I’ve been asked numerous questions over the years regarding political campaign donations. This side-note post serves as something for me to share in future responses. I’ll get back to the 2026 elections (and donations to those campaigns) shortly.
When to Donate
In general, early donations are better than late donations. On the other hand, campaigns do love to brag about increasing contributions over time. My advice is to let the campaigns worry about budgeting and donate whenever you feel like doing something constructive.
The only caveat pertains to FEC reporting dates. The government requires all campaigns to file financial statements during the course of each election cycle. While these filings have little to do with campaign budgeting, they are often used – when the data is good – to help drive the narrative that a campaign is healthy, vibrant, and/or doing better than an opponent’s campaign. The reports can alternatively be used to show how desperately a campaign needs money – the political equivalent of begging for change on a street corner.
Two sets of FEC reporting dates are the most relevant this cycle. All campaigns must close their books on 6/30 & 9/30 in order to file the FEC paperwork by 7/15 & 10/15, respectively. Campaigns will gladly accept money whenever they can get it, but a donation received by COB on 6/30 is slightly more useful to them than a donation received the morning of 7/1.
Where to Donate
I generally prefer to donate directly to individual campaigns so that I know exactly where my money is going.
I will occasionally donate to a well-run PAC (Political Action Committee) that provides a service that benefits multiple candidates (e.g., advertising buys, voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts). If I have neither the time nor desire to do my own research, I might also donate to a PAC that intelligently re-distributes money to a deserving subset of candidates. Many PACs, however, are minimally useful with maximum overhead. Some PACs are just scams. Be careful.
The vast majority of Democratic campaigns (and PACs) use ActBlue to handle donations. ActBlue offloads much of the money handling mechanics from the campaigns and provides them data for their necessary FEC filings. A campaign’s ActBlue setup is quite simple, including the design of a hosted campaign donation form. While the form is easily customizable, some campaigns are better with aesthetics than others. In any case, the underlying transactions are well-handled by ActBlue, not by the campaigns.
By the way, ActBlue operates as a non-profit organization. They take 3.95% of each donation to cover credit card fees, hosting services, software development, and support. No setup or monthly fees are charged. It’s a good deal for the campaigns and gives donors a common, secure transaction platform.
How to Donate
ActBlue is also quite easy to use from a donor’s perspective. While one-off donations can be made, setting up a donor account is straight-forward and enables a user to easily make multiple donations to multiple campaigns without a ton of repetitive work. ActBlue also has reporting features to help donors keep track of when, where, and how much they’ve contributed.
You will notice that “suggested” donation amounts appear as buttons on the form and that those amounts vary from campaign to campaign. The numbers are just configuration settings that some campaigns haven’t tweaked. If you don’t see a button with the amount you want to donate, just type your desired dollar amount into the button with the blank field.
Of course, campaign donations are going to put you on contact lists. You just have to live with that. Campaigns know that people who have donated once are MUCH more likely to donate again. There are, however, a few things that you can do to manage the spam.
- Use a separate email account. My ActBlue profile uses a Gmail address that I set up just for this (and similar) purposes. Most political panhandling goes here. I check the account, but not daily. When I do, I might scan the Subject fields for hints of cleverness. Mostly, I just empty the inbox.
- Unsubscribe. In my experience, most political campaigns are decent about accepting an Unsubscribe request within a few days. I generally don’t bother, though, unless the email comes to an address that I didn’t provide. For those campaigns that consistently ignore an Unsubscribe request, they are reported as spam and blocked.
- Use Google Voice. I also have a free Google Voice account that I use whenever I’m asked to provide a phone number to someone with whom I have no desire to converse. Spam texts & voicemails go here. Since I see no valid reason for any campaign to call or text me, I check this even less often than the above Gmail account … and mostly just to clear it.
Whatever you do, you’re still going to get tons of melodramatic spam. It’s impressive that just $5 will save American democracy and prevent the Apocalypse.
Take some solace in the fact that the candidates aren’t spending the wee hours of every morning composing these pathetic, online pleas. They were either written by a poor AI model or by some young, unpaid intern with a mailing list and an old laptop. The candidates themselves are somewhere making pathetic, in-person pleas to big-dollar donors. The professional staffs are busy trying to actually run things. From the campaigns’ perspectives, this form of online “outreach” costs NOTHING. So, if it pulls in even a few bucks, they’re happy.
[ Yes, I am aware that there is indeed one idiot politician who is often online at 2am, personally spamming the world. He’s not on ActBlue. ]
FYI, for my own analytics, I do look at campaign websites, ActBlue customizations, apparent donor contact practices, etc. as minor indicators of the competence of campaign staffs. I’m more interested in knowing if the staffs can raise money, get exposure, reach new voters, and get their supporters to the polls. But the little stuff also matters.
Bottom Line
Show your support! It’s easy. And even small donations add up.