Blueprint is a high-impact political giving platform built to help Democratic donors invest in electoral victories and long-term voter power at the same time. To do this, we curate a quarterly portfolio of competitive state and federal races in need of funding, plus civic organizations leading essential, year-round programs to strengthen our democracy.

No. Whether you donate through the recommended Blueprint or request a personalized one, Blueprint is free to use—and 100% of your contribution (after ActBlue's processing fees) goes to high-impact candidates and organizations; we don’t take a cut for ourselves.

If you'd like, you can add an optional "tip" to support Swing Left—the team behind Blueprint—when making your quarterly investment, or at any time through this page

Throughout the election cycle, new official Democratic nominees emerge on a rolling basis in our targeted federal and state-level races. Aligning Blueprint's portfolio updates with this primary calendar, as well as quarterly campaign finance reports, allows us to fill funding gaps at critical points throughout the electoral cycle.

Additionally, changes to Blueprint's overall allocation—or the weightings between federal races, state races, and civic organizations—alter the recommended balance of funding between candidates and organizations. These adjustments respond to the number of targets within each strategy as well as the needs of voter registration, protection, and mobilization work at that point in the cycle.

Never. While Blueprint lets you donate to multiple candidates and organizations at once, we won't share your email address with any of them. You'll only receive periodic emails from Team Blueprint with need-to-know information, including quarterly Blueprint updates, strategy insights, and impact reports.

If you plan to make separate donations via ActBlue in your name and a spouse's name to max out on individual contribution limits, it's best to use separate Blueprint accounts too. This way, when you go to the ActBlue page your correct email address will automatically be carried forward, and you'll be able to see each of your contributions reflected in your personal Blueprint dashboard. However, if you plan to give by check or wire transfer from a joint bank account, we can easily separate your contribution when we process your funds, so you're welcome to use the same Blueprint account to track your total contributions, if you'd prefer.

Blueprint is brought to you by Swing Left, a national grassroots organization empowering donors and volunteers to shift the balance of political power and protect our democracy. Our platform is run by a dedicated team of political strategists, fundraisers, and technologists. We use our shared expertise—along with input from peers—to provide quarterly giving recommendations that help you give with confidence and ease.

During the 2020 cycle, 83% of the funds raised for candidates through Blueprint went to races decided by single-digit margins—a testament to Swing Left’s ability to pinpoint competitive races with promising candidates. The following year, 88% of the funds raised for Virginia candidates through Blueprint—which helped propel three Democrats in the House of Delegates to narrow victories—went to races decided by single-digit margins. To date, we have made grants to over 50 civic organizations, which employ relational organizing, digital outreach, phone calls, and other tactics to reach millions of voters while registering hundreds of thousands of new voters across the country. You can learn more in our 2020 Impact Report and 2021 Impact Report.

While Democratic dollars flood toward high-profile federal races, down-ballot candidates and civic organizations are left in need of funding. Worse yet, the GOP isn't making the same mistake: Democrats are often outspent five to one compared to their GOP opponents in critical state races. Additionally, political donations tend to spike in the final weeks before Election Day even though candidates and organizations need money early in the cycle to build and scale effective programs.

Aside from strategic concerns, there's also the issue of donor frustration and fatigue. Endless solicitations, email spam, and a lack of honest communication are just some of the problems that plague traditional fundraising practices. Blueprint gives donors a better experience and trusted recommendations that cut through the noise.

In the 2010 midterms, the GOP swept state legislative races to gain a major partisan advantage in the upcoming round of redistricting—the once-per-decade process of drawing new voting maps after the census. By drawing legislative and congressional voting districts to their own advantage, GOP lawmakers locked in undue power, which they've used to suppress the vote and pass unpopular, harmful policies.

Democrats had these unfair maps stacked against them in 2020, which helped the GOP maintain control over key state legislatures, from Arizona to Texas to North Carolina. In 2021, Blueprint started recommending civic organizations fighting for fair maps through education, lobbying, and litigation to combat the slew of gerrymandered maps expected in GOP-controlled states, which will impact electoral outcomes and political representation for years to come.

We believe that the only thing as strategically important as which candidates you support is when you get involved. That's why Blueprint recommends that contributions go to key races as early as possible, while ensuring that they go towards defeating a Republican opponent, not winning a contested primary. To that end, contributions toward Blueprint's recommended state legislative candidates only support Democratic candidates in uncontested races or official Democratic nominees post-primary. For statewide contests such as gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, we often recommend contributing to nominee funds where donations are held until an official Democratic nominee is declared. In some cases, we may recommend investing in statewide incumbents pre-primary (e.g. Governor Tony Evers and Senator Raphael Warnock in 2022) to help drive early support to Democrats in must-win seats.

We select civic organizations for Blueprint in partnership with both national experts and successful on-the-ground organizers. First, organizations meet a set of peer-validated parameters such as geographic focus, scale, and cycle experience. Second, organizations are evaluated based on a robust set of criteria, including but not limited to impact metrics, strategic clarity, leadership and staffing, community-rooted programs, and funding needs.

On the candidate side, our goal is to drive dollars to where they will have the greatest marginal impact on electoral outcomes. Our return on investment (ROI) model integrates the research and meta-analysis of leading experts, including probabilistic forecasting, electoral data, fundraising performance, campaign expenditures, and qualitative inputs from state-based partners.

For specific details on our target selection process, check our methodology document.

Voter registration refers to getting new or purged voters registered. Then, voter protection work ensures eligible voters aren't illegally denied the right to vote. This includes voter suppression tactics like intimidating or turning away voters at the polls, as well as broken voting machines or insufficient number of ballots. Finally, voters new and old need to mobilize—or turn out—to cast a ballot, whether that’s voting absentee or getting to the polls on Election Day.

Your Blueprint supports a mix of targets that require different types of funding vehicles. Blueprint uses state-specific funds to aggregate donations for the majority of our targeted state legislative and gubernatorial races. For U.S. House and Senate candidates, your Blueprint may include an incumbent's re-election campaign, a nominee fund, and/or a pooled fund that supports many competitive districts at once. Lastly, contributions toward civic engagement and redistricting work go into the Blueprint Voter Fund and the Blueprint Redistricting Fund, respectively, before being disbursed to individual organizations.

No. When you enter your donation amount on the portfolio page, the generated ActBlue link will automatically cap your contribution where a limit is reached and redistribute remaining dollars to unrestricted portions of your portfolio. This only applies for one-time donations, as individual campaigns are responsible for tracking contributions over time to ensure donors do not exceed limits throughout the electoral cycle. If you plan to give over $50,000 at once or have concerns about contribution limits due to your previous giving, please request a custom Blueprint or contact our team at [email protected].

Certainly! We recommend front-loading your contribution for maximum impact, but you are welcome to donate as often as you’d like during a given quarter.

Blueprint is built for one-time donations (which you can repeat as often as you'd like) but not automatic, recurring donations. This is because as targets change throughout the year, the funds necessary to support those candidates will also change. We recommend making one donation at a time, but checking back each quarter so that you can invest in all the power-building strategies Blueprint has to offer.

If you're interested in giving all at once, our team can build a Blueprint that's right for you. Please contact our team at [email protected] with information about your budget and priorities, and we'll be happy to help.

For the majority of our electoral targets, Blueprint starts disbursing funds to candidates as soon as they secure the Democratic nomination, whether that's after the primary election or following the state's candidate filing deadline, for a Democrat in an uncontested race. However, we recommend supporting some statewide incumbents even sooner as early money helps the Democratic candidates solidify and scale a robust campaign. After making these early investments, Blueprint also provides late-stage funding to candidates in the most competitive races leading up to the general election.

ActBlue, the platform that processes donations made through Blueprint, does not accept contributions smaller than $1 into any one fund. That said, the donation minimum is determined by the number of funds included in your Blueprint each quarter. Please note that in giving the minimum $1 to each fund, the overall allocation of your Blueprint will not be preserved.

Blueprint is free to use, but you can add an optional "tip" to support Swing Left—the team behind Blueprint—when making your quarterly investment, or at any time through this page. Tipping is a simple way to show your appreciation for Blueprint and the entire team at Swing Left. Your donation will go toward the tools and people power that make this platform possible: securing top talent, analyzing hundreds of races and organizations, designing an award-winning product, and offering in-depth impact reporting throughout the cycle.

At this time, we're encouraging all donations to be processed online via ActBlue, which moves funds directly to recipients and cuts down on processing time. If you’re planning to make a larger contribution and wish to avoid ActBlue’s 3.95% credit card processing fee, please email [email protected] for additional support.

Yes, contributions to candidates and committees made through ActBlue are visible in the Federal Election Commission's database of individual contributions. Like all donations made through ActBlue, your donation will appear under “ActBlue” with an earmark for Blueprint's individual funds. There may be a delay in your Blueprint contribution appearing in public records as state and federal campaigns have varying deadlines to submit their campaign finance reports.

No. Contributions to candidates are not tax-deductible, and Blueprint funds civic organizations through 501(c)(4) vehicles fiscally sponsored by Tides Advocacy, which are not eligible for tax exemption either.

For each strategy included in your Blueprint, you can click on “Details” to find a description of the individual targets and the funds used to support them. If one of our targeted races does not yet have an official Democratic nominee, we'll list the race type and/or district number, and follow up with more candidate-specific information via our quarterly impact reports. To find a historical view of the races and organizations you've supported through Blueprint, you can click through each tab of your dashboard.

You aren't required to create a Blueprint account in order to donate with your giving circle. If you do create an account, you’ll be able to track your Blueprint donations in your personal dashboard and receive email updates from Team Blueprint, in addition to communications from your giving circle.

Please fill out our interest form so we can learn more about your giving circle and connect you with a member of our team to discuss next steps.

Giving circles can be formal or informal, large or small, and last for a few months or an entire election cycle (or more). Early on, it's helpful to consider how much you hope to raise and what your objective is—for example, empowering voters in North Carolina or protecting Democrats' Senate majority. Then you can start by reaching out to people you think would be motivated by the same mission, whether it's your peers, alumni network, or family members. Once you have an initial group of committed donors, our team can help your giving circle decide which races and organizations to support based on your objective. From there, you can count on our team to provide the tools, expertise, and support you need to harness the resources in your circle.

No. Thanks to the support of organizational donors, Swing Left is able to offer Blueprint's political giving services and expertise at no cost to our users or the candidates and organizations we recommend. Whether you're in a giving circle or not, 100% of donations through Blueprint—after ActBlue's standard 3.95% credit card processing fee—go to the candidates and civic organizations.

No. Unless donors opt in to sharing that information on their own, candidates and organizations won't receive Blueprint donors' contact information. However, individual contributions to candidates and committees made through ActBlue are visible in the Federal Election Commission's database of individual contributions.

This issue was most likely caused by a security measure from Apple Pay or your bank/credit card company. Split contributions can sometimes look like duplicate transactions, which we try to prevent by differentiating the names of our funds. We're sorry it didn't work this time!

We recommend contacting your bank or credit card company to clear up the issue, or re-submitting the missing portions of your donation using an alternate payment method. For more assistance, please contact our team at [email protected].

It is! Supporting candidates across different states and different types of races (i.e. gubernatorial versus U.S. House) requires multiple funds to comply with varying campaign finance laws. Blueprint automatically splits your contribution so you can support a variety of targets at once, from civic organizations to state legislative candidates to Senate nominees. On the ActBlue page, you'll find a description of which funds correspond to each portion of your Blueprint.

Making changes to your donation on the ActBlue page itself will default to an even split between all of Blueprint's individual funds. If you'd like to make a change, it's best to go back to the Blueprint portfolio page to enter your new amount there. That way, Blueprint will generate a new ActBlue link with the correct allocation built-in.

If a portion of your donation will exceed state or federal contribution limits, Blueprint will redistribute the surplus dollars to other parts of your portfolio, which may alter the overall allocation of your donation. This only applies to one-time donations, as campaigns are ultimately responsible for tracking incoming donations throughout the cycle to ensure donors do not exceed contribution limits. For more assistance, please contact our team at [email protected].