In the wake of today’s news that Donald Trump has sicced his attack dog Pam Bondi on ActBlue in a blatantly illegal partisan political attack, there’s a trending diary complaining about how ActBlue is supposedly flooding the diarist with spam email & text messages from dozens of candidates begging for money.
I get these as well, and I agree that they’re out of control. HOWEVER…those don’t come from ActBlue, they come from the campaigns (and in many cases from 3rd-party “Scam PACS” which may or may not be entities legitimately raising money for Democratic candidates).
As the guy who’s raised over $20 MILLION DIRECTLY FOR DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES to date (including over $13 million last cycle and over $180,000 so far this cycle), it behooves me to clear up a few misconceptions about ActBlue.
First of all, as noted above: ActBlue doesn’t send those irritating spam emails/texts.
Second: ActBlue provides a tool for whoever creates the fundraising pages which, when enabled, gives donors the ability to opt out of sharing their email/phone number with the campaigns!
I have this tool enabled on all of my own fundraising pages. For instance, if you visit my Special Elections page, the following pop-up tool appears as soon as you’ve completed your donation:
Now, there are certainly some improvements which could be made to this tool: First, it should be enabled by default instead of disabled. Second, it would be nice if it appeared before you complete your donation instead of afterwards, although I think there’s a technical reason for that since you have to enter your email address in order for ActBlue to be able to send you your receipt.
However, that tool is available…it’s just up to the campaigns (or PACs, or 3rd party page creators like myself) to enable it.
Update: It’s possible that the “opt out of sharing” tool is only available on SLATE pages (ie, pages with more than one candidate listed). I’m not sure about this, nor do I know why it would make a difference, but I figured I should add that caveat.
Third: Unfortunately, even if your email/phone number ISN’T shared with the campaigns, you may still receive spam emails/texts. Why? Because FEC regulations require ActBlue (or other campaign fundraising platforms like NGP) to send the donors name and mailing address to the campaign. From there it’s easy enough for either the campaigns or 3rd party companies to cross-match them to other email/phone databases and voila, they can then sell the lists to other campaigns.
I should note that this is also true if you donate directly via the candidates campaign site…and even if you use Venmo or Apple Pay or whatever, they still have to include at least your name & mailing address.
Fourth: No, ActBlue doesn’t “grift.” They have a flat rate of 4% which goes to cover credit card processing & other related gateway/banking fees. 4% is a bit high (I think 2.5 — 3.5% is more typical), so it’s possible that perhaps 1% actually goes to their operational expenses, but that’s pretty damned reasonable given how massive their technical and legal infrastructure is (most of their income is via voluntary tips from donors).
Remember, ActBlue has to make sure they comply with not only federal campaign finance law but also state campaign finance laws for ALL 50 STATES +DC, and even local campaign finance laws in some areas (I used ActBlue when I ran for county commissioner back in 2016, for instance, and sometimes even local school board candidates use ActBlue). There’s also judicial campaign finance laws which are often different from the laws for partisan seats, and don’t forget about campaign finance laws for PACs and charitable groups, which ActBlue also handles.
Point being, I don’t know what their legal compliance expenses are but they must be massive…and that’s all without Trump sticking Bondi & the DOJ on them.
Also, that 4% is the same whether you donate to a candidate via an ActBlue set up by a 3rd party like the ones I have at Blue26.org or whether you donate directly via the candidate’s campaign website.
Fifth: On ActBlue pages with multiple candidates listed, by default donations are split evenly across all of the candidates listed, but you also have the option to pick & choose which candidates you want to donate to using the “customize amounts” tool. If 10 candidates are listed and you donate $100, by default it’ll be split 10 ways, but you could also donate $50 to one of them, $25 to another & $25 a third, or whatever.
NOW, as I mentioned above, there are so-called “Scam PACs” which claim to be raising money for Democratic candidates but when you look more closely the money actually just goes to the PAC itself which in turn often only donates a small amount of what they raise to the candidates. I wrote up a couple of exposes of these last year.
For example, there was one called “Blue States PAC” which raised $750,000 but only donated 30% to actual Democratic candidates, party committees or other more reputable progressive PACs. Another one called “Fight the Right” raised over $1 million but only donated 22% to actual Dems.
On a semi-related note, with all the controversy about David Hogg and his “Leaders We Deserve” PAC, I did a similar deep dive into their FEC filings from last cycle:
x
With all the fuss about David Hogg & his “Leaders We Deserve” PAC, I decided to take a look at LWD’s FEC filings from the 2023-2024 cycle.
I’m presenting this without making any judgement, as I’m neither a lawyer nor an accountant & have never run a PAC. 1/
http://www.fec.gov/data/disburs...
— Charles Gaba (@charlesgaba.com) 2025-04-17T23:41:31.232Z
The short version is that during the 2023-2024 cycle, Leaders We Deserve raised an impressive $11.9 million and spent $11 million, but only $3.3 million of it (around 33%) actually went to Democratic candidates, Dem party committees or other PACs. The rest went to various types of “overhead.” I’m not passing judgment on LWD/Hogg, just stating what their FEC filing says.
By contrast, I don’t have a PAC: Blue26.org is just a website I whipped up to act as a collection of links to various ActBlue pages where I raise money directly for Democratic candidates & party committees. ActBlue takes their normal 4%, but the other 96% goes directly to the specific candidates/committees listed. I receive nothing.
Now, I do have my own tip page which shows up after you’ve completed a donation (clearly labeled as such) where folks who want to throw a buck or two my way to support my efforts can do so, but again, that’s voluntary and separate from the donation to the candidate(s).
UPDATE: Since this is getting some attention, here’s links to a few of my own ActBlue pages. Again, donations made via these go directly to the candidates listed (minus ActBlue’s standard 4% to cover cc processing costs); NOTHING goes to me:
