Organizations we should set up:
The 527 Organization
This organization is set up primarily to influence elections. They can raise funds to engage in activities like voter mobilization, issue advocacy, and advertising that doesn’t explicitly endorse a candidate. They would be used to run issue advocacy campaigns that help shape public opinion concerning our progressive, election reformative, no corporate, foreign, or “other” money in politics movement.
The Advocacy Group (and Think Tank)
This group focuses on conducting research, developing policy proposals, educating policymakers, and advocating for specific issues. Although they cannot explicitly support candidates, their research and policy proposals will align with particular ideological views that can indirectly support a party or candidate’s platform. They will also create educational materials to educate the public on how to create grassroots lobbying and advocacy organizations to help perpetuate the movement through all levels of society.
501(c)(3): The Advocacy group can be set up as a charitable organizations, like a think tank or research institute (e.g., Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation). We can set up one or more of these to educate the public on the movement and related issues, conduct research, and commission reports. These cannot engage in partisan activities or support specific candidates directly.
501(c)(4): Known as “social welfare organizations,” we can create one of these for each issue the movement supports, and the activity of these can indirectly support candidates as long as it’s not their primary activity. They are allowed to contribute to “issue advocacy” (ads that don’t directly endorse or oppose a candidate but highlight policy positions).
Hybrid PAC: The primary PAC of the movement would function as both a traditional PAC and a Super PAC, maintaining separate accounts to conduct limited direct contributions and unlimited independent expenditures.
Traditional PACs: These organizations will raise and spend money to directly support candidates. We might be able to form these PACs with a crowdfunding platform such as Crowdpac. We’ll have to look into it.