"Why donating to campaigns is a poor use of your limited resources"

This is addressed to people, like myself, who care deeply about the outcome of our coming elections. I hope to convince you that, despite that fact, your donations are much better spent elsewhere. Where? I cover that in this post.

I do recognize, of course, that candidates need money, but campaigns take in more than they can spend productively. And there are essential supports to our democracy that are underfunded. One House race in 2024 (NY-17, $18 million in candidate expenditures, PLUS $26 million in PACs) consumed nearly twice the entire budget of the Internet Archive / Wayback Machine ($23 million). The Internet Archive is an enormously valuable repository, not just for Americans but globally. OpenSecrets ($4.5 million), the source of the campaign data, runs on an even smaller shoestring.

Even worse, campaign spending is hugely inefficient – concentrated in a short period of time and largely by outsiders rather than steadily building community infrastructure. So, if you want to give money to efforts that can affect elections directly, give to my priority 2 orgs (below). Among other things, they engage marginalized communities in voting, get people to the polls, and other activities that are essential to elect the people I would like to see elected. My priority ones, are necessary for a functioning democracy, too, and generally most need the funds.

So, I my priorities for giving to protect our democracy are:
1) Civil society organizations like OpenSecrets, Internet Archive, ACLU, Freedom of the Press Foundation.
2) Grassroots organizations working on voting rights, citizen engagement, empowering people.
3) —————
intentionally left blank to indicate how much lower elections are in my priorities.
4) State and local elections (particularly, where there are programs like NY's that magnify small-ish donations).
5) ———————
intentionally left blank to indicate how much lower elections are in my priorities.
6) "
7) Congressional and Senate races
8) ———————
intentionally left blank to indicate how much lower elections are in my priorities.
9) "
10) "
11) Even worse is donations in the last month of the campaign. Desperate as you will feel in October to do one more thing to push someone over the top, and as many emails, calls, texts, and other appeals to give one more dollar to get so-and-so the votes they need, it is unclear that the last dollar will even have ANY positive impact. It is possible for campaigns to have TOO MUCH money so they spend their resources alienating voters. There may be an election that is on a knife-edge, but it probably won't be the one you give your money to.

P.S. The organizations on this list are much LESS LIKELY to be filling your email and text streams with fundraising appeals. They generally spend much less of their limited resources bugging potential donors.

P.P.S. Some day I will learn how to format in Ghost. Today is not that day.