When most people hear "political giving" they immediately think of campaign contributions. At NPC, we think about political giving a little differently. While giving to candidates is important, no single candidate or organization can solve all of our political problems.
Just as it is a good idea to diversify your 401k investments, it is important to take a diversified portfolio approach to your political giving. Since every issue has a variety of organizations working in different ways, or in different "sectors," it is important to make sure you are supporting your issue by supporting different types of work within it.
You may feel overloaded with information or donation requests from both candidates and progressive organizations, but political giving doesn’t have to be complicated, especially since you probably already know what issues are important to you.
The first step to making effective political giving decisions is assessing how you want to make an impact. In other words, what political return are you seeking?
For instance, do you want your contributions to further your issue by passing legislation, electing specific candidates, generating new policy ideas, developing new leaders championing your cause, organizing on behalf of your issue, or improving progressive media to better frame your issue?
Next Step: Once you know what type of political impact you want to create (for example, you may want to "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" by "passing legislation promoting alternative energy" or "make sure that enough high-quality pro-environment leaders are in the candidate pipeline"), you can move on to finding organizations that are delivering the political return you are seeking.
