RFS feel-good update (12/27): An honest note, for better or worse

A thank you & an ask

Hi all -

I hope your holiday season has been relaxing and joyful so far! Welcome to that liminal space between Christmas and New Years when time feels meaningless. I meant to keep this brief, but as it turns out, I have a lot to say, so please forgive the length of this email.

First, thank you. This was Run for Something’s best year yet — check out our victory wrap-up!! — as we notched hundreds of wins, beat dozens of insurrectionists and election-deniers at the local level, and fought back book bans in school board races across the country.

We are literally transforming what it means to be a leader, one race at a time.

That wouldn’t be possible with you. If you’re getting this email, you’re a part of this community. You’ve given money, time, attention, or some combination of the three (or something else entirely) in a way that has meaningfully contributed to our collective success. I confidently speak for myself, Ross, the entire RFS team and every candidate & campaign we’ve worked with over the years:

Thank you. It’s a privilege to do this work with you.

One of the literally thousands of examples of what this team has accomplished:

Through our Clerk Work recruitment program, we did cold outreach in PA — tens of thousands of calls and texts — to find folks to run for the county commission seats that directly oversee election administration.

One of the folks we called was Justin Douglas, an activist and pastor who’d just been fired from his church for welcoming LGBTQ+ folks to the congregation. With our help and encouragement, Justin got on the ballot — motivated by democracy, yes, but even more so by wanting to reform the county jail system, which had killed an alarmingly high number of prisoners.

Justin worked his ass off, was outspent by upwards of 10:1, and overcame a literal century of odds against him to win his race by just a few hundred votes.

Read this incredible story: He is going to save lives (and save democracy.)

You made that possible. Thank you.

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Now, let’s get down to business: We need you with us for 2024.

While it’s been our best year yet on the program side, it’s been one of our hardest years for fundraising. Whether that’s because people can’t quite believe we’re at another existential election year, or because some simply don’t want to believe it will be Biden vs Trump again, or because folks are just tapped out, I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s been rough for us and for so many of our partners. (Read this from Movement Voter Project for more.)

I am not one to exaggerate and tell you the sky is falling, kiss all hope goodbye, etc, etc, but I do want to be honest with you:

When we get back in the office on January 2nd, the RFS team is going to take a look at where we close out 2023 and have to make some hard choices about what we can sustain in 2024 — especially as we look ahead to the great known-unknown of what 2025 might hold.

Again, in the spirit of honesty: Whether or not we’ll have the resources to keep this incredible work going at the scale we need for the long-haul has kept me up at night for months.

The work has never been more important, we’re getting really really good at it (!!), and: I’m afraid we won’t be able to do it at our best when it matters most.

If you are able to make a donation before the year ends, this is when we need you with us.

Don’t wait until the polls scare the shit out of you or until it “feels real.”

It’ll be too late by then for us to do the recruitment work we need to do ahead of 2024 filing deadlines — too late to get campaigns on a strong starting point and too late to be everywhere we need to be when we need to be there.

If your biggest political goal for 2024 is to stop Trump, good news: Run for Something’s work is a critical part of that fight and as important, a cost-effective one. Helping us recruit and support local candidates helps Democrats hold the White House.

• Puck News’s Peter Hamby goes long about reverse coattails — the data-backed & statistically significant way that local candidates will gin up turn-out for the entire ticket. If you need me to forward you this due to the paywall, just reply.

• Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times sums it up pretty well: This is the work we need to do if we want to save democracy.

If you’re concerned about state legislatures — about protecting abortion access, voting rights, and so much more, our recruitment effort on that front is already paying off. Thanks to the hard work of the RFS team & our hundreds of partners across the country, Democrats are contesting every state senate seat and nearly every state house seat in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio, and are fielding a record number of candidates in partisan races in Arkansas. With each filing deadline that passes, more good news will come.

If you’re concerned about school boards — we’re doing that work, too. In spite of the ridiculous stories coming from Moms for Liberty, they’re not going anywhere and neither are we. Our 50 State School Board Strategy is in full-effect as we run scaled and targeted recruitment campaigns and dig in with school board candidates to make school boards boring again.

Whatever reason you need, I am quite literally begging you: Do not wait until it’s too late for it to matter.

Make a donation right now. Don’t let this opportunity to do everything you can slip right by you. Don’t let November 2024 hit and wish you could’ve done more.

If you’re interested in giving a larger amount and want other ways to donate — whether through a wire transfer, by gifting stock, or something else entirely, just reply to this email and I’ll get you the info you need.

If you want to make a tax-deductible gift to Run for Something Civics, you can do so here. If your employer also matches gifts to a 501c3, or you want to give through a donor-advised fund, reply to this email and I’ll set you up.

If you know someone who should give, forward them this email.

I want to be able to confidently say we can and will win in 2024. But right now, even putting aside everything else going on in the world, I’m simply not sure the resources are there. You can change that right now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Onward to the new year — let’s make it a good one.
Amanda