WASHINGTON — Even as he collects checks as big as $814,600 for his campaign efforts, Donald Trump’s hopes of erasing President Joe Biden’s current financial advantage in the 2024 election likely rest with his millions of followers who over eight years have already given him $1.5 billion in small-dollar donations.

“And they’re happy to give it,” said one Trump campaign adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s fatigue, obviously. But other than Obama, he’s the best there is. Certainly the best Republicans have ever had.”

Barack Obama broke fundraising records in the 2008 presidential election and created a new paradigm for political campaigns by aggressively seeking out donors who would give $20, $10 or even $2, but would do so on multiple occasions.

Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to successfully follow that model during his 2016 run. In his 2020 reelection campaign, he raised $953 million by sending his supporters repeated text message and email solicitations, compared with $496 million from those attending expensive fundraising events.

But the coup-attempting former president continued hitting up his followers for money after losing in 2020, at first by falsely claiming he would use it for legal challenges to the election result, and then by claiming he needed it to push his agenda, even though more than $100 million of the $347 million he raised through his Save America fundraising committee went to pay his legal bills.

Trump’s 2024 campaign said it raised more than $50 million at a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this month. That was followed by a $5 million event in Atlanta and an $8 million gathering in Orlando, as well as numerous smaller lunches and dinners at his West Palm Beach golf course and elsewhere that picked up between a half-million dollars and $2 million, the adviser said.

According to top Republicans, the campaign has an overall goal of raising between $750 million and $1 billion between March — when Trump locked up his third straight Republican nomination — and Election Day in November to run a competitive race against Biden.

But there are only so many billionaires and millionaires in America able and willing to write five- and six-figure checks to a presidential campaign, meaning that Trump again will be turning to his small-dollar donors to produce big money.

“He’s going to need it this year, because he’s got nothing in the bank,” said a Republican National Committee member who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Whether that’s probable or even possible cannot be known just yet — the new vehicle for his small-dollar fundraising, the so-called Trump National Committee, was only formally organized in late March. In its first filing with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, it reported raising and spending exactly $0 through March 31.