Donations to US political campaigns are legally required to be publicly disclosed, whereas donations to US 501c3 nonprofits and 501c4 policy advocacy organizations are not legally required to be publicly disclosed and can be kept private.
Looks like the 501c4 organizations can engage in political activity up to the point of running ads supporting or opposing specific candidates. But political activities cannot be >50% of their activities and they can’t directly give money to candidates. So I guess it’s a decent but not perfect option for someone concerned about these issues.
Yep. These are mentioned in the post. I think 501c4s are often good donation opportunities. But it’s also widely agreed upon that they’re a much less effective way (more than 5x less effective) to support a candidate than direct, “hard-dollar” contributions to a candidate, except in some unusual cases where the campaign is being silly/the c4s are being extremely clever or for presidential elections where the campaigns have much more money.
For most races there also simply doesn’t exist a dedicated c4 trying to support a particular candidate (rather than push some agenda). (This is another way presidential races differ, though.)
Donations to US political campaigns are legally required to be publicly disclosed, whereas donations to US 501c3 nonprofits and 501c4 policy advocacy organizations are not legally required to be publicly disclosed and can be kept private.
Looks like the 501c4 organizations can engage in political activity up to the point of running ads supporting or opposing specific candidates. But political activities cannot be >50% of their activities and they can’t directly give money to candidates. So I guess it’s a decent but not perfect option for someone concerned about these issues.
Yep. These are mentioned in the post. I think 501c4s are often good donation opportunities. But it’s also widely agreed upon that they’re a much less effective way (more than 5x less effective) to support a candidate than direct, “hard-dollar” contributions to a candidate, except in some unusual cases where the campaign is being silly/the c4s are being extremely clever or for presidential elections where the campaigns have much more money.
For most races there also simply doesn’t exist a dedicated c4 trying to support a particular candidate (rather than push some agenda). (This is another way presidential races differ, though.)