PeanutButterPAC.org is an ideologically oriented political action committee favoring progressive politics, truly a people-powered public policy PAC. Think of it as a method of making a big difference for just a little money – year round, small dollar weekly donations, in sufficient numbers, can make a gig difference. There are three categories of weekly donations to the PAC:
- $2 Tuesdays
- $3 Thursdays
- $5 Fridays
PAC members are asked to make a small sacrifice in their daily lives and send the money in as a donation. Maybe you like to buy coffee on the way to work, or you’re an an office worker who buys lunch every day in the office cafeteria, or a smoker who thinks one pack less per week would be a good thing. We ask that you sacrifice one day’s worth of this money (e.g. pack a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, hence the name of the PAC) and donate it. Once you’re a member, you’ll be able to nominate progressive politicians you like into the candidate pool, write blog entries promoting them into the PAC award system, and you’ll be able to vote for other candidates as well.
Every week there will be two polls on the day for the donation category: one poll will choose an award winner for that week and the other will set the following week’s slate of candidates from the candidate pool. The software will track how much is donated to whom (and for which race) to keep the PAC within FEC guidelines, and a reporting interface will produce a file for FEC reporting. A 15% tip on all donations will cover administrative expenses: salary for the administrator, server and software infrastructure, credit card merchant account expenses, advertising expense and various office expenses. All will be tracked with Quickbooks and reported appropriately, and the books will be open to examination by any member at any time.
The money is collected quarterly, in advance of the quarter – this will keep credit card merchant account charges to a minimum. A reminder email will be sent prior to the credit card charge so that members will be able to cancel if they can no longer afford to participate.
The polls are open from midnight to midnight on the day of voting. Money will be taken from the member’s account whether they vote or not. The most any single member can donate is $11.50 weekly if they sign up for all three categories – $10.00 for the three weekly awards, plus a 15% tip to cover administrative costs. There will be seven categories of donors:
- Tuesday only: $2.30 every week ($29.90 per quarter)
- Thursday only: $3.45 every week ($44.85 per quarter)
- Friday only: $5.75 every week ($74.75 per quarter)
- Tuesday and Thursday: $5.75 every week ($74.75 per quarter)
- Tuesday and Friday: $8.05 every week ($104.65 per quarter)
- Thursday and Friday: $9.20 every week ($119.60 per quarter)
- All three days: $11.50 every week ($149.50 per quarter)
Assuming the PAC gets 100 people in each category, the money movement would run as follows:
- Tuesday: $920 ($800 award, $120 tip)
- Thursday: $1,380 ($1,200 award, $180 tip)
- Friday: $2,300 ($2,000 award, $300 tip)
With just 100 people in all seven donor categories, the PAC can raise $4,000 for the award recipients every week, or $208,000 annually. Tips of $600 weekly total out at $31,200 annually in this case, enough to pay the administrator a stipend and handle other expenses. From there it’s a numbers game – if the PAC gets 1,000 people in each category, it will move more than $2 million annually, with tips of $6,000 weekly tallying to $312,000. If the PAC were to reach this point, it would likely need a staff of at least two or three full time employees and a much more robust server infrastructure, so expenses would also be higher. Tip money that doesn’t get spent during the year can be redirected into awards, or the tip percentage can be reduced, giving members a break on the subscription cost. Members will vote on the disposition of excess tip income, and as mentioned above, the books will be open for examination by any member. As the membership and the weekly award dollar amount grows, we may need to split awards among multiple recipients to prevent exceeding FEC limits for individual candidates/races.
Quarterly payments will begin when there is sufficient interest to generate at least $200 in weekly donations, or when we get at least 20 members donating in each day’s polls, we’ll know better about that over the next few weeks. Members who join during a quarter will be pro-rated for the number of weekly donations remaining in that quarter, and everyone in the first round of donations will be pro-rated if we begin to collect funds during a quarter.
Presently we are in the formation stage – we are shopping for a credit card processor, custom code to run the polling process is being written and we are using various outlets to drum up interest in the organization. Please register for an account and consider the level at which you can afford to participate, leave a comment below. Also, please consider supporting us and spreading the word to your friends by making a purchase at our Zazzle store. Thanks – you’ll be hearing from us soon!
Please comment and let us know what you think of PeanutButterPAC.org – any suggestions for improvement are welcome!
I think this site could be an excellent organizing tool for progressives that want to make sure our voices are heard on such important matters as climate change, health care for everyone, improving access to public transit, updating our infrastructure so transit works and we’re not the world’s laughingstock when it comes to broadband speeds and access.
Looking forward to fighting FOR more elected officials like Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, and Ron Wyden and AGAINST the Joe Liebermans and the Evan Bayhs of the Democratic coalition and against the forces of evil like the Tea Partiers and Mitch McConnell
Grassroots movements like this are a great idea. Good luck, and I’ll be following! Try not to get spread too thin, though. It is SO easy to lose focus in an endeavor such as this, with everyone pulling towards their own pet cause.
One quick note on usability of the site: The color of the links are too close to the color of the background, inducing eye strain, at least for me. You may want to adjust that a bit.