The largest democratic fundraising platform is wrapped in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump. And its CEO is opposed to “authoritarian” tactics. Meanwhile, ActBlue admits that it needs to “build new muscles” to fight back.
Last month, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the use of online funding by foreign actors to make so-called straw donations that affect the US election. ActBlue is the largest online fundraising platform for Democrats, and was named only in the memo.
“We were mostly in A, ‘This is not real. This is not serious. These are not serious people. These are not serious allegations.'” “And instead, it lasted for a very long time to our traditional attitude.”
The stance was to move the platform away from the spotlight despite years of faced scrutiny and fraud accusations from Republicans. House Republicans have been investigating ActBlue on a variety of funding practices since 2023, and the investigation remains ongoing. An interim report released by the committee weeks before Trump’s memorandum accused Act Blue of allowing donation fraud, but the only example of attempted fraud was one that the company itself identified in internal documents.
Now ActBlue has realized that it can no longer remain unremarkable. Wallace-Jones, who was at the helm of Actblue in early 2023, appeared on MSNBC in April when Trump’s memorandum first appeared, and in recent weeks he had a media round and interviewed Pod Save America and Actist Aaron Parnas. And she told Politico that she is confident that ActBlue’s investigation will lead “nowhere,” but she now sees the need to communicate more to the public about what ActBlue is actually doing. That new stance places fundraising platforms in rare companies. This is one of the few progressive forces to fight management policies rather than approve that demand.
“We’re only now in the position that our silence actually hurts our perception of who we really are,” Wallace Jones said. “So we could have become vocals sooner? Certainly.”
The following interviews have been compiled for length and clarity.
This was something that was not expected. But that was also not surprising in the sense that there was a slow crescendo from grassroots individuals and that they had gone through various legislative bodies to see the Act Blue on the Republican side.
We are an organization that wants to raise funds correctly. It is our first principle and we are always interested in being able to make us even better.
ActBlue’s targeting is inherently deeply political. It is clearly not directed towards general fundraising cleaning, but it specifically targets the largest and most successful fundraising organizations in a democratic space. It is an attack on grassroots power. It is recognized that we make this even better.
I don’t see it as any way to improve it, but rather exercise authoritarian tactics to push the opposition. And we are not in a world where it’s okay for us.
Listen, we always see ourselves as such a good actor in this field. So I think we were pretty much there. These are not serious people, and these are not serious allegations. Instead, it was maintained for a very long time in the traditional attitude of being in the background plumbing.
It is only now that our silence actually poses as a sinner that hurts the perception of who we truly are. So, did we become vocals sooner? of course. It took me a while to actually accept the idea that this was just a political offensive. In response, I built some new muscles.
That’s what we’re doing now, and that’s what we keep doing.
Malicious attacks have real consequences for real people. And part of that is that part of ActBlue is increasingly necessary to secure ourselves from the dangers of those who are hearing these malicious attacks and to secure ourselves from the dangers of those who believe they are purifying their ecosystems by taking negative actions on good actors.
This has created a very deep belief on our part to provide that sense of security.
Our position is that there is nothing to hide. And we stand by it every day. That’s why we are very transparent in the way we operate, the way we get involved, the way we respond.
Listen, we have always done something, and we are very unpublished of the actions we are taking.
Being more vocal about how to do that is a step forward to making sure that what is needed in this moment and that we are not leaving what we’ve worked so hard in the presence of truly bad actors.
It is very silent to use the term “scam PACS” because there is no formal definition. Long-standing entities have problems with entities, which are completely new entities.
For example, there is a lot of historical information we can see in PACs that have been around for many years, but are their funding practices good? Do they actually have a virtual being that we can see? Can we study their budgets and determine that the dollars they are unfolding are dollars that are in line with what they said they are here to be here? Or are they spending dollars raised on the backs of hardworking little dollar donors to enhance themselves?
These are things that can be learned quite quickly from entities that have existed for a long time, and new entities have no interest in their historical information, so in a sense they have to learn and make decisions as they go as they grow up about how they behave.
Recently, I adopted the phrase “When they go low, we innovate.” And this is important not only for ActBlue, but for any technology organization.
The good thing about being the biggest is that there are many benefits to being the biggest. There are economies of scale we get, there are network effects we get, and you asked about other small competitors – these are not what you get overnight, right?
There is always something you can learn from a small organization. They are at low risk. They have fewer customers who need to inform you when the change is coming. They have a small platform to make sure what they’re implementing actually works.
We have a huge network, and we have many, many more components that we have to work with. Such an organization does two things by reaching a large position. One forces them to evolve forever, while the two see an opportunity to acquire some of those new ideas so they can grow faster.
