To: Interested Parties
From: Shasti Conrad, Chair, Washington State Democrats

Good morning,

Big Picture

Late last month, Trump signed an executive memorandum to harass and intimidate ActBlue, the leading fundraising online platform for Democratic candidates and progressive campaigns. Since ActBlue was established in 2004, the platform has collected $16.8 Billion. Washington Democrats use ActBlue for our fundraising, so Trump’s action is directly targeting our ability to raise and access funds that we need for the vital work we do to activate voters, conduct field organizing, and win elections. 

Austin Surat, a political scientist at Amherst College, makes a compelling case that “it is not surprising that the president and his supporters in Congress would try to cripple [ActBlue]. That’s what 21st-century authoritarians do: They retain the forms of democracy but do everything they can to tip the scales in their favor.” 

House Judiciary Ranking Member Jaimie Raskin (D-MD) released a statement saying in part, “[The] presidential decree targeting the campaign infrastructure of the Democratic party with precisely zero evidence of wrongdoing is the kind of edict you’d expect from a power-mad dictator in a Banana Republic. This president, with his approval ratings underwater and sinking like a stone, is desperately seeking to undermine his political opposition by cutting off their access to funding.” 

Washington Democrats are preparing to handle whatever dysfunction and chaos the Trump administration is determined to inject into our campaign infrastructure. We wanted to share some best practices that can be applied to your own organization’s fundraising support systems.

Back up your data regularly and comprehensively

Having the full database of your donors, their contact information, and giving history stored somewhere secure that you can access in case of government intrusion will ensure your organization can continue to function in the worst case scenario. Even if it’s an excel spreadsheet, that’s better than nothing if ActBlue were to suddenly go dark.

Have an alternative payment processing system available

While ActBlue has long been the gold standard for Democratic campaigns and organizations, there are other payment processing systems available. Doing the research now to set up a backup system in case ActBlue goes down for an extended period of time ensures continuity of service for your supporters. Due to the size of our organization, Washington Democrats require a more sophisticated Customer Relations Management platform than ActBlue provides. We use NGP, but understand that smaller campaigns and organizations may not be able to afford another service on top of ActBlue. We would encourage you to do the research ahead of time to compare costs for backup services and even reach out to these services with your concerns about potential disruptions caused by government interference. They may be able to point you towards more economical options or provide scaled-down versions of their own services that you can switch to in case of emergency. 

Create contingency plans ready to deploy for anything you’d lose in the event of a service interruption

Recurring gifts, email functionality, donor histories and inventories of active donors - all can disappear from ActBlue if the government gets a court to go along with their flawed reading of the law. Organizations like ours must be prepared for this eventuality. Having contingency plans at the ready ensures that your organization and your supporters will continue to have access to the basic functions that support our fundraising efforts. 

Thankfully the courts have been a (mostly) persistent block against Trump’s overt attempts at authoritarianism, but preparing for the worst case scenarios will ensure that our Democratic ecosystem is well poised to ensure the basic operations of our organizations, providing the bandwidth we will need to forcefully resist Trump’s unconstitutional and lawless overreach.

Call to Action

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• Wednesday, May 14 - Time to Act! Hosted by U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, join this virtual series to take practical action. Sign up here.

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