Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

Election Followup – Final Set of Organizations

by WaterGirl| December 20, 20243:35 pm| 23 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

On Monday, we talked about North Carolina and more, and on Thursday, we talked about the Balloon Juice efforts in support of Four Directions. Today let’s talk about the other organizations we supported. This will be our final look-back post on the 2023-24 targeted fundraising cycle.

First up – The Civics Center

This was our first year focusing on youth, and we hit the ground running. We talked about the youth focus with NC Black Alliance and NCAAT in Monday’s post, so no need to talk about them here. The Civics Center was our third group with a youth focus. They train students and educators to conduct registration and preregistration drives in High Schools.

And they make it fun, providing T-shirts, stickers, customizable flyers, tote bags, candy and other swag in the brilliantly-named Democracy in a Box.

The Civics Center does two major High School campus drives each year. Our donations helped them expand their Fall registration drives into diverse urban campuses, at a cost of about $1,000 per school. Between the $30k we raised and the double match they found for our funds, that’s 90 high school registration drives!

This really has a longer-term focus than our usual boots-on-the-ground, GOTV efforts. But when you’re investing in youth, the younger you start, the bigger the long-term payoff! Studies show that getting a student registered and to the polls when they first become eligible has a lifetime impact, and if they vote in 2 elections a row, you’ve likely created a voter for life.

Next up – Voting Access for All (VAAC)

You probably recall that VAAC works in Michigan with the formerly incarcerated and with folks who are in jail waiting for trial because they can’t afford bail – people who were never tried in a court of law, let alone convicted. I still need to connect with them about the fruits of their efforts in 2024, so I don’t have much to report there. Just that I feel good about supporting that cohort, as I do about all the under-represented groups we support.

And finally – Worker Power

We supported Worker Power on 3 fronts during this cycle:

Spring canvass team in Maricopa County
Leadership School (scholarship for one young leader)
Fall canvass team in Pinal and Pima Counties (Tucson area).

We funded a canvass team for 3 weeks in strategically-targeted precincts in Arizona – neighborhoods with flippable state house and senate seats and vulnerable Republican Congressmen.

Although we didn’t get Arizona’s electoral votes, our efforts helped flip a state house seat in Phoenix, as well as contributed to the election of Senator Ruben Gallego. Sadly, we were unable to flip Republican Juan Ciscoman’s seat – in an unhappy bit of irony, a Green party candidate siphoned off enough voters to deny a win to Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel, who is an actual environmental lawyer. I have some choice words for people who have lost the plot.

I’ll leave you with 5 points.

Working for a better future is an act of faith.
Identifying and motivating new voters is an investment.
We can build on that investment in 2026 and 2028.
Money spent identifying and motivating voters is always money well-spent!
We can’t quit now. We have to work even harder after this setback.

As with everything we do, it’s about right now, and it’s also about the future!

Election Followup – Final Set of OrganizationsPost + Comments (23)

Election Followup – Four Directions

by WaterGirl| December 19, 20241:30 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

On Monday, we talked about North Carolina and more.

Today let’s talk about the Balloon Juice efforts in support of Four Directions – a group and a cause that is near and dear to our collective Balloon Juice hearts.

Four Directions does an extraordinary job of fighting for Native American voting rights and giving voice to the Native American community.

voter registration
GOTV efforts
voting rights litigation
legislative advocacy

We supported Four Direction’s efforts in three key swing states – Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin. And of course we helped them return to Montana with the goal of reelecting Senator Jon Tester.

Montana was a heartbreaker. It was a rough Senate year, and I can hardly believe that we lost 3 good senators: Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Bob Casey.

Overall, according to the Brookings Institute, the nationwide Native vote was 57% for Harris and 39% Trump, down from Biden’s numbers in 2020. Congressional voting percentages were similar.

The gender gap is evident in the Native vote as well, with 63% of women voting for Harris vs 50% of men. Sadly, the Native vote was more likely to vote for Trump in 2024 than African-Americans, Asian Americans or Latino voters. Still, the native community was 17% more likely to vote for Harris than white voters.

Turnout is always affected by accessibility barriers – long distances to vote, threats of arrest even if the law doesn’t allow arrests while traveling to vote, subject to hostility when they go to vote, and lack of assistance with voting questions. This year was no different.

Overall, the Native vote wasn’t quite as solidly Democratic this cycle as it has been in the past. But 2024 may well be a world-wide anomaly, and our work in turning out Native voters in key swing states will pay off in 2026 and beyond.

Even so, there were brights spots!

Montana’s 4 Native American majority counties went solidly for Tester.
Native-majority Apache County in Arizona went for Harris over Trump by a margin of 59-40 (down from 66-33 in 2020).
Ruben Gallego’s efforts in Indian Country paid off; he won Apache County by a larger margin that Harris at 62-35.
Jacky Rosen (Nevada) kept her seat in a really tough year.
Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin) kept her seat in a really tough year.
The only Native majority County in Wisconsin (Menominee) awarded 80% of its votes for Harris.
In Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas), home of the majority of the state’s Native population, Native voting participation was up over 2020.

We did good, BJ peeps. It may feel like at times like we lost everything, but we didn’t. It’s likely that our efforts in these states got us THREE Senate seats that wouldn’t have won otherwise.

None of our funds went into the pockets of highly-paid consultants. None went to television ads. It mostly went into the pockets of the Native Americans who were doing the boots on the ground voter registration and GOTV. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a win-win, because we are helping to raise the standard of living in those communities.

I am confident that our funds to Four Directions for Montana had more of an impact on Native votes than the millions of dollars the DNC put into TV ads, etc in Montana.

It’s important to remember that once someone votes in one election, it’s far more likely that they will vote in the next one.

As with everything we do, it’s about right now, and it’s also about the future!

Election Followup – Four DirectionsPost + Comments (30)

Election Followup – North Carolina and More

by WaterGirl| December 16, 202412:00 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

In any normal election year, we would have started and already completed the post-election fundraising wrap up posts by now. Like many of you, I am still figuring out how to pick myself up off the floor after the election. My head knows that this isn’t the time to say “well, we tried, but we lost, and I’m done”. My heart? My heart knows that, too, even as it’s still broken, but how to move forward still isn’t exactly clear.

Had a great conversation with the folks at Worker Power last week. We’re going to be bringing in some of our organizations to talk with us about how we all move forward after this crushing blow, and I think we are going to start with them. These won’t be presentations so much as they will be discussions – probably on a weekend evening as we’ve done for some of our Balloon Juice zooms.

However devastating the election loss continues to be at the Presidential and US House and Senate levels, it’s important to remember that our efforts were not for naught. That’s the beauty of our focus mostly on organizations, as opposed to candidates. The work builds on itself, from year to year, election to election. With organizations, it’s not about just the top-level races, it’s about state races and down-ballot races, as well.

I am really proud of all the groups we supported – there’s not even one that I regret. In some ways the outcome is everything, but in other ways, it’s not about the outcome, it’s about doing the work, and building on that, and I have no regrets about the work we did.

We branched out to some new states, like North Carolina, to some new groups, and to some new communities.

So with that as background, let’s look at North Carolina, where we primarily focused on turning out the youth BIPOC vote.

Our first partnership was with the North Carolina Black Alliance Campus Engagement Project, and its charismatic leader, Marcus Bass. The Black Alliance already had a fully-operational registration and turnout team at the state’s 13 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In Phase I, Balloon Juice helped them expand to two public colleges with substantial BIPOC student populations. Our money helped them recruit, train and deploy on-campus canvassers.

Phase II expanded this effort to four urban community colleges in the state’s largest cities. Both efforts were overwhelmingly successful. In between, we flash-fundraised for security equipment for the canvassers after the mood on the street turned ugly after the Trump assassination attempt in July.

Over 150,000 provisional and challenged ballots were cast in NC, and we also funded the ballot curing efforts after the election. All told, between our donations thru ActBlue and external matches, we raised $155,000 for NC Black Alliance.

We also helped North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT) expand their outreach to Asian American students on the state’s largest campuses. The young women who lead this organization are impressive. And inspiring! NCAAT coordinated with their Black Alliance partners to make sure their ballot curing efforts were not duplicated. All told, between our donations thru ActBlue and external matches, we raised $100,000 for NCAAT in Action.

North Carolina didn’t go to Harris, but ticket-splitting in the state awarded major victories to the Democratic party in North Carolina. Josh Stein trounced the odious Mark Robinson by 14 points to become Governor. Democrats won other statewide races, electing Democrats as Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. And, flipping a seat in the state House of Representatives cost the Republicans their ill-gotten gerrymandered veto-proof super majority.

The Republicans reacted by abusing their current supermajority power to pass a bill weakening the power of statewide offices held by Democrats and giving the Republicans more control over elections. Read about their perfidy here.

We supported 3 North Carolina candidates, based on recommendations from Marcus at NC Black Alliance.

Allison Riggs, one of two Democrats on the seven-justice NC Supreme Court, is currently leading by 748 votes over her Republican challenger. As of December 13, the race has not yet been called. But it is looking good – she picked up a few votes on a partial recount.

Carolyn Thompson, an African-American incumbent justice on the NC Court of Appeals. Alas, she lost by less than 100,000 votes out of over 5 million cast, to a very conservative white male challenger.

Raymond Smith is an African American Gulf War veteran challenging a white male Republican incumbent in Eastern North Carolina. He hoped to flip the seat and shatter the Senate super-majority. Unfortunatelyi, incumbent Eldon “Buck” Newton was easily reelected with a 10-point lead.

Despite all these heroic efforts, youth voter turnout (18-25 year olds) in 2024 was down 7% in the state from 2020 (60% vs. 53%). There are many potential explanations – some universal, and some unique to North Carolina (the hurricane aftermath). The result was beyond disappointing.

But the new voters registered and motivated to go to the polls is an investment in the future. The NC Democratic party is well-organized and well-led by its dynamic chair Anderson Clayton. The efforts of our partners and the state party have expanded the base of new Democratic voters – we can build on that in 2026 and 2028. Money spent identifying and motivating new voters is always money well-spent! As with everything we do, it’s about right now, and it’s also about the future!

I always think about Georgia, and Stacey Abrams. The work that gave us two Democratic Senate seats in 2020 didn’t start in 2020, or even in 2016. That work started way back in 2010, and that’s the work we’re involved in now in North Carolina. And 10 years later, we got the senate because of those two Georgia Senators, and Georgia got two of the finest senators around. I would not be at all surprised if Jon Ossoff runs for president in 2028, and wins.

I thought this could be the year that NC electoral votes would go to the Democrats. That was not to be, but electing Democrats to most state-wide offices and breaking the House supermajority will spare North Carolinians some of the worst of what the Republicans have in store for them. The work we have done for NC, and the work we have ahead of us, may well make as many waves as GA did in 2020.

Working for a better future is an act of faith. We took our body blows, we are licking our wounds, and in the new year we will have our work cut out for us. I will not let Trump and his henchmen break my spirit. Not for long, anyway.

Election Followup – North Carolina and MorePost + Comments (49)

New Angel Matches for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania State Races

by WaterGirl| October 23, 20243:49 pm| 45 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Political Fundraising, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

I just received an email message from an Angel offering a $1k Angel match for WI and a $1k Angel match for PA. (Sorry, OH!)

Matching up to $100 per person per thermometer. To be matched, ell us about your donation in a comment or by email to WaterGirl

Donate

Open thread.

New Angel Matches for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania State RacesPost + Comments (45)

Angel Match Updates and More

by WaterGirl| October 22, 20249:47 am| 44 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

Just two weeks from today we will have done everything we can do to have a positive impact on the election.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, I would guess that Friday will be the last day we can donate to candidates and expect that it could have an impact on Nov 5. So including today, we essentially have 4 days left to help our candidates in the sidebar. At that point, no matter what the totals, we’ll be done with that phase and the candidate thermometers will come down. No commitments were made, so it’s not the end of the world if we don’t meet those goals – I just figured that $5k was a meaningful amount for the House Races and that $2k was a meaningful amount for the smaller races.

We have passed the halfway mark on our fundraising for PA, WI, and OH – we are at 55%!

I’ll add Angel match information in comment #1, and I’ll update it throughout the day.

This is hands-down the most watchable / readable piece about Project 2025 that I have seen all year.

Please share this video far and wide.

I’ve seen this all over twitter, but someone just linked to the TikTok, though I don’t recall who. So if it was you, take a bow.

~~If anyone finds a YouTube version, please link to it in the commutes so I can add it here~~. Thanks, Old School!

TikTok does this weird thing on my computer where it switches what video plays, so here is the URL for watching and sharing if the one below switches out. Link

@timwalzThe best defense is a good offense — so let’s get out and win this thing.♬ 10k video. – 💙💙Daijone_TooHeartless💙💙

Before I was governor, I was a high school teacher and football coach.

Trust me. You take the time to draw up a playbook like Project 2025, you’re gonna use it. pic.twitter.com/kZTYI7KQb6

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 21, 2024

Also, let’s use this thread for reporting donations toward Angel matches.

Look for Angel match information in comment #1.

Angel Match Updates and MorePost + Comments (44)

Answering Your Fundraising Questions

by WaterGirl| October 21, 202410:00 am| 59 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

There were several questions in the recent fundraising thread and I thought I would answer them here.

Current Angel matches

Remember, for most of the state house races, this is about trying to get a majority, or stopping the other side from keeping their supermajority, or defeating a particularly odious Republican.

And of course we need to win back the House!!! The 3 House seats will help us do that.

PA Matt Cartwright $800 ($50)
$330.00 left

PA State Races $1k
$265 left

WISC Rebecca Cooke $1k
$230 left

WISC State Races $500
complete

OHIO Greg Landsman $1k
$690 left

OHIO State Races $600
$180 left

Once these matches are met, we’ll be at about $20,000 overall, which is halfway to our goal. A total of $41,000 would finish off all 6 of the state thermometers.

Texas and Florida?

Both of the Democratic senate races – FL and TX – are rolling in $$ from all over the country. Pulling for them, for sure, but those are not races where our money could have an impact.

More Candidates after this round?

Probably not, unless one of our organizations contacts us about a candidate that could really use our help.

In 2022, we raised about $160,000 for candidates, with $73k going directly to US House candidates, and a couple of senate races, and a lot of key “election protection” races where Governors, Secretaries of State, and Attorneys General were up for elections in swing states.

This is a very different year for candidates – there is a ton of Democratic money sloshing around in almost every race for the US House.

So as much as we would love to help certain House and Senate candidates, it’s like last time around – we didn’t donate to Beto, or to Stacey Abrams, or to other candidates we admire and want to see elected. All those races are getting national money from all over the country – so while it might feel good to give to them, it’s not strategic. They will win or they will lose, but our money would not make a difference.

Four Directions

We aren’t trying to reach a specific goal for them, so that thermometer will just hang out in the sidebar – for people to donate, or not.

Anything being donated through the 4D thermometer will surely be going to pay for folks who are doing the work on the ground.

More Angel matches?

If anyone wants to be an angel, at this stage of the game – being so close to the election and me being without my laptop – I think we would ask the angels to add their dollars up front and let people know that any amount will be matched until the thermometer reaches a certain amount.

What’s next?

Beyond what we’ve got going thermometer-wise, I think we’ll hold our powder – all of our organizations know that if something comes up, we are available for FLASH fundraising. Like we did for Four Directions Nevada with the freak snowstorm on election day. Or if the North Carolina folks were to contact us to say that if they had X more dollars they could keep Y more canvassers on for ballot curing, I’m sure we would respond to that in a heartbeat!

Any other questions?

Let us know in the comments and I’ll answer them.

Quick note: If any of what I’ve written sounds cold or heartless, believe me when I say it’s a real struggle sometimes to keep the focus and not get sucked in to helping candidates we love. This weekend, one of our angels put us in touch with Greg Landsman (at my request) in case he could point us to some House candidates who might need our help.

He came back with a list of 5 – most of whom we love and supported in 2022. Marcy Kaptur, etc. But if they have 1.5 million in unspent funds, then our money won’t make a difference.

It’s so hard to say no, but our focus is strategic fundraising, and I try really hard to stay true to that. It is hard sometimes!!!

Answering Your Fundraising QuestionsPost + Comments (59)

Weekend Post with Angel Matches and Thermometers

by WaterGirl| October 19, 20249:55 pm| 31 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

In case you missed it, we are raising funds for 3 US House candidates and State Races for PA, WI, and OH.

Need somme inspiration?

Listen to this from @JordanHarrisPA. pic.twitter.com/zlrnPb12mH

— Kamala for PA (@KamalaforPA) October 19, 2024

On TikTok if you prefer: Link

Angel matching – to be matched, tell us about your donation in the comments or in email to WaterGirl.

We have Angels – WISCONSIN!

$1,000 Angel match for Rebecca Cooke (WI-03) who is running for the US HOUSE (matching up to $100 per person)
Angel: Mousebumples

We have Angels – PENNSYLVANIA!

$800 Angel match for Matt Cartwright (PA-08) who is running for the US HOUSE (matching up to $50 per person)
Angel: Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

$1,000 for the Pennsylvania State Races thermometer (matching up to $50 per person)
Angel: Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

We have Angels – OHIO!

$1,000 Angel match for Greg Landsman (OH-01) who is running for the US HOUSE (matching up to $100 per person)
Angel: goldengirl

$600 for the Ohio State Races thermometer (matching up to $100 per person) matching not retroactive
Angel: Mac

THERMOMETERS!

Details about candidates are here.

Donate

Weekend Post with Angel Matches and ThermometersPost + Comments (31)