Advice on Making Donations to Democratic Candidates

If you have ever made a donation to a partisan political candidate, then you have learned that your name and contact data will almost inevitably be sold, again and again, to other partisan campaigns around the country. This is done for a simple reason: the seller and the buyers all make money. The latter in any particular case may not be much, or perhaps even nothing, but it doesn’t cost much to add new contacts to a solicitation list for a solicitation that is going out anyway.

This page is divided into two parts.

Part 1 is a set of “don’ts and dos.”

Part 2 is a list of specific PACs to ignore if you receive e-mails from them.

Part 1: Don’ts and Dos

This is an offering from Andy Borowitz.

Don’ts

  • Don’t give to a PAC using crummy/deceptive fundraising tactics (anyone claiming to have 3x matches, or claiming that if you don’t give right now the world will explode)
  • Don’t give to a PAC you’ve never heard of before just because they have a vague anti-Trump-sounding name
  • Don’t give to a candidate running in a district that Trump won by a billion points in 2024 and a Democrat isn’t going to flip; for example, don’t give to a vanity candidate running against Marjorie Taylor Greene
  • Don’t give to a group that you don’t know anything about and is sending you random messages

Dos

  • Give to a candidate running in Virginia in their off-cycle election (like Abigail Spanberger for governor)
  • Money donated directly to a candidate will often go further than to a PAC. Candidates can buy airtime at a cheaper rate than PACs, although many PACs still do valuable work
  • If you give to a candidate, make sure they’re running in a winnable seat. These lists aren’t perfect, but the Cook Political Report rates the competitiveness of every House race. Your money is best spent on races in the “lean” or “tossup” category
  • Pick a candidate you think does great work and give them a monthly recurring donation—just set it and forget it. Recurring donations are great because they help organizations plan their future budgets well. So $10 over 12 months is often worth more to a campaign than $120 up front, because their budget-making process requires accurate forecasting
  • If all of this sounds too complicated, here’s one simple thing you can do: give to Jon Ossoff of Georgia. He’s the most vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbent. You can give him a recurring donation for 18 months and that’ll take him through Election Day. If that’s all you do, that would be pretty great!

Part 2: Political Action Committees (PACs) to Avoid

These suggestions are based on an article by Ryan Grim in Drop Site News. The article describes the political fundraising background of a person who is now running for Senator in Maine, and a set of PACs affiliated with the organization “Mothership Strategies.”

The following PACs are affiliated with Mothership:

  • Progressive Turnout Project
  • Stop Republicans
  • Progressive Takeover
  • Stop These Oppressive People: Tyrants
  • Turnout the Vote
  • Dem Turnout 2026

Here is a quotation from the article, describing one of the annoying tactics of Mothership:

“Mothership PACs pioneered the tactic of signing donors up automatically for recurring contributions, a practice that ActBlue, the party’s fundraising platform, eventually barred as deceptive.”