this was a slow thread on twitter but I think it’s worth unrolling into a blog.

I want the good guys win this election. (it’s more clear than it’s ever been; I’m not against conservatives, but the entire Republican party has shown itself to be spineless, fascist, and corrupt to the core.) However, I am super low on emotional energy (pretty low on all kinds of energy) these days. I have some money. I can donate that money. Fine. But how much and where to?

How much?

I have no idea. It feels kind of sane to pick a number and then disperse all that, instead of trying to evaluate each thing on a case by case basis. I picked about 1 paycheck’s worth. I don’t know if I should do more; it feels ok enough though.

Where to?

Well, I could just give to Biden, say, and hope that the Biden org is the best at turning out voters. But I don’t imagine they are, and I imagine they have plenty of money. I think that small races are better at turning out people, and then those people will just incidentally vote for Biden too. Plus, diversification of risk - if I give to 15 different races then it’s not like all my money will be wasted, even if one race does badly for whatever reason.

Who should I look to to tell me where to give to?

Again, I think let’s pick from a few people to diversify risk. If person A has some strategy to pick the best house races but they turn out to be wrong, I don’t want all my money to go to waste.

So I came up with the following sources:

Preet Bharara’s Housework 2020

Pinboard/Maciej Ceglowski’s Great Slate and State Slate

Give Smart by the Future Now Fund and Data for Progress

Swing Left

Sister District

And a couple one off things, I’m not perfect. When given a bunch of equally good seeming candidates (as in Housework) I erred on the side of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina (swing states + personal connections), and I think Michigan and Arizona (swing states and a couple races going on).

List of Links

- Great Slate (US congress) 10%

- State Slate (state houses) 10%

- Swing Left Ohio fund - 10%

- Swing Left PA fund - 10%

- The Give Smart Slate - state house/senates - 10%

- Julie Slomski (PA state senate) - 5%

- Ricky Hurtado (NC state house) - 5%

- Sydney Batch (NC state house) - 5%

- Jackie Grimes (WY state senate) - 5%

- Elissa Slotkin (US congress, MI) - 5%

- Carolyn Bourdeaux (US congress, GA) - 5%

- Hiral Tipirneni (US congress, AZ) 5%

- Pam Keith (US congress, FL) 5%

- Eugene DePasquale (US congress, PA) - 5%

- the pro-housing SF supervisors - 5% (1% each)

anyway go give some money now; it doesn’t help if you wait till November.

post script: Biden too

I realize as I talk about “diversifying risk” I should have diversified across “maybe the best impact is with the biggest richest org.” Like, I can see that story too: Biden campaign and their Big Money are more poised to, like, buy a ton of facebook ads in a smart way or something. So I gave 10% to them too, which brings it to 110%, which is unsatisfying mathematically but feels good.