ActBlue brings in nearly $400 million more for Democrats despite Trump's pressure on the fundraising platform

CNN

2 days ago

President Donald Trump's demand for an investigation into ActBlue worried some Democrats who argue his order was not about allegations of campaign finance violations, but an attempt to stifle liberal campaigns.
So far, ActBlue remains a Democratic juggernaut.
The platform brought in more than $393 million during the second quarter of this year, nearly on par with the $400 million it processed in the first quarter, according to figures shared first with CNN. The April-to-June haul marks a roughly 36% jump from its second-quarter receipts of $289 million in 2021, at the start of Democrat Joe Biden's term.
ActBlue said 400,000 more unique donors are giving through the platform today than four years ago.
The new figures offer the first snapshot of ActBlue's fundraising since Trump's order and come amid escalating attacks on the platform from Republicans who control the White House and Congress. The platform remains integral to Democratic campaigns trying to capitalize on progressive anger at Trump's second-term agenda, even as some Democrats adopt ActBlue alternatives.
Trump issued a directive in late April that the Justice Department investigate the platform — one of a series of actions that the president has taken since returning to the White House that target his political rivals or others he views as acting counter to his agenda.
'Even amid the coordinated and rigged effort from the GOP to attack ActBlue and Democratic infrastructure, small-dollar donors aren't backing down and it's adding up,' ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones said in a statement to CNN. She said the second-quarter results make clear that 'grassroots supporters are leaning in, giving in record numbers, and our platform is powering that momentum.'
'ActBlue continues to be the trusted home for Democratic donors who are ready to meet this moment — and win,' she added.
ActBlue has collected more than $17 billion since its founding in 2004, and millions of users have saved their contact and payment information with the group, allowing contributors to easily make one-click donations.
In the 2024 cycle alone, ActBlue raised more than $3.8 billion — more than double the roughly $1.7 billion collected by WinRed, the platform Republicans created in 2019 to compete with Democrats for small-dollar donations.
Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist who runs the Center for Campaign Innovation, said his party has struggled to match Democrats' online fundraising prowess. He argues the problem has grown starker as Democrats do better with college-educated and higher-income voters while Republicans make inroads with the working class.
'As the Democratic base becomes wealthier, that's where you are going to see people with the extra money to spend' on donations, he said, 'whereas the Republican coalition is more working class under President Trump.'
Part of ActBlue's staying power, he added, stems from its long track record with contributors. 'Donors have their payment information saved. It's convenient,' he said.
But the flurry of activity targeting ActBlue has underscored the need for alternatives, some party strategists say.
Betsy Hoover, an alum of former President Barack Obama's campaigns and co-founder of the Democratic tech accelerator Higher Ground Labs, said ActBlue has been a monopoly 'in a good way' for the party. 'There is a lot of efficiency achieved by all of us going through one platform.'
But, she added, 'as much as we don't like what the Trump administration is doing, it's foolish to be dependent on a singular platform with no alternative.'
Higher Ground Labs investments in the Democratic fundraising landscape include Oath, which focuses on connecting donors to campaigns where they can have the most impact on electoral outcomes, and GoodChange, launched in 2023 by two veteran political fundraisers.
GoodChange has signed up about 300 clients, ranging from campaigns to civic nonprofits, since its inception, according to its co-founder Becky Pittman. In recent months, GoodChange has signed deals with seven state parties.
Cheryl Biller, the North Dakota Democratic Party's executive director, said she decided to add GoodChange as a way to process contributions late last year because she was drawn to some of its innovations. GoodChange offers a feature that allows donors to direct extra change from their everyday purchases to the party's coffers.
But having another tool to process contributions grew all the more important once Trump signed the memorandum in April ordering the ActBlue investigation, she said.
'I am pleased that we were ahead of the curve,' Biller said. If ActBlue were to become endangered, 'for us to shift completely to GoodChange wouldn't be hard,' she added.
Oath, meanwhile, focuses on helping donors maximize the impact of the spending by guiding them to competitive contests and to candidates aligned with the contributors' top policy concerns.
But CEO and co-founder Brian Derrick said his team also has notified donors that 'if ActBlue, for any amount of time, is unable to process donations, we will step into the breach.'
'To be clear, we do not want that to happen. It's a deeply partisan and political attack,' he said of the Republican-led investigations. 'But we also recognize the potential ramifications of it happening nonetheless.'
The investigation on Capitol Hill has escalated in recent weeks with the chairmen of three House committees at the center of the probe issuing subpoenas that order a current ActBlue employee and a former executive with the platform to appear for depositions later this month.
The lawmakers are examining allegations that ActBlue has allowed illegal donations made in the name of another person, known as straw donations, as well as contributions from foreign sources.
ActBlue leaders, who initially cooperated with the congressional probe, have pushed back recently, arguing that lawmakers may be improperly using their powers to support the Justice Department probe ordered by Trump. Additionally, they argue that the probe amounts to a partisan attack, given that the GOP-aligned WinRed platform appears to have escaped similar scrutiny,
A CNN investigation last year found that WinRed had nearly seven times more complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission than ActBlue.
To date, the Justice Department has not announced any actions against ActBlue. Trump's directive gave Attorney General Pam Bondi 180 days — or until late October — to report the results of the investigation to the White House.