Latest / Pod Save America / Why are Fundraising Texts SO Annoying?

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Why are Fundraising Texts SO Annoying? · Pod Save America

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Speaker 4: I want to read you the opening lines of a
1:56
Speaker 4: couple of fundraising texts I got. These are mostly real,
2:00
Speaker 4: but some may be made up, and I want to
2:01
Speaker 4: see if you can spot the fake one.
2:03
Speaker 5: Sure.
2:03
Speaker 3: Family, it's Cory Booker. It's one.
2:06
Speaker 4: Two, we're about to shock Susan Collins. Three, Tommy, I'm
2:10
Speaker 4: gay and I need your help. Four, and this one
2:12
Speaker 4: I believe is supposed to be sung. Lately, I've been
2:15
Speaker 4: losing sleep, losing sleep about the future of our country, Tommy.
2:19
Speaker 4: Number five, friend, I don't mean to sound dramatic, but
2:22
Speaker 4: our democracy is about to burn to the fucking ground.
2:24
Speaker 4: My ass is literally on fire, RN. This is Chuck Schumer,
2:27
Speaker 4: by the way. Which of those do you think is real?
2:49
Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor.
2:51
Speaker 4: And this episode is about something everyone hates.
2:54
Speaker 3: Fundraising emails and fundraising texts.
2:57
Speaker 4: Even if you've made only one political donation in your life,
3:00
Speaker 4: your contact information can get thrown into some database that
3:03
Speaker 4: leads to endless streams of unhinged fundraising solicitations. But this
3:08
Speaker 4: problem is bigger now. than it just being kind of
3:10
Speaker 4: weird when Hakeem Jeffries won't stop sending you selfies, it
3:13
Speaker 4: could actually undermine one of the few advantages that Democrats
3:16
Speaker 4: have over Republicans, which is grassroots fundraising success. In 2024,
3:22
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris raised about 40% of her money from small
3:25
Speaker 4: dollar donors, while Trump raised less than 29% of his.
3:29
Speaker 4: And according to an analysis by the Center for Campaign Innovation,
3:32
Speaker 4: in the first three months of 2025, House Democrats have
3:36
Speaker 4: raised about twice as much on average from donors giving
3:39
Speaker 4: under $ 200. And the Democratic Party's advantage with small-dollar donors
3:43
Speaker 4: is even bigger over in the Senate. But if we
3:46
Speaker 4: drive those donors away by annoying them, or worse, by
3:49
Speaker 4: exploiting them, that fundraising advantage will evaporate. So in today's episode,
3:55
Speaker 4: I'm going to explore the world of online fundraising, how
3:58
Speaker 4: it got so bad, why texting stop never seems to
4:01
Speaker 4: make the messages stop, the political risks for the Democratic Party,
4:04
Speaker 4: and the critical role that ActBlue plays in our fundraising
4:07
Speaker 4: success and how Republicans are trying to destroy it. You're
4:11
Speaker 4: going to hear from three experts in this digital media world.
4:15
Speaker 4: Crooked Media's own Dan Pfeiffer, Regina Wallace-Jones, the CEO of ActBlue,
4:19
Speaker 4: and Joe Rosbars, the CEO of Blue State Digital and
4:22
Speaker 4: a longtime digital strategist. We're going to start with my
4:25
Speaker 4: conversation with Joe about how online fundraising has evolved, the
4:28
Speaker 4: explosion of awful fundraising texts, and what a better approach
4:32
Speaker 4: to small-dollar fundraising could look like. So, Joe, you've worked
4:36
Speaker 4: for a bunch of different candidates, Howard Dean, Barack Obama,
4:39
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren. How has your job evolved over time, the
4:42
Speaker 4: job of a digital strategist?
4:45
Speaker 6: Well, increasingly, the job of the digital strategist is more
4:48
Speaker 6: and more parts of the campaign. So when we first
4:51
Speaker 6: worked together back in 2007 for Barack Obama, we really
4:56
Speaker 6: had to have three brains, right? You would have morning
5:00
Speaker 6: with the comms team, you'd have afternoon with the field
5:03
Speaker 6: organizers and political folks. And then in the evening, you'd
5:06
Speaker 6: be chasing the finance folks to be handling the grassroots
5:10
Speaker 6: part of it.
5:11
Speaker 7: And so I think the job now is actually the
5:14
Speaker 7: whole campaign, right?
5:16
Speaker 6: So I think I was the first one to be
5:19
Speaker 6: chief strategist for a campaign, like coming from a digital
5:21
Speaker 6: background for Warren in 2020. And what we've seen is
5:25
Speaker 6: that the model for the organization of the campaign has
5:28
Speaker 6: changed as every part of the campaign has become digital.
5:31
Speaker 4: It's funny to think that I think your job title
5:34
Speaker 4: was like head of new media, right?
5:36
Speaker 3: And now it's just media. That's the whole ballgame.
5:38
Speaker 4: Do you have a sense generally of how much money
5:42
Speaker 4: democratic campaigns are raising from big donors versus grassroots online
5:47
Speaker 4: fundraising these days?
5:49
Speaker 6: It depends on the campaign. Like, Safe incumbents will have,
5:53
Speaker 6: you know, their sort of rounds of checks that come in.
5:56
Speaker 6: There are different candidates and campaigns that are almost exclusively
6:00
Speaker 6: grassroots based. That's something that candidates can change as they
6:04
Speaker 6: move up the ladder, run for different levels of office.
6:06
Speaker 6: So for presidential campaigns in 2020, Elizabeth Warren decided not
6:10
Speaker 6: to spend time selling access to the candidate.
6:14
Speaker 3: Right.
6:14
Speaker 6: So not calling rich people on the phone or having
6:17
Speaker 6: private big donor events to fund the primary campaign. And
6:21
Speaker 6: that was something that was a risk at the time,
6:24
Speaker 6: but she was able to become the first time presidential
6:27
Speaker 6: candidate ever to get to a million donors by focusing
6:30
Speaker 6: on the grassroots. And so even when it's tough, you're
6:34
Speaker 6: in a competitive primary, you can make these choices, but
6:36
Speaker 6: also donors reward the choices that you make about how
6:38
Speaker 6: you raise your money.
6:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's true for Obama.
6:41
Speaker 4: In 2008, we didn't take any PAC money, any lobbyist money.
6:43
Speaker 4: People thought that might be stupid or risky, but I
6:45
Speaker 4: think the messaging that comes with That kind of, let's
6:49
Speaker 4: be honest, like bare minimum campaign finance step you can
6:54
Speaker 4: take personally is pretty important.
6:56
Speaker 3: So the big.
6:57
Speaker 4: Question behind this episode is, why the hell am I
7:00
Speaker 4: getting so many text messages from candidates? And why can't
7:02
Speaker 4: I get them to stop? So I was hoping to
7:04
Speaker 4: start with some basics. So when I donate to a candidate,
7:08
Speaker 4: what happens with my data?
7:10
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, the answer depends, right? Because your data is.
7:17
Speaker 6: You've signed up for the campaign's email list. If you
7:20
Speaker 6: gave your phone number, you're probably going to get SMS
7:22
Speaker 6: from them. But a campaign, especially one that loses, or
7:25
Speaker 6: for a candidate who's not going to be running for
7:27
Speaker 6: office anytime soon again, your data turns into a way
7:32
Speaker 6: to retire campaign debt and for consultants to sell it
7:36
Speaker 6: on to the next person.
7:38
Speaker 4: So basically, the campaigns can log your data put it
7:42
Speaker 4: into a file and then sell that to other political
7:45
Speaker 4: candidates or I guess PACs or organizations?
7:48
Speaker 3: Yep.
7:49
Speaker 4: So I think that's the part that frustrates people because
7:52
Speaker 4: you end up getting these fundraising texts from candidates you've
7:55
Speaker 4: never heard of, from PACs you've never heard of or
7:57
Speaker 4: never given to. Is it also getting scraped from FEC
8:01
Speaker 4: data or information that we sort of put into the
8:04
Speaker 4: system writ large when we just vote or register to vote?
8:07
Speaker 6: In theory, you're not supposed to scrape the FEC data
8:12
Speaker 6: in order to do fundraising. Whether the FEC data gets
8:15
Speaker 6: scraped by a voter file company, gets passed on and
8:19
Speaker 6: reformatted into something, the data finds its way to places
8:23
Speaker 6: and for purposes that's not really the intention. But it's
8:27
Speaker 6: also just campaigns straight up making their data available to
8:32
Speaker 6: a brokerage of likely donor, likely democratic supporter, et cetera, data.
8:38
Speaker 6: And so it's the model where, unfortunately, where we are
8:41
Speaker 6: right now is that the digital experience of email and
8:46
Speaker 6: SMS has the market around your data has come to
8:49
Speaker 6: look like the direct mail market, where there are just
8:52
Speaker 6: these lists being passed around by different shops and people
8:57
Speaker 6: just blast away at it. And so the consulting firm
9:00
Speaker 6: or the mail house or data firm makes money and
9:04
Speaker 6: you get bombarded with lots of texts and emails, and
9:09
Speaker 6: they don't even really need it to have a high
9:11
Speaker 6: response rate, right? As long as you get a couple,
9:14
Speaker 6: it's cheap to do, and then you're off to the
9:16
Speaker 6: races and doing this thing. The problem with it, though,
9:18
Speaker 6: is that obviously it's a terrible experience for the end
9:20
Speaker 6: user of the donors, and it doesn't actually build a
9:24
Speaker 6: good file for your campaign, because you might have somebody
9:28
Speaker 6: respond to an initial message, but if they're not district,
9:34
Speaker 6: they're not following your race, they're not actually part of
9:37
Speaker 6: a community that you're building around your campaign, they're not
9:39
Speaker 6: likely to give again. And what happens is that even
9:41
Speaker 6: donations that you get in in that first sort of
9:43
Speaker 6: wave of a mass of prospecting, you wind up with
9:47
Speaker 6: a lot of unsubscribes with a lot of people who
9:49
Speaker 6: don't ever give again.
9:50
Speaker 3: Right.
9:50
Speaker 4: And I guess that's probably why it feels like to
9:52
Speaker 4: a lot of people, you can reply stop every day
9:55
Speaker 4: for the rest of your life, and you're still going
9:57
Speaker 4: to remain on some list, probably because your data is
9:59
Speaker 4: just getting sold over and over and over again.
10:02
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're replying stop to that campaign, and usually they'll
10:05
Speaker 6: follow your request to stop. But the consultant that put
10:09
Speaker 6: your data in that campaign's file is obviously not going
10:14
Speaker 6: to stop.
10:15
Speaker 4: Can you explain what a scam pack is and how
10:18
Speaker 4: it works?
10:19
Speaker 6: There are operatives who run shops that produce mail or
10:24
Speaker 6: digital services or technology or data, and they set up
10:29
Speaker 6: packs that look like they're going to do something, right,
10:32
Speaker 6: to help Democrats win or this kind of Democrat or
10:34
Speaker 6: fight on this issue. And really what happens is it
10:37
Speaker 6: becomes a self-licking ice cream cone for the consultant. So
10:40
Speaker 6: it's raising money, but spending basically all of its money
10:42
Speaker 6: on raising the money for the consultants and operatives who
10:45
Speaker 6: set it up.
10:46
Speaker 3: You're right.
10:46
Speaker 7: It's really awful.
10:47
Speaker 4: And also, I mean, I think there are There have
10:49
Speaker 4: been instances, I believe, of candidates who basically seemed like
10:53
Speaker 4: their entire campaign was predicated on running against Marjorie Taylor Greene,
10:57
Speaker 4: for example, or some Republican in like an R plus
11:00
Speaker 4: 30 district. And then this person runs and they raise
11:03
Speaker 4: a ton of money online. You come to realize that, oh, actually,
11:06
Speaker 4: that money is going into, let's say, a marketing firm
11:09
Speaker 4: that they actually own and operate.
11:12
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely.
11:13
Speaker 6: There are cases where that's the candidate. There are cases, though,
11:15
Speaker 6: also where the candidate is making choices to run a
11:18
Speaker 6: very high overhead fundraising program that not every candidate needs
11:23
Speaker 6: to or should be an expert in fundraising practices. But
11:26
Speaker 6: a lot of times you can have campaigns that get
11:28
Speaker 6: taken for a ride and wind up paying a considerable
11:31
Speaker 6: portion of their overhead to the consultants.
11:33
Speaker 4: Can you explain what peer-to-peer texting is and whether you
11:37
Speaker 4: think that has contributed to this increase in text message
11:39
Speaker 4: fundraising requests?
11:41
Speaker 6: Peer-to-peer texting is when you have a group of volunteers
11:45
Speaker 6: who are willing to do something for you. You provide
11:49
Speaker 6: them a software tool where they can log in and
11:52
Speaker 6: send pre-filled out texts to a pre-selected list of voters
11:58
Speaker 6: or prospective donors or whatever that is. And it is
12:02
Speaker 6: something that if a campaign doesn't want to necessarily get
12:06
Speaker 6: tagged or an organization doesn't necessarily want to get tagged
12:08
Speaker 6: with you knowing where the message is coming from, per se,
12:12
Speaker 6: or if they are engaged in practices around the lists
12:16
Speaker 6: that they've uploaded that wouldn't pass muster for the text
12:19
Speaker 6: that they send from their short code, you know, like
12:21
Speaker 6: their five-digit number that is the official campaign thing, you
12:24
Speaker 6: might find that in peer-to-peer text.
12:26
Speaker 7: Peer-to-peer text came up as an.
12:28
Speaker 6: Organizing tool to help voters reach out to people in
12:32
Speaker 6: their community or people that they knew and is definitely
12:35
Speaker 6: a key part of running a big grassroots campaign. But
12:38
Speaker 6: In the hands of grifty operatives, it can also be
12:42
Speaker 6: a key part of why you're getting bombarded so badly.
12:45
Speaker 3: And I think that's what's so frustrating about this, right?
12:46
Speaker 4: It's because I think peer-to-peer texting or text-based communications started
12:51
Speaker 4: as a really great way to remind people to vote
12:53
Speaker 4: or to get registered to vote. And now it's being
12:55
Speaker 4: taken over by this fundraising piece of the political pie,
13:00
Speaker 4: and it feels like it's ruining it.
13:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
13:02
Speaker 6: And maybe I'm just old school, but our clients and
13:05
Speaker 6: campaigns and organizations we work with at Blue State don't
13:08
Speaker 6: send unsolicited SMS or email. It's just not the way
13:12
Speaker 6: to build a strong, healthy program over the long period.
13:15
Speaker 6: And the biggest, most successful programs over long periods of
13:17
Speaker 6: time don't engage in these practices.
13:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
13:20
Speaker 4: I want to read you the opening lines of a
13:22
Speaker 4: couple of fundraising texts I got. These are mostly real,
13:26
Speaker 4: but some may be made up. And I want to
13:28
Speaker 4: see if you can spot the fake one.
13:29
Speaker 5: Sure.
13:30
Speaker 3: Family, it's Cory Booker. It's one.
13:33
Speaker 4: Two, we're about to shock Susan Collins. Three, Tommy, I'm
13:38
Speaker 4: gay and I need your help. Four, and this one
13:40
Speaker 4: I believe is supposed to be sung. Lately, I've been
13:43
Speaker 4: losing sleep. Losing sleep about the future of our country, Tommy.
13:48
Speaker 4: Number five, friend, I don't mean to sound dramatic, but
13:50
Speaker 4: our democracy is about to burn to the fucking ground.
13:53
Speaker 4: My ass is literally on fire, RN. This is Chuck Schumer,
13:55
Speaker 4: by the way. Which of those do you think is real?
14:00
Speaker 6: You know, I think a lot of people would love
14:02
Speaker 6: to have that level of energy from our Senate Democratic leader,
14:05
Speaker 6: but I think the last one is probably.
14:06
Speaker 3: The biggest one.
14:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, you nailed it. Why do they include these creepy photos?
14:11
Speaker 4: Why is the tone so completely unhinged?
14:15
Speaker 3: Like, is that effective?
14:17
Speaker 6: I mean, if you think about the version on the
14:20
Speaker 6: Republican side, right? On the Republican side, the grassroots fundraising
14:24
Speaker 6: is distilled to its most grifty concentrator. because they just
14:29
Speaker 6: don't need that money. The Republican financing operation is so
14:33
Speaker 6: brazenly corrupt that all of the grassroots fundraising is really
14:37
Speaker 6: just about tricking older folks into entering their credit card
14:41
Speaker 6: information that is being auto-charged every month and they don't
14:45
Speaker 6: know or check. And that's the end state of where
14:49
Speaker 6: it's going for these kind of messages that you're seeing.
14:52
Speaker 6: And so It's both an annoyance and it makes the
14:58
Speaker 6: fundraising harder for people that are trying to do fundraising
15:01
Speaker 6: for important races and meaningful causes. But it's also just
15:04
Speaker 6: a content problem, right? Like people's perception of what the
15:08
Speaker 6: political conversation is, what democratic messaging is, what is important
15:12
Speaker 6: and needs to be emphasized and lifted up is all
15:14
Speaker 6: distorted by whatever the 0.001 response rate ticking up to 0%.
15:21
Speaker 7: You know, adding a thousandth of a percent to that.
15:24
Speaker 3: Right, right. What's a little bit more effective?
15:26
Speaker 4: Do you think the candidates themselves have become aware of
15:29
Speaker 4: how much people hate these messages and how much they
15:31
Speaker 4: annoy them?
15:32
Speaker 6: I think people say things to candidates about the email
15:37
Speaker 6: and SMS that they get. But the reality is that
15:40
Speaker 6: unless it's a presidential campaign, you as a candidate likely
15:44
Speaker 6: won't encounter most of the people getting these messages because
15:47
Speaker 6: Like you, I get all these messages and none of
15:49
Speaker 6: them are for anybody running in my district or usually
15:51
Speaker 6: even in my state. And so you're not going to
15:53
Speaker 6: bump into these people unless you're on a plane or something, right?
15:56
Speaker 6: You're not going to bump into any of the people
15:57
Speaker 6: who your campaign is aggravating.
15:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
16:00
Speaker 4: So the annoyance we all feel with fundraising texts used
16:03
Speaker 4: to be the annoyance we all felt with fundraising emails.
16:06
Speaker 4: Is that the email issue abated because of spam filters
16:10
Speaker 4: becoming so effective? I just feel like people don't, it's
16:13
Speaker 4: like I don't even notice them anymore.
16:16
Speaker 6: Yeah, the email inbox is a more regulated place, right,
16:20
Speaker 6: by Gmail or by whatever other service you use. And
16:23
Speaker 6: so things get sorted out. There's also still an ongoing
16:28
Speaker 6: war around deliverability. And so the more of these bad
16:32
Speaker 6: practices that you engage in in email, the worse your
16:36
Speaker 6: email will perform in terms of getting to the people
16:39
Speaker 6: who actually signed up and want it. And so there
16:41
Speaker 6: is a kind of balance to the economy of how
16:43
Speaker 6: email works, even though people are still doing a bunch
16:45
Speaker 6: of these practices, especially in the scam pack and like
16:49
Speaker 6: organizational area.
16:50
Speaker 4: So, I mean, when you, when I press people, you know,
16:54
Speaker 4: friends who have worked on campaigns or people at the
16:56
Speaker 4: DNC on this issue, they're like, we know, we know
17:00
Speaker 4: these messages suck.
17:01
Speaker 3: They're annoying.
17:02
Speaker 4: But one of the only advantages we have as Democrats
17:05
Speaker 4: is a better grassroots fundraising program and base for And
17:09
Speaker 4: if the money from these text-based messages went away, we
17:13
Speaker 4: would have less resources, we'd lose campaigns. So they feel
17:17
Speaker 4: like they're kind of stuck.
17:18
Speaker 3: Is that bullshit?
17:21
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's pretty much bullshit.
17:23
Speaker 6: The cost of doing business in the bad way is
17:27
Speaker 6: higher than doing business the right way and building your
17:30
Speaker 6: campaign and your organization from the bottom up ethically with
17:33
Speaker 6: consent and people opting in. And the idea that We
17:38
Speaker 6: have to do things that people hate in order to
17:40
Speaker 6: run campaigns is not limited to fundraising, right? And it's
17:47
Speaker 6: really toxic and something that needs to go. Like we
17:49
Speaker 6: don't have to make shitty TV ads that people hate.
17:53
Speaker 6: We don't have to have organizational cultures run by really aggro,
17:59
Speaker 6: awful people managers with a bunch of HR problems in
18:03
Speaker 6: campaign organizations. There are lots of things about campaigns that
18:06
Speaker 6: people excuse in the name of winning or fundraising or whatever.
18:11
Speaker 6: And I think there are enough examples now, going back
18:15
Speaker 6: to us piloting certain things with Obama, Warren, Bernie, AOC, others,
18:21
Speaker 6: that you really can make different choices and have a
18:24
Speaker 6: campaign be something good that people enjoy their experience with.
18:27
Speaker 6: And by the way, that's better for the brand, right?
18:30
Speaker 6: That's better for the party. That's better for the organization
18:32
Speaker 6: you're building. That's better for the campaign organization. organization that
18:35
Speaker 6: will be left over when the campaign is over. Because
18:39
Speaker 6: too often, a campaign, especially presidential campaigns, you wind up,
18:43
Speaker 6: whether you win or lose, it's still just an empty
18:46
Speaker 6: parking lot full of garbage, right, that the carnival left town.
18:50
Speaker 6: And if you're trying to actually build a relationship with
18:53
Speaker 6: people who want to do something, want to help you govern,
18:55
Speaker 6: who want to help you get other people elected like them,
18:57
Speaker 6: that's a it helps that you are most able to
19:04
Speaker 6: do that by doing it the right way.
19:06
Speaker 4: I like the metaphor of a parking lot full of
19:08
Speaker 4: garbage after a carnival is an excellent one for a
19:11
Speaker 4: losing campaign. People listening are probably like, okay, I'm angry.
19:15
Speaker 4: Who should I be mad at? Who are these consultants?
19:18
Speaker 4: Is it a bunch of them? Is it a few
19:19
Speaker 4: bad actors? How do we think about that?
19:24
Speaker 6: There are a few actors that are the worst, but unfortunately,
19:27
Speaker 6: it's quite prevalent. There's very few of us, like Blue State,
19:32
Speaker 6: who are not engaged in these practices and trying to
19:34
Speaker 6: help campaigns build for the long term, build the right way,
19:37
Speaker 6: campaigns and organizations and party committees and things like that.
19:40
Speaker 6: And so I would give the campaigns that you care
19:44
Speaker 6: about the feedback when they are treating you in a
19:47
Speaker 6: way that you don't like. But also, I think there's
19:50
Speaker 6: room here for some institution or media outlet or organization
19:55
Speaker 6: to assign itself the task of basically consumer protection here, right?
20:01
Speaker 6: If some party committee or media outlet decided that they
20:05
Speaker 6: wanted to solicit All of the complaints for unsolicited text
20:09
Speaker 6: messages and emails and stuff that grassroots donors on the
20:11
Speaker 6: Democratic side are receiving, you could report out the worst actors.
20:15
Speaker 7: On a campaign basis.
20:16
Speaker 6: You could go do the investigation to find out what
20:19
Speaker 6: vendors they're paying that result in these massive spikes in complaints.
20:22
Speaker 6: So I think there is a way to get at
20:24
Speaker 6: this that doesn't require government intervention or the DNC shutting
20:28
Speaker 6: people off of the voter file or whatever. I think
20:31
Speaker 6: surfacing it and making it a little bit more transparent
20:33
Speaker 6: would help campaigns and organizations make better decisions.
20:36
Speaker 3: That is a really good idea.
20:37
Speaker 4: And I think you speak to the need for someone
20:41
Speaker 4: who really knows what they're doing to kind of vet
20:43
Speaker 4: these things, because you get all these requests and you can,
20:46
Speaker 4: you try to like, sometimes I'll like get a foreword
20:48
Speaker 4: from my father-in-law, who's like a great human being, a
20:52
Speaker 4: great Democrat. He'll be like, should I donate to this thing?
20:54
Speaker 4: And I'll try to like run it down for him.
20:56
Speaker 3: And it takes me forever.
20:57
Speaker 4: You go to a website, I go to the FEC page.
20:59
Speaker 4: I try to Google the people associated with it. It's
21:01
Speaker 4: almost impossible to to actually vet a lot of these
21:04
Speaker 4: PACs and organizations that are just bombarding people.
21:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
21:07
Speaker 6: And I think it would be a great service to
21:11
Speaker 6: grassroots donors everywhere to just aggregate where people are seeing
21:15
Speaker 6: these spikes in complaints and these activities to the point
21:18
Speaker 6: where if you actually had it wired up and enough
21:21
Speaker 6: people bought into that, you would actually see things happen
21:23
Speaker 6: in real time and maybe be able to stop them
21:25
Speaker 6: and call it out.
21:34
Speaker 1: Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. What's the best piece
21:38
Speaker 1: of money advice you ever got? Put it in the mattress.
21:41
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21:42
Speaker 2: No, that's not it.
21:43
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21:44
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21:45
Speaker 1: I got good advice when I was working in the Senate.
21:46
Speaker 1: You know how we had those accounts?
21:48
Speaker 2: The TSP account.
21:49
Speaker 3: The savings, yeah.
21:50
Speaker 1: And I wasn't doing the maximum. And our pal Tommy
21:55
Speaker 1: Vitor and Robert Gibbs were like, you're an idiot.
21:57
Speaker 5: Yeah.
21:58
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
21:58
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, it seems like a lot
21:59
Speaker 1: of money now.
22:00
Speaker 3: And then, but you know what?
22:01
Speaker 1: It's good to do that.
22:02
Speaker 2: I was putting money into the thrift savings account, but
22:05
Speaker 2: I forgot to actually invest it. So it was just
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Speaker 2: sitting in cash. And then the whole economy crashed in
22:10
Speaker 2: 2007 due to the financial crisis. And then the Congress
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Speaker 2: refused to pass TARP.
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Speaker 3: Remember?
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Speaker 2: And then the market went even further. And that was
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Speaker 2: the day I was like, do it now.
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Speaker 8: My first dip.
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Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 8: I bought that dip. Look at that.
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23:23
Speaker 4: What's sort of the gist of a better way to
23:25
Speaker 4: run a railroad that raises money and like resources candidates appropriately,
23:30
Speaker 4: but doesn't feel annoying or at worst predatory?
23:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, you don't have to just sit around and wait
23:36
Speaker 6: for people to come to your website and sign up
23:38
Speaker 6: for your email or SMS, right? Like there is paid media, right?
23:42
Speaker 6: And that's something where if you invest in, and by
23:45
Speaker 6: the way, good for the brand, good for everybody, invest
23:48
Speaker 6: in progressive and democratic media outlets and invest in the
23:52
Speaker 6: sponsorship of content that aligns with your worldview, that's where
23:58
Speaker 6: your potential donors are. So there are ways to go
24:01
Speaker 6: out into the media environment in so many ways and
24:05
Speaker 6: so many platforms, investing in organizations of all sizes from
24:10
Speaker 6: the Guardian US where my wife works, but down to
24:14
Speaker 6: individual creators who are just trying to sponsor their ability
24:19
Speaker 6: to do that work part-time on top of whatever else
24:21
Speaker 6: they do. There are lots of places to go to
24:23
Speaker 6: find the people you want to give to your campaign,
24:26
Speaker 6: and frankly, better ways to make a connection with them
24:28
Speaker 6: than an unsolicited message that's annoying them at the dinner table.
24:32
Speaker 9: Yeah.
24:33
Speaker 4: Trump has directed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue,
24:37
Speaker 4: which is the biggest fundraising platform for Democrats. How important
24:42
Speaker 4: do you think ActBlue is for the Democratic Party? And
24:44
Speaker 4: what do you think it would mean if the DOJ
24:47
Speaker 4: made it go away somehow?
24:48
Speaker 6: I think we have to say at the top of
24:50
Speaker 6: this that obviously any politically charged investigation is illegal and
24:56
Speaker 6: shouldn't happen and is awful and not something that we
24:58
Speaker 6: should accept as normal and discuss as like, oh, what
25:01
Speaker 6: are the politics outcomes for this? I feel really a
25:05
Speaker 6: lot of sympathy for the folks who are putting in
25:09
Speaker 6: the hard work At ActBlue, it's essentially a public utility
25:13
Speaker 6: for Democratic campaigns, especially the campaigns that are the smallest
25:18
Speaker 6: and need to get their infrastructure up and going. It's
25:21
Speaker 6: a turnkey option for people who are just starting out
25:25
Speaker 6: their campaign to try to do anything in the electoral process.
25:29
Speaker 6: And yeah, it shouldn't be taken lightly that they're a target.
25:33
Speaker 4: After the 2024 election, A bunch of Democratic operatives and
25:36
Speaker 4: fundraisers sent a letter to the leader of ActBlue demanding
25:40
Speaker 4: that they make some changes to the way their service works.
25:43
Speaker 4: Like the biggest asks were getting rid of messages that
25:46
Speaker 4: trick donors into believing they were giving to an official
25:49
Speaker 4: party entity when they were not, or that their donation
25:51
Speaker 4: would be matched somehow by someone.
25:54
Speaker 3: Do you think that letter went far enough?
25:56
Speaker 4: And what responsibility do you think ActBlue has in this
25:58
Speaker 4: kind of conversation we're having about fundraising sucking for the
26:01
Speaker 4: end user?
26:03
Speaker 6: Well, I think if you're going to be in the
26:05
Speaker 6: position where you are a public utility and for all
26:09
Speaker 6: intents and purposes, kind of a monopoly on the thing,
26:11
Speaker 6: you have a different kind of level of responsiveness that
26:14
Speaker 6: you need to bring to the conversation when you're in
26:17
Speaker 6: a sense, the only game in town. And so I
26:19
Speaker 6: think there's more stuff that they could be doing. I
26:22
Speaker 6: really hope that the investigation and illegal targeting of them
26:27
Speaker 6: is not so much of a distraction that all the
26:29
Speaker 6: other work isn't prioritized to help improve the ecosystem around
26:33
Speaker 6: democratic campaigns and fundraising. But it's really up to all
26:37
Speaker 6: of us as donors to make sure that the organizations
26:40
Speaker 6: we give to are behaving ethically and rewarding those who
26:44
Speaker 6: do behave ethically. And then hopefully some actors around get
26:48
Speaker 6: together and help change the gravitational pull of this system
26:52
Speaker 6: a little bit as we go into the next cycles.
26:55
Speaker 4: This might be a dumb question, but do you think
26:57
Speaker 4: it's possible for a campaign to raise too much money?
27:02
Speaker 6: Yes, it is especially problematic when campaigns that are having
27:08
Speaker 6: a great moment and make decisions about their budget around
27:13
Speaker 6: the money that they're raising right now, encounter a moment
27:16
Speaker 6: where that slows, you wind up chasing, right? And I
27:20
Speaker 6: think this is something that we've seen in different primaries
27:24
Speaker 6: and general elections over the last few cycles. And it's
27:28
Speaker 6: something where if you have internally given your fundraising team
27:34
Speaker 6: has accepted a goal of X and they see that
27:38
Speaker 6: they're only going to get to 80% of X, a
27:41
Speaker 6: lot of campaigns don't have enough of a checks and
27:44
Speaker 6: balances on their strategy for fundraising and how it connects
27:49
Speaker 6: to their actual budget and money spent. that you wouldn't
27:52
Speaker 6: actually have people go out and try to spend $ 1. 20
27:55
Speaker 6: to raise $ 1 to hit.
27:57
Speaker 7: A goal number.
28:00
Speaker 6: Not that people would even necessarily do that intentionally, but
28:03
Speaker 6: just because of how you've instrumented your system of where
28:06
Speaker 6: you spend money to raise it, you are over-predicting what
28:10
Speaker 6: the dollar you spend to bring in a dollar of
28:13
Speaker 6: donation is going to be. And so you wind up
28:16
Speaker 6: holding the bag at the end. So in a sense,
28:18
Speaker 6: you have spent too much money to raise too much money.
28:20
Speaker 6: You should have just settled for raising slightly less money.
28:23
Speaker 3: That's a really good point.
28:24
Speaker 4: I think I bet a lot of people don't realize
28:25
Speaker 4: how much money gets spent in pursuit of fundraising. I
28:29
Speaker 4: guess a lot of listeners to this show, I bet
28:31
Speaker 4: like 90% of listeners to Pod Save America have given
28:34
Speaker 4: to a candidate at some point. And they just want
28:37
Speaker 4: to feel like that money is going to a good
28:39
Speaker 4: cause or being well spent or just like not getting
28:42
Speaker 4: abused in some way. Do you have advice for people
28:45
Speaker 4: about kind of like a couple best practices around donations
28:48
Speaker 4: to politics generally?
28:51
Speaker 6: I think if you're talking about campaigns specifically, investing in
28:56
Speaker 6: the candidates who are giving their time to you. is
29:00
Speaker 6: a good filter for me. So candidates who are spending
29:03
Speaker 6: time speaking with you and producing content for you that
29:07
Speaker 6: isn't asking you for money is an important part of
29:09
Speaker 6: the equation, right? And so if you see a candidate
29:13
Speaker 6: who's spending time engaging grassroots folks in ways that are
29:18
Speaker 6: about more than money and fundraising, that it's about organizing,
29:21
Speaker 6: that it's about policy, that it's about narrating what's going
29:24
Speaker 6: on in the campaign or what's going on in politics generally,
29:27
Speaker 6: those are the campaigns that usually are going to be
29:30
Speaker 6: Good and good places to go. I think also folks
29:33
Speaker 6: who are, you know, building organization on the ground, like
29:38
Speaker 6: it is not easy to be. a field organizer, as
29:41
Speaker 6: you know, from all these years ago, it is not
29:44
Speaker 6: a lucrative thing to go work on a campaign as your,
29:48
Speaker 6: as an early job, or even as a job later
29:50
Speaker 6: in life, if you're taking a break from whatever else
29:52
Speaker 6: you're doing, the difference between being able to hire one
29:56
Speaker 6: more person, to just scratch out a good busy work
30:00
Speaker 6: week for a campaign is such a big deal and
30:03
Speaker 6: just not that much money in the scheme of things.
30:05
Speaker 6: And so folks who are hiring and doing real organizing
30:09
Speaker 6: on the ground, those are the campaigns that I would
30:12
Speaker 6: give the extra dollar to.
30:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really good point. And that's a reason
30:15
Speaker 4: to donate early, right? Because that money could be invested
30:17
Speaker 4: in hiring a field staff and not dumping money on
30:20
Speaker 4: TV ads that may or may not work.
30:22
Speaker 6: Campaigns and candidates are living and dying by what they
30:26
Speaker 6: can predict they're going to be able to spend. And
30:29
Speaker 6: so when you have these moments, even though it's not, well,
30:32
Speaker 6: it's an election year here in New Jersey, but even
30:34
Speaker 6: though it's not an election year, you know, for Congress
30:36
Speaker 6: or for Senate yet, the sooner you give and the
30:39
Speaker 6: more times you give to a candidate that's doing something
30:44
Speaker 6: that you believe in, it's so much signal, right, to
30:49
Speaker 6: that campaign to invest more in what they're doing that
30:51
Speaker 6: got to you, that made you inspired. but also that
30:55
Speaker 6: to give them the confidence to build and hire that
30:57
Speaker 6: next organizer or build out the open one more campaign
31:00
Speaker 6: office in order to build out, you know, earlier and
31:04
Speaker 6: better for the election that's going to be next year.
31:06
Speaker 6: So like this is sometimes it feels like you're sort
31:09
Speaker 6: of on the receiving end of like a kind of
31:13
Speaker 6: the bank teller, you know, machine opens and it's like, okay,
31:15
Speaker 6: here's this fundraising email and then everybody goes away inside.
31:18
Speaker 6: But like, they're really watching and making decisions based on
31:22
Speaker 6: whether you gave today, how much you gave, how many
31:24
Speaker 6: times you get, like all that stuff is getting extrapolated
31:27
Speaker 6: by good campaigns to make their bets about how they
31:30
Speaker 6: can best win. So I would encourage everybody to, you know,
31:33
Speaker 6: when you're feeling it, give to the folks you love.
31:36
Speaker 3: Anything else you want to share?
31:38
Speaker 6: The grift on the Republican side is like, you know,
31:40
Speaker 6: I find that Democrats were not often not talking enough
31:44
Speaker 6: about these things that are like fixable. And when we're
31:48
Speaker 6: engaged in our self-critique, it's a lot of your, you know,
31:53
Speaker 6: things that aren't necessarily fixable and are just the way
31:56
Speaker 6: they are. So I think this is one where we
31:58
Speaker 6: can do things. We can see on the other side
32:02
Speaker 6: what it looks like when it's like really bad and
32:04
Speaker 6: there is no grassroots component to how campaigns are run
32:07
Speaker 6: or responsiveness to ordinary people. And so we should do
32:11
Speaker 6: some things and try to make this problem less of
32:14
Speaker 6: a problem.
32:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. And it does feel fixable.
32:16
Speaker 4: And just to nail a point you were making about
32:19
Speaker 4: the grift on the Republican side, I have this kind
32:21
Speaker 4: of faint memory of, I think, Donald Trump sending out
32:25
Speaker 4: an email ostensibly for like Herschel Walker, but 90% of
32:29
Speaker 4: the funds actually went to his PAC. And then sometimes
32:32
Speaker 4: you're automatically opted in for a recurring donation. And sometimes
32:36
Speaker 4: those recurring donations continue after election day. So it is
32:39
Speaker 4: just a shocking extraction of money, usually from their most
32:44
Speaker 4: elderly voters and supporters. So it is really as gross
32:48
Speaker 4: as it is, it can feel on our side. It
32:50
Speaker 4: is worse over there.
32:52
Speaker 5: Yes.
32:52
Speaker 7: And there's, and there's data to back that up.
32:54
Speaker 6: Like there, I think there were consumer complaints like to
32:57
Speaker 6: the FEC and others, like it, there's just so many
33:00
Speaker 6: more on, on the Republican side. And I, you know,
33:03
Speaker 6: that's bad too, right? I guess I don't want them
33:06
Speaker 6: to be more effective grassroots fundraisers, but we have a
33:08
Speaker 6: ways to go before it's quite as bad as, as,
33:10
Speaker 6: as them, but we should fix what we can.
33:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't want them to be more effective at
33:14
Speaker 4: raising money, but I also don't want broad swaths of
33:17
Speaker 4: the most committed political activists on both sides to feel
33:21
Speaker 4: like the entire system is a grift that is rigged
33:24
Speaker 4: against them and is designed to harm them. I feel
33:26
Speaker 4: like that's just bad for our body politic and helps
33:29
Speaker 4: enable people like Donald Trump.
33:30
Speaker 3: Joe, thank you so much for doing this. This is fascinating.
33:33
Speaker 3: I'm really grateful.
33:34
Speaker 7: Yeah, thanks.
33:34
Speaker 8: Great to be here.
33:36
Speaker 4: We'll be right back with my conversation with Dan. But
33:38
Speaker 4: as you guys know, we are trying to build an independent,
33:41
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35:44
Speaker 4: Here's my conversation with Dan about his concern that these
35:47
Speaker 4: fundraising tactics are worse than just annoying, that they could
35:50
Speaker 4: actually hurt the Democratic Party. All right, Dan, so everybody
35:54
Speaker 4: hates fundraising emails.
35:55
Speaker 3: We hate fundraising texts.
35:56
Speaker 4: But you have said before that you think this is
35:59
Speaker 4: a bigger issue than it just being annoying. And that
36:01
Speaker 4: the fundraising tactics could actually hurt our candidates or the
36:05
Speaker 4: party itself.
36:06
Speaker 3: Why is that?
36:07
Speaker 8: Well, I think it's important to.
36:08
Speaker 10: Sort of take a step back and recognize how the
36:13
Speaker 10: process actually works on campaigns. Like every campaign exists only
36:18
Speaker 10: till election day. They care about nothing that happens after that.
36:20
Speaker 10: So they burn their list to the ground to reach
36:24
Speaker 10: their– they don't care. Because if you lose, your list
36:26
Speaker 10: is worth nothing, right? And so if you win and
36:28
Speaker 10: you have to sort of rebuild trust with your list,
36:31
Speaker 10: that's a high-class problem. And so they send more– all
36:35
Speaker 10: their goal is to reach their fundraising goal. And they
36:38
Speaker 10: get more desperate, more alarmist. And the hard part for–
36:42
Speaker 10: and more frequent, right? And they only think about the
36:46
Speaker 10: single– the donors they're going to get. They never think
36:50
Speaker 10: about– it's not their job to think about the fact
36:52
Speaker 10: that the people who are on their list, either because
36:54
Speaker 10: they signed up or more likely because some firm they
36:57
Speaker 10: use bought their number from some other list or bought
36:59
Speaker 10: their email from some other list, are on 50 other
37:03
Speaker 10: lists or 100 other lists. And they're getting every email
37:06
Speaker 10: and every text. And you don't know– if you're just
37:10
Speaker 10: an average person, you have no idea which are from
37:13
Speaker 10: the DNC or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris– or you're
37:17
Speaker 10: a member of Congress, and which are from some sketchy
37:21
Speaker 10: scam pack that's just trying to take your money. And
37:24
Speaker 10: so all you get the sense, the Democratic Party writ
37:27
Speaker 10: large is just bombarding you with insane.
37:29
Speaker 8: Communications for money. And it dries out the list.
37:33
Speaker 10: It turns people off. They're often, they are, they're trying
37:36
Speaker 10: to just like solve a specific problem. Like I'll give
37:39
Speaker 10: you an example. The DNC has had to raise money
37:41
Speaker 10: since the 2024 election. Because I was a monthly donor
37:45
Speaker 10: for a very long time to first the Biden and
37:46
Speaker 10: the Harris campaign I have gotten in the months after
37:50
Speaker 10: the election, it's been a while since then, but in
37:51
Speaker 10: the months after the election, I was repeatedly getting fundraising
37:54
Speaker 10: texts from Kamala Harris asking me to raise money for
37:57
Speaker 10: the DNC.
37:57
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah.
37:58
Speaker 10: Just think about how frustrating that is right after the party,
38:01
Speaker 10: because they have a budget goal and they're trying to
38:03
Speaker 10: reach it. What makes it even worse and even more
38:05
Speaker 10: complicated is you have fundraising consultants who get paid based
38:08
Speaker 10: on the amount of money they raise. In some cases,
38:10
Speaker 10: that usually doesn't happen with a presidential campaign or anything
38:12
Speaker 10: like that, but with some of these smaller campaigns or
38:14
Speaker 10: some of these PACs. And so they're so aggressive. And
38:18
Speaker 10: it just leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. I'm
38:21
Speaker 10: sure all the people in your life are constantly complaining
38:23
Speaker 10: to you. Is there anything you can do? When I
38:25
Speaker 10: was in the White House, people asked me all the
38:27
Speaker 10: time how they get off the list. And they would
38:28
Speaker 10: show me emails and texts that weren't from Barack Obama
38:30
Speaker 10: or the DNC. They were from other groups. But because
38:34
Speaker 10: it's just a Democrat asking another Democrat for money, it
38:37
Speaker 10: wears bad on the whole party.
38:38
Speaker 6: Yeah.
38:38
Speaker 4: And another piece of this is that text-based communications is
38:42
Speaker 4: a great way to communicate with people because people actually
38:45
Speaker 4: open their texts and they read their texts. But we're
38:47
Speaker 4: only doing it with fundraising now. What's a better way
38:50
Speaker 4: for campaigns to leverage that high open rate for a
38:54
Speaker 4: political advantage, do you think?
38:56
Speaker 10: Well, I think the hard part is that we have
38:58
Speaker 10: really ruined the use of... Text was great for a
39:02
Speaker 10: brief period of time, and now it's been so abused
39:05
Speaker 10: that it's very hard to distinguish in your political text
39:09
Speaker 10: now what would be an ask to be a volunteer or.
39:14
Speaker 8: To show up to vote.
39:15
Speaker 10: Because you're getting so many fundraising texts and you are
39:18
Speaker 10: trying to get off those lists. Like, and this is the,
39:21
Speaker 10: this is the, um, collective action problem that exists in
39:25
Speaker 10: the fundraising space, which is you can use your list correctly.
39:28
Speaker 8: Bernie Sanders is great at his list.
39:30
Speaker 10: He asks them for money, informs them of things to do,
39:34
Speaker 10: asks them to do non-fundraising things a lot, like to
39:38
Speaker 10: go to this rally or volunteer, all of those things.
39:41
Speaker 10: So he does a great job. But then there are
39:42
Speaker 10: always other people doing a terrible job. And because there's
39:45
Speaker 10: a list overlap, it makes it hard. So if you're
39:47
Speaker 10: an individual candidate and you have a lot of people's
39:49
Speaker 10: phone numbers, That is a good way to tell them information.
39:52
Speaker 10: Like you could actually just tell them about things happening
39:53
Speaker 10: in Congress would be.
39:54
Speaker 8: Like a really great way.
39:55
Speaker 10: Like people, John and I were just talking on the
39:58
Speaker 10: Friday pod about how people have no idea that Congress
40:02
Speaker 10: is about to vote to get Medicaid to pay for
40:04
Speaker 10: tax cut for rich people.
40:05
Speaker 8: Like that text-based would be a way to do it.
40:07
Speaker 10: But when you're getting a zillion fundraising texts, it lowers
40:11
Speaker 10: the efficacy of that other way of using text-based communications.
40:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes you just assume that everything is just
40:17
Speaker 3: a solicitation. Last question for you.
40:19
Speaker 4: So I was talking to Joe Ross-Pars earlier about whether
40:21
Speaker 4: he thought it was possible for a campaign to raise
40:23
Speaker 4: too much money. And he said, yes, especially if you're
40:26
Speaker 4: a campaign that is spending a lot of money to
40:29
Speaker 4: bring in money. It can become like a self-licking ice
40:31
Speaker 4: cream cone. And it got me thinking about the Harris
40:34
Speaker 4: campaign and how they spent their roughly $ 1. 5 billion they
40:37
Speaker 4: raised in 2024. The New York Times reported that Harris
40:40
Speaker 4: spent about $ 600 million producing and airing TV ads. There
40:45
Speaker 4: was the $ 900, 000 they spent on the exterior of the
40:50
Speaker 4: sphere in Las Vegas as sort of marketing effort at
40:52
Speaker 4: the end of the campaign. And a lot of these
40:54
Speaker 4: things were perceived as being pretty ineffective, especially given the
40:58
Speaker 4: price tag. Do you think campaigns are putting too much time, money,
41:01
Speaker 4: and effort into fundraising at this point with diminishing returns
41:05
Speaker 4: for even the spend on those dollars?
41:07
Speaker 8: I think.
41:08
Speaker 10: Not in local races and probably most House races. I
41:12
Speaker 10: think they have a certain amount of budget. It's hard
41:15
Speaker 10: to raise that money. They don't have huge grassroots lists
41:17
Speaker 10: that are just pouring money in. They don't have huge
41:20
Speaker 10: bundlers who can do it. The big Senate races and
41:23
Speaker 10: the presidential campaigns probably are in some cases spending too
41:28
Speaker 10: much time raising money. I think you remember– In 2020,
41:34
Speaker 10: after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, there was that massive flood
41:37
Speaker 10: of money into every Senate race in the last few
41:39
Speaker 10: weeks of the race. And the things that campaigns were
41:43
Speaker 10: spending money on, especially when that money comes late, there's
41:47
Speaker 10: only so many things you can do with it.
41:49
Speaker 8: Most of the TV ads are bought.
41:50
Speaker 10: You're buying TV ads where like one-tenth of the reach
41:54
Speaker 10: gets into your state.
41:55
Speaker 8: It's right over the border, stuff like that.
41:57
Speaker 10: And I think it does create a– When you have
42:02
Speaker 10: that much money, you sometimes make strange strategic decisions because
42:05
Speaker 10: you're not forced by the necessity of meeting a budget.
42:09
Speaker 10: Someone could argue that we had too much money at
42:11
Speaker 10: the end of the Obama campaign.
42:12
Speaker 8: We were buying ads in video games in 2008.
42:14
Speaker 10: 30-minute spots and stuff.
42:15
Speaker 5: Yes.
42:16
Speaker 3: We bought 30-minute spots like we were.
42:22
Speaker 10: Selling like a blender on QVC. But there is, there
42:28
Speaker 10: is this, like, I think what you're bringing up with
42:30
Speaker 10: the Harris campaign is there is you can spend money,
42:34
Speaker 10: especially if you're a national command, you can spend money
42:36
Speaker 10: to raise money and you're spending a whole bunch of
42:38
Speaker 10: money and you're barely breaking even in some cases. Cause,
42:41
Speaker 10: and that's part of what's happening is these lists get
42:43
Speaker 10: burned to the ground is it's harder and harder to
42:45
Speaker 10: get people to give money. So you're spending more to
42:47
Speaker 10: go to more people.
42:48
Speaker 3: Right.
42:48
Speaker 10: There have been some efforts from some people who have
42:51
Speaker 10: tried to put pressure on ActBlue and other groups. But
42:54
Speaker 10: this is something– maybe the DNC could get involved. But
42:57
Speaker 10: we really do need party leaders to come together and
43:00
Speaker 10: work to try to set some set of rules around
43:04
Speaker 10: the frequency of fundraising texts and emails.
43:08
Speaker 3: Right.
43:09
Speaker 10: You know, there could be, you know, sort of, you know,
43:11
Speaker 10: maybe an equivalent of like charity navigator for these packs.
43:14
Speaker 10: So that people, because I got a text minutes after
43:19
Speaker 10: Ras Baraka was arrested from a group called Free Ras Baraka.
43:25
Speaker 8: Like to, I don't know what group, is that his campaign?
43:27
Speaker 3: Right.
43:28
Speaker 8: Is that another group who just adopted?
43:30
Speaker 10: But there was no way to know until you entered
43:32
Speaker 10: the flow to actually donate the money.
43:35
Speaker 8: To know who you were giving to.
43:36
Speaker 10: And there has to be all of the people who
43:40
Speaker 10: are doing right, which I think are a lot of
43:42
Speaker 10: the Democratic politicians are suffering because there are a lot
43:44
Speaker 10: of bad actors out there. So there should be some
43:46
Speaker 10: collective effort to try to police what's happening. And I
43:49
Speaker 10: think the whole party would raise more money and improve
43:52
Speaker 10: our standing with our base if we were.
43:54
Speaker 6: To do that.
43:54
Speaker 3: That's a really good idea.
43:55
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a couple of kind of actionable suggestions
43:57
Speaker 4: that have come out of this episode.
43:59
Speaker 3: One, I think you're right.
43:59
Speaker 4: The party leaders should come together and try to lay
44:01
Speaker 4: out some standards that everyone should be asked to follow. Two,
44:05
Speaker 4: some sort of charity navigator-like platform would be really helpful
44:08
Speaker 4: because it's incredibly difficult to run down the provenance of
44:11
Speaker 4: these PACs and see what's legit and what's not. And
44:14
Speaker 4: then three, Joe recommended that we keep a list and
44:18
Speaker 4: just name and shame all the worst actors, the campaigns
44:22
Speaker 4: or PACs or party entities that harass people the most.
44:25
Speaker 3: Yeah.
44:25
Speaker 8: And the fundraising consultants. I think that's a great idea.
44:27
Speaker 3: Great idea. Dan, thank you so much. Thank you, Tommy.
44:30
Speaker 4: After the break, you'll hear my conversation with Regina. But
44:33
Speaker 4: our friends over at Vote Save America would kill me
44:35
Speaker 4: if I didn't make clear that Vote Save America does
44:39
Speaker 4: not sell donor contact information, ever.
44:51
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46:09
Speaker 4: Throughout this episode, we've been talking about ActBlue. So we
46:11
Speaker 4: wanted to end it by talking with Regina Wallace-Jones, the
46:14
Speaker 4: CEO of ActBlue, about what they do and why Trump's
46:18
Speaker 4: attempts to destroy ActBlue could be so devastating for the
46:21
Speaker 4: Democratic Party.
46:22
Speaker 5: My name is Regina Wallace-Jones. I'm the CEO and president
46:26
Speaker 5: of ActBlue.
46:27
Speaker 3: And what is ActBlue?
46:29
Speaker 5: ActBlue is a digital fundraising platform. We have existed since 2004.
46:34
Speaker 5: We give homage always to Howard Dean, who was one
46:38
Speaker 5: of the first to really demonstrate that a viable presidential
46:42
Speaker 5: campaign could be run with the strength of small dollar donors.
46:46
Speaker 5: And our vision at the time was that we could
46:48
Speaker 5: make that widely available to all candidates up and down
46:52
Speaker 5: the ticket. We have been executing on that mission for
46:55
Speaker 5: the last 21 years and are excited where we've landed
46:58
Speaker 5: now is a central juggernaut for the Democratic and progressive left.
47:05
Speaker 5: And that's where we love being and that's where we
47:06
Speaker 5: want to stay.
47:07
Speaker 4: What was the fundraising landscape or process like for Democrats
47:11
Speaker 4: before Act Blue came along?
47:12
Speaker 5: So there would be basically two different kinds of candidates
47:17
Speaker 5: that were funded prior to an Act Blue. The first
47:22
Speaker 5: would be just a wealthy person, period, who may have
47:26
Speaker 5: financed largely all of their campaigns themselves and or among
47:30
Speaker 5: themselves and their friends. The other is, you know, a
47:33
Speaker 5: candidate who is largely making a bid for larger donors
47:38
Speaker 5: to fund their campaign, which, you know, effectively means that
47:42
Speaker 5: substantially few people are making a decision about who has
47:45
Speaker 5: the fundraising momentum to really run a campaign. And that
47:49
Speaker 5: would be at the municipal level, it would also be
47:51
Speaker 5: at the federal level, but the dollars get sort of
47:54
Speaker 5: more and more magnified the higher you move in the ticket.
48:00
Speaker 5: So ActBlue's perspective was that we really wanted to unlock
48:04
Speaker 5: the power of the grassroots, that the say of the
48:07
Speaker 5: many was way, way more powerful than one or a few.
48:12
Speaker 5: And so we set out at that point to really
48:15
Speaker 5: work from the bottom up. We did not start at
48:17
Speaker 5: the presidential level. It actually wasn't until 2020 that all
48:23
Speaker 5: of the Democratic candidates for the president of the United
48:27
Speaker 5: States ran a small dollar campaign on ActBlue.
48:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.
48:33
Speaker 4: I worked for John Edwards for president in 2004. And
48:36
Speaker 4: when you would walk around the fundraising department, there would
48:39
Speaker 4: be giant books filled with contact information for trial lawyers.
48:43
Speaker 4: So I remember the kind of OG fundraising and the
48:46
Speaker 4: types of people. that it involved in the political process.
48:49
Speaker 4: And you're right, I mean, Howard Dean comes along and
48:52
Speaker 4: he starts this revolution in online fundraising. But at some
48:56
Speaker 4: point along the way, ActBlue just exploded in popularity and
49:00
Speaker 4: kind of became the only game in town. I'm just wondering,
49:03
Speaker 4: why do you think that was?
49:05
Speaker 5: You know, I think there's a couple of reasons for this.
49:08
Speaker 5: The first is ActBlue is really the only game large
49:15
Speaker 5: entity and certainly at the time, the only entity that
49:18
Speaker 5: was actually organized as a nonprofit. The second thing is
49:23
Speaker 5: we did, as I said, start from the ground up.
49:26
Speaker 5: So it was sort of winning the trust of the
49:29
Speaker 5: ecosystem campaign by campaign and demonstrating that consistently we were
49:36
Speaker 5: going to be there for the moment. If we think
49:40
Speaker 5: back to 2020, the moment when George Floyd was killed
49:44
Speaker 5: was a moment that exploded into movement around the world.
49:50
Speaker 5: And Act Blue was a central actor in that, helping
49:54
Speaker 5: to channel the dollars, the fundraising, and the frustrations in
49:59
Speaker 5: some way, but really with an intention to drive action, right?
50:03
Speaker 5: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, sort of
50:08
Speaker 5: that moment when many realized that reproductive rights were at
50:12
Speaker 5: risk and that we had not really put the right
50:15
Speaker 5: structural framework in place to make sure that that wasn't
50:18
Speaker 5: something that we would lose.
50:19
Speaker 3: So as you said, I mean, you're not a political party.
50:24
Speaker 4: You're not a political entity. You're not fundraising. You're a
50:26
Speaker 4: technology platform and conduit through which funds are raised and
50:31
Speaker 4: then distributed out. Is there a version of ActBlue on
50:34
Speaker 4: the Republican side that just happens to be used by Republicans?
50:37
Speaker 3: And how does it differ?
50:39
Speaker 5: I am so glad that you asked that question. Actually,
50:42
Speaker 5: there is a product that was created in 2019. That
50:49
Speaker 5: product is called WinRed. And the structural model for WinRed
50:55
Speaker 5: is in many ways an exact replica of ActBlue. There
51:00
Speaker 5: are some key differences. One is that it was mandated
51:04
Speaker 5: from the top down. So whereas we started one campaign
51:08
Speaker 5: at a time from the ground up and did not
51:11
Speaker 5: get to the presidency until 2020, when red was started
51:15
Speaker 5: as a mandate from the top down, where President Trump
51:21
Speaker 5: was the candidate that really drove the use of the platforms.
51:26
Speaker 5: And obviously the challenge with that is that there's only
51:29
Speaker 5: a presidential every four years, which means that if you
51:32
Speaker 5: have not done the work to win the hearts and
51:37
Speaker 5: minds of down-ballot candidates, you go from feast to famine
51:41
Speaker 5: as a platform. And it's very hard to maintain a
51:43
Speaker 5: platform without having continuous evergreen fundraising that is happening at
51:48
Speaker 5: all times. So that's one key difference. The second key
51:51
Speaker 5: difference is that WinRed is a for-profit organization. which means
51:55
Speaker 5: that they're substantially less transparent in their practices. And that
52:01
Speaker 5: drives very different behaviors inside of the ecosystem that they're
52:06
Speaker 5: operating within versus inside of ActBlue. In this moment, we
52:11
Speaker 5: are three times more effective than WinRed. That is both
52:15
Speaker 5: in dollars raised, but it's also in conversion rates, and
52:20
Speaker 5: it's also in genuine trust that we have across the ecosystem.
52:27
Speaker 5: So all good news there, always things to work on.
52:31
Speaker 5: And I know that we're going to talk about them.
52:33
Speaker 4: So let me get at some of these annoyances, because
52:34
Speaker 4: a big part of why I'm doing this episode is
52:36
Speaker 4: because democratic fundraising efforts can be really annoying. I think
52:41
Speaker 4: it goes just beyond the inconvenience. I think sometimes the
52:43
Speaker 4: volume of requests, the feeling that you can't get them
52:47
Speaker 4: to stop, the tone, the tenor, it can feel like
52:50
Speaker 4: almost disrespectful or worse. You know, there are these scam
52:53
Speaker 4: packs that that raise money and that money then primarily
52:57
Speaker 4: gets funneled to the people working for these scam packs
53:01
Speaker 4: and not for good campaigns or good causes. What role
53:04
Speaker 4: can ActBlue play in reforming the process or weeding out
53:08
Speaker 4: bad actors?
53:09
Speaker 5: So let me begin at the top because I'm certain
53:12
Speaker 5: that for some listeners, they're looking at this and they're
53:15
Speaker 5: getting raging mad because they first and foremost believe that
53:19
Speaker 5: messages are coming from ActBlue. And so I always have
53:23
Speaker 5: to clear the record at the top and say, ActBlue
53:26
Speaker 5: does not solicit directly, nor does ActBlue sell the data
53:33
Speaker 5: that exists on our platform. What is happening for ActBlue
53:36
Speaker 5: is we become the link inside of the transactional ask
53:41
Speaker 5: that's typically happening on an email or an SMS platform.
53:46
Speaker 5: And because we are such a clear brand inside of
53:49
Speaker 5: that email or that SMS or that text message, We
53:52
Speaker 5: get the attribution for the actual message. That's not what's happening.
53:56
Speaker 5: But I certainly recognize that that is how most donors
54:00
Speaker 5: experience it. And only because I'm the CEO of ActBlue
54:03
Speaker 5: do I actually know the truth of how all of
54:04
Speaker 5: this is working.
54:05
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is for people who get a
54:08
Speaker 4: million texts and they feel like they have texted back
54:10
Speaker 4: stop to every campaign or pack in the history of
54:13
Speaker 4: campaign impacts and they want to blame ActBlue because sometimes
54:16
Speaker 4: embedded in those texts is an ActBlue link.
54:18
Speaker 3: You're saying you guys have nothing to do with that.
54:20
Speaker 3: You're not sending those messages.
54:22
Speaker 5: Well, yes, and, because there's two things that just got
54:26
Speaker 5: conflated together here. One is that messages are coming out
54:30
Speaker 5: from 40,000 entities. This other thing is I, Regina, or you, Tommy,
54:37
Speaker 5: are getting messages from 40,000 entities, right? The big question
54:41
Speaker 5: there is, gee whiz, if I only gave to one candidate,
54:45
Speaker 5: how is it that all 40,000 of them have my
54:49
Speaker 5: contact information? And there I say- ActBlue is not giving
54:53
Speaker 5: your information to all of the other entities, but the
54:57
Speaker 5: commitment that we have for every entity that is raising
55:00
Speaker 5: on ActBlue is that the donors that are giving to
55:04
Speaker 5: them is donor data that belongs to that campaign or
55:09
Speaker 5: that entity that is raising on the platform. And there
55:14
Speaker 5: are many that hold that data with a ton of
55:18
Speaker 5: sacred responsibility. And there are also some who sell or
55:24
Speaker 5: give that data away. Now, if I want to be
55:28
Speaker 5: the protagonist in this and in defense of some of
55:32
Speaker 5: those who are making these decisions, the mental mindset is
55:37
Speaker 5: one of many things. One is I am sharing my
55:41
Speaker 5: list with a colleague in another state that I really
55:46
Speaker 5: think is the right person for the role and they
55:49
Speaker 5: do not have enough donors that they can reach to
55:53
Speaker 5: get the scale of fundraising that they need. And so
55:57
Speaker 5: as a good actor, I am sharing my very, very
56:02
Speaker 5: valuable list with them so that some of those people
56:08
Speaker 5: consider that candidate, right? It is not something that everyone
56:13
Speaker 5: agrees with, right? But in their defense, that might be
56:17
Speaker 5: a reason why that happens. Another reason why that happens
56:22
Speaker 5: might be, I have not raised quite as much money
56:28
Speaker 5: as I needed to raise in my campaign cycle. And
56:32
Speaker 5: the list that I have is the most valuable asset
56:38
Speaker 5: that I have as a candidate. So, I will make
56:43
Speaker 5: a decision to sell my list to a broker or
56:49
Speaker 5: sell my list to another campaign or sell my list
56:53
Speaker 5: to another, whatever the case may be, in service to
56:58
Speaker 5: paying my staff or in service to paying down debt
57:01
Speaker 5: for my campaign. So the intention often is a good
57:08
Speaker 5: and reasonable intention that an entity is trying to act upon.
57:13
Speaker 5: The effect of that on many donors, not all, right?
57:18
Speaker 5: I mean, I want to be clear that there are many,
57:19
Speaker 5: many donors that are like, bring that on because.
57:23
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I don't think there's any donors.
57:25
Speaker 9: That are, I promise.
57:28
Speaker 4: Listen, you're being, you're, I'm just, as a friend, you're
57:30
Speaker 4: being excessively generous to these campaigns.
57:32
Speaker 3: Okay.
57:32
Speaker 4: I'm like, we get the concept, but no one is
57:35
Speaker 4: like sell my data at infinitum.
57:38
Speaker 3: That is a nightmare for everybody.
57:39
Speaker 5: No, and no, but let me tell you, let me
57:41
Speaker 5: tell you why I know this is true because at
57:44
Speaker 5: least 5% of the time people are saying yes. Right. So,
57:50
Speaker 5: If everyone hated it, right, it would be a, we
57:55
Speaker 5: would stop doing this.
57:57
Speaker 4: I think most people don't know what's happening. I think
57:59
Speaker 4: people are going to donate to a list that.
58:02
Speaker 5: That is true, but that is also different from when
58:05
Speaker 5: it happens, whether I know how it happened or not.
58:09
Speaker 5: Do I say yes to the ask that's being made
58:11
Speaker 5: of me? And different times, different people say yes. So
58:15
Speaker 5: in their defense, all I'm saying is that there are
58:17
Speaker 5: often good reasons for why it's happening. And in 2025,
58:24
Speaker 5: in a world where targeting and messaging can all be
58:31
Speaker 5: much more precisely done than list sharing between candidates or causes,
58:39
Speaker 5: a moment like this creates an opportunity for an Act
58:44
Speaker 5: Blue to innovate and to move us to our next
58:48
Speaker 5: level of efficacy as an ecosystem. For example, those who
58:54
Speaker 5: are listening today may be seeing targeted advertisements on your
59:00
Speaker 5: social media platforms. There you get the benefit of hearing
59:05
Speaker 5: not just flat text message or flat email, but you
59:10
Speaker 5: get the benefit of hearing a video coming from the
59:15
Speaker 5: principal or the candidate who is really making a very
59:19
Speaker 5: clarified bid for what they're asking for. And it's not
59:23
Speaker 5: like two seconds of time. It's a rich bit of
59:27
Speaker 5: encounter that you can really take in and be influenced
59:30
Speaker 5: by what's being said. And from there, make a choice
59:35
Speaker 5: to make a donation. This is way less intrusive for many.
59:40
Speaker 5: And what we're finding is that the more candidates that
59:43
Speaker 5: are using these channels that we and other platforms are enabling,
59:48
Speaker 5: the more we're finding that donors are enjoying that a
59:52
Speaker 5: little bit better because it's integrated in with their feeds, right?
59:58
Speaker 5: And sometimes they're into it and sometimes they're not. But
1:00:01
Speaker 5: if they're not into it, it doesn't interrupt their day.
1:00:04
Speaker 5: They can just scroll past it, right?
1:00:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not opening their phone to a giant picture
1:00:07
Speaker 4: of Nancy Pelosi being like, Tommy, we're all going to
1:00:10
Speaker 4: die if you don't give.
1:00:11
Speaker 3: Me five bucks right now.
1:00:12
Speaker 5: Right, as lovely as she is.
1:00:13
Speaker 3: By the way. Absolutely lovely. Yeah, yeah. She is absolutely lovely,
1:00:17
Speaker 3: but the texts are awful.
1:00:18
Speaker 4: So in December of last year, a group of fundraising
1:00:21
Speaker 4: practitioners and consultants and academics They wrote this letter to
1:00:24
Speaker 4: ActBlue with some recommendations about protecting donors from the kind
1:00:27
Speaker 4: of scam packs, the unscrupulous actors that we were talking
1:00:30
Speaker 4: about earlier. How can you do that? How can you
1:00:34
Speaker 4: guys help protect against scam packs? Did you guys find
1:00:36
Speaker 4: the recommendations in that letter helpful or were they targeted
1:00:40
Speaker 4: the wrong people?
1:00:40
Speaker 3: How do you think about it?
1:00:42
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think about it in two ways
1:00:44
Speaker 5: as the CEO of ActBlue. One is any problem that
1:00:47
Speaker 5: we're having in– in our ecosystem, I want to hear
1:00:52
Speaker 5: about it. I'm not one that would bury my head
1:00:55
Speaker 5: in the sand and pretend that something doesn't exist. Having
1:00:59
Speaker 5: said that, I have a preference for hearing about it
1:01:04
Speaker 5: and not posting about it. I find one way to
1:01:08
Speaker 5: be a little bit more destructive and another way to
1:01:10
Speaker 5: be much more inviting of collaboration and problem solving. So
1:01:15
Speaker 5: that is certainly an open letter that I took I
1:01:20
Speaker 5: took to heart. Now, let me, again, for those who
1:01:24
Speaker 5: are new to this conversation and or may not understand
1:01:27
Speaker 5: all the ins and outs of it, I want to
1:01:30
Speaker 5: offer that the very naming of scam pack is difficult naming, right?
1:01:35
Speaker 5: If I were to try to look up what is
1:01:38
Speaker 5: the formal definition of scam pack, right, it would be
1:01:40
Speaker 5: hard for me to find an actual definition for what
1:01:43
Speaker 5: that is. But we do coalesce around a series of
1:01:47
Speaker 5: practices that make for a good PAC with good practices,
1:01:52
Speaker 5: and a series of practices that lead to a PAC
1:01:55
Speaker 5: that needs improvement. Let me just call that. So the
1:02:00
Speaker 5: things that I would name would be, does the PAC
1:02:03
Speaker 5: have a clear identity with a clear social presence that
1:02:10
Speaker 5: donors can look at and review? and understand what is
1:02:14
Speaker 5: it that they are here to do. That would be one.
1:02:17
Speaker 5: One would be, are they transparent in how they are
1:02:23
Speaker 5: spending the dollars that are actually being raised, right? And
1:02:27
Speaker 5: if it is a PAC that is raising for candidates,
1:02:32
Speaker 5: what you would want to see is a substantial amount
1:02:36
Speaker 5: of their spend going to actual candidates. If it is
1:02:40
Speaker 5: a PAC that is raising for issue or cause or
1:02:44
Speaker 5: something that is not candidate specific, you would want to
1:02:47
Speaker 5: see dollars being directed to that very specific thing that
1:02:51
Speaker 5: they are raising for and not towards nefarious, unnamed, let's
1:02:59
Speaker 5: call it consultant expenses where you can't really understand what
1:03:04
Speaker 5: that is or what it does. So that would be
1:03:07
Speaker 5: sort of a differential for me between good and bad.
1:03:10
Speaker 5: There are good and needs improvement rather, not good and bad.
1:03:14
Speaker 5: And then there are actual messages, right? So I've heard
1:03:19
Speaker 5: a lot of people accuse PACs who are using messages
1:03:24
Speaker 5: like act now and get a $ 5, 000 matching rate, right?
1:03:29
Speaker 5: There are PACs that use that kind of messaging that
1:03:33
Speaker 5: are very good PACs, right? They are taking the dollars
1:03:36
Speaker 5: that they're raising. They are demonstrably putting those dollars into
1:03:42
Speaker 5: key races across the country. And no one would ever
1:03:44
Speaker 5: argue about how the dollars are being spent, but they
1:03:47
Speaker 5: might argue about the aggressive messaging that they're using to
1:03:51
Speaker 5: get people to act, right? It would be like, again,
1:03:54
Speaker 5: the rough equivalent of the pastor who is a hellfire
1:03:58
Speaker 5: and brimstone pastor versus someone who's giving you a little
1:04:01
Speaker 5: gentle nudge that you should improve the practices in your life, right?
1:04:05
Speaker 5: Both of them lead to the same outcome if followed,
1:04:08
Speaker 5: and if you have that belief system, but different people
1:04:12
Speaker 5: have different preferences for how they hear their information, right?
1:04:15
Speaker 5: That I would not name as scam, even though some
1:04:21
Speaker 5: folks might receive it and many folks might receive it
1:04:23
Speaker 5: and feel like it is scammy or spammy feeling.
1:04:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really important point, right?
1:04:28
Speaker 4: You can have a sort of annoying, scammy obnoxious tone,
1:04:33
Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean the money is going to a
1:04:34
Speaker 4: bad place. And look, I have empathy for how challenging
1:04:39
Speaker 4: the task is of identifying or defining a scam pack.
1:04:42
Speaker 4: Because let's say we're talking about a charity. If there
1:04:45
Speaker 4: was a charity that said they were buying malaria nets
1:04:48
Speaker 4: for kids, but you look at their expenditures and 85%
1:04:51
Speaker 4: of it is going to a marketing firm or legal
1:04:53
Speaker 4: services or overhead, and 15% is going to malaria nets,
1:04:57
Speaker 4: you're like, aha, nope, bad actors. But we're talking about
1:05:01
Speaker 4: political entities seeking political outcomes. And the expenditures could be
1:05:06
Speaker 4: on marketing or ads or whatever and look up on
1:05:10
Speaker 4: the up and up, but they could be routed through
1:05:12
Speaker 4: an entity that's affiliated with the person that launched the
1:05:15
Speaker 4: PAC that's doing the fundraising. So they're getting paid that way.
1:05:18
Speaker 4: And I guess the challenge is like, how do you
1:05:19
Speaker 4: guys root out situations like that where you have someone
1:05:22
Speaker 4: who starts a PAC and then pays their own firm
1:05:25
Speaker 4: a bunch of money and profits on the back end?
1:05:27
Speaker 4: But it seems like that would be tough for you
1:05:29
Speaker 4: to know.
1:05:30
Speaker 5: So- Research is an important part of how we think
1:05:34
Speaker 5: about packs being onboarded, right? And to be clear, packs
1:05:40
Speaker 5: are an IRS designation, right? So there are some packs
1:05:43
Speaker 5: that have existed for a long time. There are some
1:05:46
Speaker 5: packs that are brand new. And the thing about packs
1:05:50
Speaker 5: that have been around for a long time is there's
1:05:51
Speaker 5: plenty of records to review in the spirit of conducting
1:05:56
Speaker 5: research to decide whether they should be onboarded. There are
1:05:59
Speaker 5: newer packs that do not have the benefit of years
1:06:03
Speaker 5: and years and annals and annals of research, right? So
1:06:07
Speaker 5: provided that they have the IRS identity, right, which that
1:06:12
Speaker 5: must be there, there are some that we would grant
1:06:15
Speaker 5: the benefit of time to get up and running. And
1:06:19
Speaker 5: you can imagine that for a new organization, just like
1:06:21
Speaker 5: for a startup company, dollars get spent differently on day
1:06:25
Speaker 5: one than they're spent on day 20,000, right?
1:06:28
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah.
1:06:30
Speaker 5: We do try to offer some grace and try to
1:06:33
Speaker 5: get some, you know, some points on the field to
1:06:36
Speaker 5: figure out how exactly that PAC will behave. And if
1:06:39
Speaker 5: we're finding that the PAC's behaviors are inconsistent with Act
1:06:45
Speaker 5: Blue's mission, right, which is to build technology that shapes
1:06:51
Speaker 5: democracy and fuels democratic wins, right? If we're finding that
1:06:55
Speaker 5: there's something that is completely orthogonal to that for the
1:06:59
Speaker 5: you know the mathematicians on the phone then that might
1:07:01
Speaker 5: be the cause for a conversation right.
1:07:04
Speaker 3: No mathematicians here.
1:07:05
Speaker 9: No mathematicians come on philosophy major marinate on that imagine
1:07:13
Speaker 9: that was your life things went for you.
1:07:16
Speaker 5: Philosophy was like my third favorite subject.
1:07:18
Speaker 4: I just want to switch gears a little bit which
1:07:20
Speaker 4: is um President Trump has ordered his Attorney General, Pam Bondi,
1:07:24
Speaker 4: to go after ActBlue. Republicans in Congress have been going
1:07:27
Speaker 4: after ActBlue or investigating ActBlue since 2023. It's clear their
1:07:31
Speaker 4: concern is what we've been talking about, which is that
1:07:34
Speaker 4: ActBlue has become a great way for Democrats to raise
1:07:37
Speaker 4: a lot of small-dollar money and has been very beneficial
1:07:40
Speaker 4: to the Democratic Party. But what do you think they're
1:07:42
Speaker 4: looking for, and what has the impact been on you
1:07:44
Speaker 4: guys from these investigations or these threats?
1:07:48
Speaker 5: Ultimately, what I think that they're looking for is why
1:07:51
Speaker 5: are they more effective than we are? And I would
1:07:57
Speaker 5: probably be looking for that myself if I was on
1:08:00
Speaker 5: the other side of the coin. But practically speaking, as
1:08:05
Speaker 5: I said, we've been at our craft for 21 years.
1:08:07
Speaker 5: They've been at their copy craft for six years. And
1:08:12
Speaker 5: when ActBlue was six years old, although we were not
1:08:17
Speaker 5: mandated from the top down, we were raising around about
1:08:22
Speaker 5: the same amount, right? So it is not the case
1:08:24
Speaker 5: that you turn on the spigots and everything just goes, right?
1:08:29
Speaker 5: There is tremendous discipline in scale and resiliency and all
1:08:34
Speaker 5: of the things that we have spent all of our
1:08:35
Speaker 5: time focusing on on the back end. And there's also
1:08:38
Speaker 5: tremendous time that we spend tuning the art of conversions
1:08:43
Speaker 5: and making sure that we are getting better and better
1:08:47
Speaker 5: and better with every election cycle. So I think that
1:08:50
Speaker 5: is the heart of the matter. But not being able
1:08:54
Speaker 5: to accept that reality, of course, we have to get
1:08:57
Speaker 5: lost in conspiracy theory. right? We have to get lost
1:09:01
Speaker 5: in the, well, it must be the case that they're
1:09:04
Speaker 5: better because of this, that, or the other thing, the
1:09:07
Speaker 5: most recent thing being foreign nationals who are interfering in
1:09:12
Speaker 5: the process, right? The data does not bear that out.
1:09:16
Speaker 4: Let's say Donald Trump snapped his fingers and made ActBlue
1:09:19
Speaker 4: go away tomorrow. What would the impact be on the
1:09:22
Speaker 4: Democratic Party?
1:09:23
Speaker 5: Well, I think it would be catastrophic, but I also
1:09:25
Speaker 5: think it's an impossibility.
1:09:27
Speaker 3: Why is it impossible?
1:09:28
Speaker 4: If this is a man who can direct his attorney
1:09:30
Speaker 4: general to tell the world that him accepting a $ 400
1:09:33
Speaker 4: million plane from Qatar is okay, why couldn't he tell
1:09:37
Speaker 4: her to, like, take you guys out?
1:09:40
Speaker 5: Nothing can stop the president from telling his— cabinet to
1:09:45
Speaker 5: do what he wants to tell him to do. I
1:09:48
Speaker 5: think there's clarity here that there was not an executive
1:09:52
Speaker 5: order to shut down ActBlue. There was a memorandum, which
1:09:56
Speaker 5: is effectively a letter written to the AG to look
1:10:00
Speaker 5: into the fundraising practices of ActBlue and other fundraising platforms, right?
1:10:06
Speaker 5: In theory, if there were a real fire, right, that
1:10:11
Speaker 5: would have been an order And that order would have
1:10:13
Speaker 5: been to shut ActBlue down, right? The real thing that
1:10:17
Speaker 5: they're trying to attack is our efficacy. We stand by
1:10:20
Speaker 5: our efficacy. We know that it's three times stronger. And
1:10:23
Speaker 5: that's not a brag. It's just a, when you're at
1:10:26
Speaker 5: it for 21 years and when you take your job seriously,
1:10:29
Speaker 5: that's what results look like. And results matter to ActBlue.
1:10:33
Speaker 3: Well, listen, Regina, thank you so much for doing the show.
1:10:36
Speaker 3: I appreciate this.
1:10:36
Speaker 4: I know you guys are dealing with a lot of
1:10:39
Speaker 4: stuff in D.C., so thank you for making the time.
1:10:41
Speaker 7: Absolutely.
1:10:41
Speaker 5: Appreciate you.
1:10:43
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