Clearing our inboxes to clear our minds
Donor organizers combat fundraising spam to build political power.
It's no secret that the misleading tone of political fundraising emails have alienated many would-be progressive volunteers. Lara Putnam and Micah Sifry highlight in their recent NYT op-ed how Democrats failed to harness record-high grassroots engagement post Trump’s election and instead focused on ”raising money off increasingly apocalyptic emails.”
Organizing efforts against these unethical email tactics have been in progress. Last year, 50 Democratic digital operatives led by Josh Nelson crafted an open letter to demand popular progressive CRM software EveryAction crack down on political spammers from using its email fundraising platform. (You can add your name to that open letter here.)
There's another constituency who focuses on combatting the "the sky is falling if you don't send us $3 TODAY" industrial complex, and it's us: donor organizers.
DO Hub advisor David Slifka points out in his latest Substack post points out that while Democratic operatives send emails “scant on content, lots of colored text, a few misleading claims, and raising money only for themselves,” donor organizers instead have ”focused on building long-term donor engagement and sharing strategic giving advice.”
Open question: Where are opportunities for donor organizers to collectively hold technology providers accountable for political fundraising spam?
4 Ways to Minimize Political Spam Today
In the absence of systemic solutions, individually we can take action to clear our cluttered inboxes right now.
Create a separate email address dedicated to political fundraising. Utilize it in all political donations going forward.
Set up email filters. Filter all emails with the word “unsubscribe” into one folder. (Imperfect but it can be a start.)
Scroll down and click “Unsubscribe” at each unwanted email that enters your inbox. It’s a slow investment but over time, it will declutter your inbox.
Allow your donors to not share their contact info when contributing. If you set up ActBlue community pages, you can allow people who donate on that page to not share their emails with campaigns/organizations being raised for. A quick step-by-step can be found here.