I regularly post recommendations for the most effective giving we can do each election season, and more and more, my top choices have featured organizations that do their work all year round — for which, in fact, the most effective work occurs well in advance of any election.
Here are my current favorites. They all:
- Build ongoing relationships with voters so they can get them out to the polls year after year.
- Regularly test the effectiveness of their methods and messages, refining them over time based on real data.
- Generate more net Democratic votes per dollar donated to them than most other organizations and campaigns.
Disclaimer: I have no relationship with any of the organizations I’m listing; I don’t gain anything from donations made to them except the satisfaction of knowing that Democratic money is being spent in good ways. 
This community affiliate of the AFL-CIO fills an important need in this country: they serve as a virtual union for workers that don’t have unions at their jobs. Though they can’t collectively bargain with employers for their members, what they do is organize them to effect electoral changes in this country that are beneficial to working people.
Working America reaches a demographic that, frankly, the Democratic Party has not been communicating very well with in recent years, which makes their work all the more valuable and even essential.
Both the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center are so effective at registering likely Democratic voters and getting them to the polls that they were ranked #1 and #2 by a Stanford-based group that took a data-driven approach to determining the most effective places to steer political donations in 2020.
Galvanize USA and Courier Newsroom connect with voters by offering them news and information important to them: on local issues in the case of Courier, through new sites and newsletters based in key states, and women’s issues in the case of Galvanize. Both organizations combat the MAGA news bubble for key electoral demographics.
Giving to campaigns
Giving directly to candidates is often an inefficient use of Democratic money because:
- Campaign spending very quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. The same money spent in other ways would result in a bigger gain of Democratic votes.
- Excess money sent to an easily winning campaign is wasted.
- Money sent to campaigns with little chance of winning can also be wasted.
- Some contests are more important than others.
However, if you’d still prefer to take this route, I recommend doing it through one of the following channels:
Oath does the work of identifying the campaigns where each donated dollar is most likely to make the biggest difference, and they offer a regular monthly donation option where, every month, they’ll direct your money to wherever it’s most needed at the time.
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For decades, the GOP has held an advantage over the Democratic Party at the local level, but these two groups, Contest Every Race and Run For Something, are working to remedy that. They recruit, train, and support candidates to run for offices that would normally be seen as unwinnable and therefore left uncontested. You might ask what the good is in contesting an unwinnable race, but the answers are that:
- Some of them are in fact winnable! Both organizations boast impressive “batting averages” for winning races that would otherwise have been conceded to the GOP without a challenge.
- Even if a local campaign doesn’t win, it can:
- Energize voters and affect statewide vote totals for state and national offices.
- Deliver a progressive pitch to voters who might not ordinarily hear it (or who might listen more openly when spoken by a local candidate from their neighborhood)
The power of many
I recommend that you donate to one or more of these organizations, and that you make it a monthly donation. It doesn’t have to be much. As with voting, it’s not about how much a single vote can do, but what we can accomplish if enough of us do it. There are billionaires donating millions of dollars to make the world better for themselves. How about if a million of us donate $10 a month (less than we might spend per month on coffee, a streaming service, or a single restaurant meal) to make the world better for everybody?
Volunteer work
For those who can’t afford to donate, or who want to get involved in a more hands-on way, two of the above organizations, Working America and Run For Something, accept volunteers. Although I’m not as sure about the effectiveness and efficiency of their volunteer operations, I favor them because of what I do know about their work in general.
For those who want to do more conventional get-out-the-vote type work, or who want to find some local action they can join in person, here are three of the bigger organizations that coordinate volunteer efforts all over the country. I imagine that the effectiveness of these activities varies widely, but every little bit can only do good:
