn’t have candidates who were as uniquely positioned in the same way that Trump is,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist who ran digital fund-raising at the Republican National Committee under President George W. Bush. 
 
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 But Mr. Trump’s surge also emphasizes the complication for Republicans in having him at the head of their party. He is relying more on small-donor fund-raising in part because he has faced opposition from some of the party’s biggest patrons, such as Meg Whitman, a California business executive, who said Monday that she was so disgusted with Mr. Trump that she would vote for Mrs. Clinton. 
 
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 To bolster his low-dollar fund-raising, Mr. Trump and his team are now working to assuage the broader pool of affluent Republican donors and fund-raisers. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has laid off his criticisms of the party’s donor class and scheduled an array of formal fund-raising events for Republican donors in money centers like Florida and New York. 
 
 Moreover, even as his name and followers are helping fund Republican get-out-the-vote efforts around the country, Mr. Trump is feuding with the party’s senior leadership, pointedly refusing to endorse prominent Republicans facing Trump-inspired primary opponents, such as the one challenging Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the House speaker. 
 
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 And it is the Republican National Committee that is providing much of the technical expertise that has allowed Mr. Trump to quickly increase his low-dollar fund-raising, some Republican officials said. 
 
 Even as relations fray between Mr. Trump and some fellow Republicans, the party and Mr. Trump each needs the other. And Mr. Trump, as the nominee and the fund-raising tent pole for the party, may have the upper hand. 
 
 “Under normal circumstances, the party would have money as leverage,” Mr. Ruffini said. “They could cut off fund-raising to a candidate who misbehaves. And that leverage has been taken completely away.” ||||| Story highlights The Trump campaign says it raised $80 million in July 
 
 But the campaign struggled to make a significant dent in tapping bigger donors 
 
 (CNN) Donald Trump's campaign posted $80 million in fundraising last month in conjunction with the Republican Party, powered by a small-dollar program that is allowing him to slowly close the gap with Hillary Clinton. 
 
 The Trump campaign and its joint fundraising operation with the GOP now boast $74 million in cash-on-hand. That nears the $102 million the Democrats banked after their July fundraising, per Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin. 
 
 And with 80% of the Trump campaign's haul last month coming in through direct fundraising appeals, the success of its digital and direct mail operation is giving senior Republicans hope that their nominee can compensate for his poor relationship with traditional, deep-pocketed Republican donors to still compete with Clinton in the general election. 
 
 "Few Republicans can do that," Trump said of his low-dollar fundraising at a rally Wednesday evening in Jacksonville, Florida. "Maybe no Republican can do that." 
 
 Still, Trump continues to struggle mightily to collect checks from the country's top donors and continues to trail the Clinton campaign in fundraising and cash-on-hand totals despite not yet spending any money on TV advertising or significant investments in campaign infrastructure. 
 
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– After a week full of headlines likely to have Donald Trump's advisers tearing their hair out, there's a bright spot for his campaign: He's narrowing the fundraising gap with Hillary Clinton, helped by a Bernie Sanders-style flood of small donations, NPR reports. The Trump campaign says it and joint fundraising committees raised $82 million in July—including $2 million from Trump himself—compared to around $90 million for Clinton, who ended the month with $58 million on hand, compared to $37 million for Trump, whose campaign was $40 million behind Clinton at the beginning of June, with just $1.3 million on hand. The Trump campaign says the bulk of the cash has come from small donations, most of them made online, reports the New York Times, which notes that this is a big change for a campaign that was "largely funded by hat and T-shirt sales and by Mr. Trump's wallet" until recently. "We are extremely proud of our 69% growth in small-dollar donations, which shows the broad-based support of over 1 million donors across America," says Steven Mnuchin, Trump's finance chairman, per CNN. Small donors may be Trump's only chance of closing the fundraising gap: Major GOP donors and fundraisers have been steering clear of his campaign, including Meg Whitman, who says she will raise funds for Clinton instead.