From Netroots To Necrosis: How The Democratic Establishment Is Killing Digital Fundraising

You Gave to Save Democracy; They Took 98 Cents Out Of Your Dollar 

Inside the Democratic Party-- the root of all evil

We started Blue America in 2006 to help raise grassroots dollars for progressive candidates. We were one of the first organizations to work with ActBlue. I don’t think anyone working there now, was working there when we started. In fact, I don’t know a single person who works there today. You may know a little about the contentious relationship between Blue America and the DCCC. It wasn’t always that way. We never liked the leadership but when the DCCC was thinking of starting to explore digital fundraising they flew me to DC to explain it to them. I tried infusing good practices into the talk. Almost immediately after they started, Rahm Emanuel thought of how he wanted to approach it: burn the lists. He saw digital fund raising for what it was: a democratization of campaign fundraising and a serious threat to DCCC monopoly. Once the netroots started beating the DCCC and DSCC shitty candidates, Emanuel instituted an agenda: make the lists worthless by spamming them to death so no one would ever want to open an e-mail.

Almost two decades later, when the DCCC and the other committees, depend on digit fundraising— at least to some significant extent— that Rahmish diktat is still part of the DCCC DNA and no one is aware of what to do about it, if they’re even aware of it! By its very odious nature, the DCCC mission is incompatible with nature of grassroots fundraising.

That culture clash— between a bottom-up, people-powered model and the top-down, consultant-driven machinery of the DCCC— hasn’t just persisted; it’s calcified. The DCCC's fundraising emails today still reek of desperation and manipulation, often deploying fake deadlines, misleading subject lines, dishonest matching offers and emotionally exploitative appeals that treat donors like marks rather than partners in a shared movement. This isn't just bad etiquette; it's a strategic failure. It undermines trust, kills long-term engagement, and leaves the party increasingly dependent on wealthy donors and corporate PACs to make up the shortfall… the “good ole Rahm days.” The netroots vision was never just about raising money online— it was about building a sustainable progressive movement, funding candidates with integrity and creating a political culture rooted in values, not vanity metrics. That vision is still alive, but it sure as hell isn’t coming from— or being helped by— the DCCC.

Last week,  Democratic Party comms expert, Dan Pfeiffer, wrote about the high cost of spam: how the flood of Dem fundraising texts hurt the party. I feel like texts are too invasive of people’s privacy to send them. I know we lose out on a lot of contributions because of that feeling, but Blue America has never sent a single text and I don’t see us ever starting. Pfeiffer’s point is simple: “Dems are abusing our most loyal supporters with long term consequences… The Democratic Party’s initial response to the passage of the [Big Ugly bill] was to send a flurry of texts and emails to its most loyal supporters, asking for donations. This has become standard practice. Whenever Trump does something terrible, the party, its PACs, and its candidates try to turn that anger into dollars… This strategy has some upsides. Democratic campaigns have routinely outraised Republicans. For example, in 2020, Democratic campaigns raised nearly $50 million in the 24 hours after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. But there are real downsides. It’s not clear the party fully grasps the damage done by treating every news event as an opportunity to wring money out of its most loyal and passionate supporters.”

Pfeiffer believes that “The Democratic Party has an attention problem. Traditional media, once our primary means of communicating with voters, has lost both reach and credibility. Social media— the dominant source of news for many Americans— is largely controlled by right-wing politicians and MAGA messaging. Unless you live in a battleground state during election season, you rarely see a Democratic ad. Unless you’re a full-blown news junkie (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), you can go weeks without hearing any Democratic messaging.

Unless, of course, they have your phone number. Then you’re bombarded with increasingly desperate fundraising texts more than a year out from the election. These texts don’t persuade or inform— they just ask for money. The party acts like a telemarketing business… The Democratic Party brand is in the toilet… The drop is due in part to Democrats' growing frustration with their own party. I’m not saying our addiction to incessant fundraising texts is the sole reason for our dismal public image— but it’s certainly not helping. How would you feel about a friend who only called to ask for money?”

He pointed out that Democratic “digital fundraising consultants— some of whom take commissions on the money raised— are incentivized to burn the list to the ground in search of short-term returns. If a pitch doesn’t work, they crank up the desperation. If it does work, they hammer it until it stops. There’s no consideration of message quality—just how much cash can be extracted.”

He also noted that Democratic “‘scam PACs’ aggressively fundraise online, raise huge sums, but spend little on actual candidates. Most of the money goes to consultants and overhead. I consider myself plugged into Democratic infrastructure, but I often get texts from groups I’ve never heard of. When I look them up, there’s almost nothing about them or their staff. Donors, unaware of the risks, give to these shady groups— money that should be going to real campaigns… These groups had generic names and sent misleading texts offering 400–700% ‘matching donations’—which almost certainly never occurred... There are long-term consequences to treating your voters like ATM machines.”

Yesterday, Adam Bonica took on the topic from a much darker perspective. Looking deeply into the Democratic fundraising complex, Bonica found that “the illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread— tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying— to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.”

NOTE: Blue America has never used Mothership or any bunch of scammers like them and we would shut down before we ever did, no matter what. Nor would we ever stoop to using their tactics or strategies. And we don't sell, trade or give out our mailing list to anyone... ever.

To understand Mothership's central role, one must understand its origins. The firm was founded in 2014 by senior alumni of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC): its former digital director, Greg Berlin, and deputy digital director, Charles Starnes. During their tenure at the DCCC, they helped pioneer the fundraising model that now dominates Democratic inboxes— a high-volume strategy that relies on emotionally charged, often hyperbolic appeals to compel immediate donations. This model, sometimes called "churn and burn," prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term donor relationships.

After leaving the DCCC, Berlin and Starnes effectively privatized this playbook, building a business around the party's most aggressive tactics and turning an internal strategy into a fundraising powerhouse for the Democratic Party— or so it might seem on the surface.

They became the operational heart of a sprawling nexus of interconnected political action committees, many of which they helped create and which now serve as their primary clients. These are not a diverse collection of grassroots groups; they are a tightly integrated network that functions primarily to funnel funds to Mothership. Their names are likely familiar from the very texts and emails that flood inboxes: Progressive Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, and End Citizens United to name a few.

The relationship between the firm and this network is cemented by blatant self-dealing. The most glaring example is End Citizens United. In 2015, just one year after founding their consulting firm, Mothership principals Greg Berlin and Charles Starnes also co-founded this PAC. It quickly became one of their largest and most reliable clients, a perfect circle of revenue generation that blurs the line between vendor and client.

The core defense of these aggressive fundraising tactics rests on a single claim: they are brutally effective. The FEC data proves this is a fallacy. An examination of the money flowing through the Mothership network reveals a system designed not for political impact, but for enriching the consultants who operate it.

To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.

But the firm's direct cut is only part of the story. The "churn and burn" fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.

The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 million for canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.

How much of the money raised by these groups actually makes it to candidates and party committees?

After subtracting these massive operational costs— the payments to Mothership, the fees for texting services, the cost of digital ads and list rentals— the final sum delivered to candidates and committees is vanishingly small. My analysis of the network's FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees.

But here's the number that should end all debate:

This represents a fundraising efficiency rate of just 1.6 percent.

Here's what that number means: for every dollar a grandmother in Iowa donates believing she's saving democracy, 98 cents goes to consultants and operational costs. Just pennies reach actual campaigns.

NOTE: That’s why Blue America encourages donors to give directly to candidates. Like I said, we’ve been doing this since 2006 and not one cent has ever gone to any of us. Almost all the contributions go to the candidates and when someone donates to Blue America directly, we use it to buy ads for candidates, like this one for Randy Bryce.

Bonica further noted that “This parasitic ecosystem could not thrive without the tacit approval of the Democratic establishment. The relationship between the Mothership network and the official party is not adversarial; it is deeply symbiotic. The firm's founders are, as noted, alumni of the DCCC. They didn't just bring their contacts; they brought the ‘churn and burn’ playbook, which was developed and honed inside the party's own campaign arm. They simply privatized the party's dirtiest tactics. This is not a rogue operation; it is an outgrowth. While the network keeps most of the money it raises, it maintains the relationship by funneling a small portion back to the party's central committees. Of the paltry $11 million that makes it to campaigns, approximately half goes to the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC. This provides the party with a trickle of revenue and plausible deniability, allowing it to benefit from the fundraising without taking direct responsibility for the deceptive tactics. In return, the network gains a veneer of official legitimacy. The infection runs deep. The firm's client list extends far beyond the PAC network to include the party's own heavyweights, like the House Majority PAC, and high-profile, establishment-backed candidates such as former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. The distinction between the party and this network dissolves with one final fact: the Democratic establishment itself is a client, actively hiring the firm at the heart of the vortex... The party faces a choice. Continue feeding the vortex, or shut it down. Continue enriching consultants who’ve perverted its message, or reclaim its integrity. Continue treating supporters as ATMs, or start treating them as partners… The numbers don’t lie. The Mothership vortex has consumed enough. Shut it down. 

The Democratic establishment can’t plead ignorance anymore. The facts are out there— crystal clear and impossible to defend. What’s happening isn't a bug in the system; it is the system. If the party wants to rebuild trust with its base, it has to start by breaking ties with predatory firms like Mothership and dismantling the cynical grift machine it quietly empowered. That means rejecting short-term greed in favor of long-term movement-building, and remembering that the people funding this work aren’t suckers to be milked but citizens fighting for a better future. If the party won’t clean house, it’s up to the rest of us to keep building something better outside of it— something honest, values-driven, and deeply rooted in the grassroots. That’s what we’ve tried to do with Blue America since day one. And that’s what we’ll keep doing, no matter how deep the swamp inside the party gets.