When the House GOP voted to repeal the ACA, they jeopardized the health and security of millions of Americans. In many cases, the Republicans who voted for Trumpcare don’t have a challenger yet, or have several primary candidates going up against them. But when the results came in, small-dollar donors were clamoring to take action and do whatever they could to fight back and defeat them in 2018. We heard them loud and clear and quickly came up with a powerful solution to help them amplify their voices.
Our team was all hands on deck on the day of the Trumpcare vote, working to get nominee funds set up for every congressional district that had a Republican incumbent. Nominee funds are a tool from back in the early days of ActBlue, and they allow people to donate to the eventual Democratic challenger in a district. That means that once the primary is over, the Democratic nominee will receive all of the money raised into the fund. In the meantime, we’ll hold the money being raised in escrow. After the primaries, we’ll get the funds out to the Democratic nominee within 10 days of the results.
We created a single contribution form listing all of the nominee funds in response to interest on Twitter, and helped groups like Daily Kos and Swing Left create similar forms with specific slates of vulnerable districts. All together, these nominee fund pages raised more than $2 million in under 24 hours. Contributing to nominee funds allowed supporters to channel some of their anger, and those donors helped bring our sitewide total for the day up to $4.2 million.
There’s a lot of work to be done to help Democrats set our country back on the right path, so starting today, you can create your own fundraising page with all the nominee funds you’d like to support — including Senate campaigns — and organize your own network. And you can find a page that includes all Senate seats with a Republican incumbent here, for you to share as you’d like. This is just one more way that we can put power into the hands of small-dollar donors, and help concerned citizens like you have an impact on the future of our country.
How can you create your own page to raise money for Democratic nominee funds?
To create a fundraising page with nominee funds, you’ll want to head to our directory.
First, select “Nominee Funds” under “Groups and Funds.” This will bring up the master list of active nominee funds. Then, you can choose a state.
The directory will refresh, and you’ll see a list of all the nominee funds for the state (federal campaigns only) you selected in the style of “CA-45 2018 Democratic Nominee Fund.”
Just click the orange “Create page” button to get started.
You’ll be prompted to sign in or create an account, so you can come back and make edits to the page after it’s created, as well as track the page’s performance.
Next, you’ll be asked to fill in some basic information, like a page title and a pitch to supporters.
You can also add a goal thermometer so your supporters can see how much your form has raised. If you include a goal, a thermometer will automatically be added to your contribution form, like the one below.
We recommend choosing amounts that are reasonable and that donors feel like they can help you reach. You should also include a couple of different amounts so that if one goal is reached, the thermometer will automatically update to show the next highest goal you’ve chosen.
You have the option of adding higher goals for when your initial goal is met under “Additional amounts.”
If you want, you can also skip that step in the bottom right corner and make these customizations at a later time. On the next page, you’ll select your preset contribution amounts, which will determine which buttons are available on the form. Of course, your donors can always type in a custom amount. You should also choose whether or not your form will be able to accept recurring contributions.
Once you’ve finished customizing your form, you’ll be brought to the Promote page, where you’ll be given a link to share with your network, as well as options to share the form on Facebook and Twitter. To find out more about social share, click here.
If you want to add more nominee funds or candidates to your page so you can raise for a group of funds at once, head over to the Add tab of your form.
Search for the group you want to fundraise for just like you did in the Directory, and click “Add” to add it to your page.
After you’ve finished adding groups to your form, you’re ready to start spreading the word and raising some money! You can post your link on social media, or email it out to your friends and family and encourage them to share it with their own networks.
If you’re going to be posting your link in many different places, we recommend using refcodes to keep track of where your donations are coming from. For example, with refcodes you can easily see if a supporter made their donation from Facebook, Twitter, or an email you sent out. To read more about refcodes, click here.
When you want to check in and see how fundraising is going, you can head to the Statistics tab of your form to see a breakdown of all the contributions you’ve brought in so far.
We hope you’ll find these nominee funds helpful in organizing folks in your communities and taking part in the resistance movement during this critical time. And as always, you can find us at info@actblue.com to answer any questions.
