Note: I plan on reposting my diary daily/near-daily until November.
As many of you may know, for the past several election cycles I’ve been running a Democratic fundraising project which has proven to be wildly more successful than I expected at every step of the way. I raised $220K during the 2018 cycle; $6 million in 2020; $1.3 million in 2022 and a whopping $13.5 million in 2024.
That’s over $20 MILLION directly for Democratic candidates without a dime of it going to me.
(I did add a tip page last year which shows up after you complete your donation to the candidates and/or party committees listed if you happen to feel like tossing a buck or two my way for my efforts, but that’s completely voluntary & 100% separate).
I should note that I’ve done this without sending a single email or text message, and without paying any “digital consultants.”
So, what about this cycle? Well, in addition to the ActBlue pages themselves (which let you donate directly to one, two or multiple individual candidates instead of donating to a PAC which may or may not spend your money wisely), I’ve created a simple one-stop repository of links to all of the fundraising pages: Blue26.org.
Blue26 IS NOT A PAC!
It’s not an organization of any sort, in fact; it’s just a website which consists of a simple blog and a bunch of links to ActBlue pages categorized by type of race (U.S. House, U.S. Senate, State Legislature, etc).
Unlike many PACs, when you donate via one of my ActBlue candidate pages...
- 96% of your donation goes to their campaigns.
- 4% goes to ActBlue’s standard credit card processing fees.
- 0% goes to anyone else, including me.
- While donations are split evenly among the candidates listed by default, you can also PICK AND CHOOSE which ones to donate to using the ‘Customize Amounts’ tool.
As a bonus, I list the specific candidates on each page, and even include the PVI (Partisan Voter Index) for every district to give you a general idea of how realistic winning/flipping each seat is likely to be.
Oh yeah...and my ActBlue pages even include a tool which lets you opt out of sharing your email/phone number with the campaigns!
Let me repeat that: You can opt out of sharing your email/phone number w/the campaigns.
During the checkout process you should see this pop-up screen; select “Not Now” and your email/phone number won’t be shared with the campaigns:
This doesn’t guarantee that you won’t still receive fundraising texts/emails if you’re already on a list via a different source, but it does mean they won’t get it from one of my pages.
For federal races you can even donate to whoever the eventual Democratic nominee ends up being via a little-known but very handy feature ActBlue offers called their “Nominee Funds.”
Feel free to post any questions or concerns in the comments and I’ll address them as best as I can.
NOTE: Here’s a local news story about the success Fergie Reid (90 for 90) and I had in Virginia last fall:
