In November 2023, the liberal good-governance powerhouse End Citizens United announced a $9 million initiative, “Organize New York,” to register young voters in six key battleground House districts in the Empire State. It was a splashy pledge that could have helped Democrats’ efforts to retake control of Congress the following year.
Except it never happened.
After a local TV interview one month later, End Citizens United stopped mentioning the initiative. And IRS filings reviewed by POLITICO show the group’s 501(c)4 nonprofit arm that was supposed to fund the effort only spent $1 million in 2024 — across all of its activities.
The disappearing act in New York is emblematic of how End Citizens United has faded from the electoral spending landscape. The group was once a fundraising behemoth, raking in millions from small-dollar donors online, but a POLITICO review of campaign finance data and nonprofit records, along with interviews with more than two dozen former employees and Democratic strategists, reveal declines in fundraising and direct electoral spending that have frustrated many of its former allies.
End Citizens United’s direct electoral spending has fallen dramatically in recent years, reaching new lows in the 2024 cycle. So far this cycle, it has burned through nearly all of the money it has raised, with fundraising costs accounting for more than a third of total expenses.
The group attributes the change to a strategic shift: As overall outside spending has soared, End Citizens United has put greater focus on events, engaging with volunteers and building relationships with candidates and elected officials.
The drop in spending also comes as fundraising challenges have plagued the finances of many progressive groups. End Citizens United’s PAC arm had just $324,000 on hand at the end of March, according to its most recent report with the Federal Election Commission, despite raising $14.8 million. That is because of its high burn rate, with payments to fundraising firms accounting for the largest expense category at $5.3 million spent, followed by payroll at $2.5 million. The PAC has given about $650,000 to candidates and party groups, including donations through its nonfederal arm, and bundled a bit over $630,000.
The organization, founded in 2015 to elect candidates supportive of campaign finance reform, has gone from being a major player supporting Democrats to an electoral afterthought, its critics said.
“Without the money, without the [independent expenditures], they don’t have the same level of influence anymore,” said a senior Democratic campaign operative, granted anonymity to discuss the situation candidly.
End Citizens United’s high burn rate and lower spending on elections were among the main concerns from the former employees and other players across the Democratic ecosystem, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly. They fear that the group is churning and burning its own small-dollar fundraising lists — sucking up resources in a tough online fundraising environment — while most of the money it raises is not spent to help Democrats win elections.
The group has continued to promise in fundraising appeals aimed at small-dollar donors that their money will go toward boosting Democratic candidates and fighting to overturn the Citizens United decision. But its primary PAC spent four times as much on operating expenses as it did on donations to candidates and independent expenditures during the 2024 cycle, according to a POLITICO analysis of data from the FEC. As of the end of March, it has spent more on fundraising costs than at this point in any previous cycle.
End Citizens United said it is well-situated for the midterms, pointing to the breadth of its programming and engagement with candidates.
“We’re on pace to raise more money than we have in any year since 2022,” End Citizens United Executive Director Abe Rakov said in a statement. We have more candidates signed up with us to run as No Corporate PAC candidates than we even had in the year of reform in 2018. And we have more volunteers activated than we’ve had since the HR 1 campaign in 2021. Our impact continues to grow.”
The group contends that, with outside spending in elections skyrocketing, there is less return for individual groups getting involved that way. Total independent expenditure spending in the most expensive Senate races roughly tripled between 2018 and 2024, according to data from OpenSecrets.
“Rather than being a smaller portion of the overall IE ecosystem, we shifted resources toward long-term programmatic work where we can have a greater impact, including organizing, candidate services, research, and voter engagement,” End Citizens United’s vice president for communications Alysa James said in response to emailed questions. “We are reaching more candidates, building deeper relationships, activating more volunteers, and influencing races in ways that go well beyond what we did when a higher percentage of our budget focused on IEs.”
In the case of Organize New York, James said the $9 million plan was an “early-stage concept” that was later determined to be duplicative with other groups’ efforts, so End Citizens United opted to support those partner organizations instead.
But according to two former employees who worked on the project, the group spent many months planning the initiative, and had to stop because it couldn’t raise the money.
Many Democratic groups have been grappling with a more difficult fundraising landscape and higher costs associated with reaching donors.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, small-dollar cash practically rained from the sky, as Democrats smashed the online donate button to express their discontent. But the rapid expansion of text and email fundraising has left many online donors burnt out, and Trump’s second term has largely not led to a similar surge in fundraising for a host of Democratic groups.
“There should’ve been a reckoning around digital fundraising after the 2020 cycle, where someone said, this spigot is dripping, it’s not a fire hose. We need to come up with a new revenue model, new fundraising tactics,” said a former End Citizens United employee. “That never happened.”
A wave of progressive PACs and nonprofits, many of which were formed or grew substantially during the Trump administration, have seen budget cuts and layoffs in the past few years as they have tried to weather the downturn. But End Citizens United’s drop in independent expenditure spending is particularly sharp, according to a POLITICO analysis of comparatively-sized PACs.
End Citizens United continues to raise funds for its PAC primarily from small-dollar donors online, unique for a PAC of its size. Former employees blame the group’s leadership for failing to right-size its spending to offset the fundraising decline.
“For years,” staff “would raise concerns about [the] fundraising model” and its long-term sustainability, said a second former End Citizens United employee.
Much of End Citizens United’s online fundraising continues to revolve around promises to boost Democrats electorally.
“[W]e need to raise another $75,000 before midnight to hit our goal and rush resources to Democrats running in the closest Senate races from coast to coast,” the group said in one recent Facebook ad soliciting donations.
“DONATE NOW TO TAKE BACK THE HOUSE,” said another.
But with fundraising costs ballooning, its independent expenditures — money spent directly to win elections — have fallen off rapidly since 2020, from $14.2 million that cycle to just $6 million in 2022 and $1.7 million in 2024. End Citizens United’s overall operating expenses also fell in 2024, but not as dramatically as direct election spending, with the gap growing between the two.
End Citizens United has continued to involve itself in electoral politics with endorsements, candidate forums and town halls in competitive districts.
The group said it expects the return on its fundraising investments to pick up as the November election approaches and could carry out independent expenditures as a tool to support candidates where there are gaps.
“Our work is focused on electing Democrats to advance legislative reforms, and we’re doing this by building long-term, sustainable programs,” James said. “That includes initiatives like our Unrig Washington program, which has 200 candidates running on an anti-corruption platform, our expanded grassroots organizing program that has activated tens of thousands of volunteers, and dozens of town halls and events connecting candidates with voters across the country. ECU is more present and embedded with campaigns than ever before, and these efforts require significant resources and staff.”
End Citizens United retains good relationships with many of the candidates and groups it has worked with, many of whom it connected with POLITICO for this story. A senior consultant working on Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s Senate campaign said the PAC’s brand lent Stratton credibility on the anti-corruption issue in her recent primary. An adviser to battleground Senate campaigns in 2020 and 2022 said the group was able to go into red states and talk about money in politics in a way that brought independent voters along.
“ECU’s work to defend voting rights, advocate for more accountability and transparency in government, and build a stronger democracy has been valuable,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Julie Merz said in a statement. “They are an important partner in our mission to take back the majority and get the People’s House back to work for the American people.”
“ECU is a valued partner in our work to win a Democratic Senate majority by defeating the Republican candidates who are enabling the Trump administration’s chaos and corruption,” said Devan Barber, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Privately, however, even some longtime allies acknowledge the group is not as able to support candidates as it used to be thanks to the fundraising challenges. And for campaigns in battleground races running on issues aligned with End Citizen United’s mission, money is often what they find to be the most helpful.
“Campaigns in tough races are looking for one thing: financial assistance, either through direct contributions or independent expenditure support,” said a national Democratic strategist who works on congressional campaigns. “Made-for-Instagram canvass kickoffs only go so far.”
A second Democratic strategist who advised a 2018 campaign that got support from End Citizens United said that its outside spending was “definitely a value add” then. But in more recent cycles, its events were less helpful, the person said, with the focus more on advocacy than helping campaigns. Promised donations from End Citizens United also took months to come through, in contrast with the quick pace of independent expenditures in prior years, the strategist said.
End Citizens United has countered distrust before to earn its place in the Democratic ecosystem.
When the group launched in 2015, progressives slammed its aggressive fundraising tactics, including heavy spending on list rentals and non-stop appeals to donors. But End Citizens United neutralized much of that criticism by becoming a major outside spending player, spending more than $10 million per cycle to boost candidates aligned with its mission. That put it among the top 20 outside spenders among groups of both parties in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 cycles.
One component of its growth was the “No Corporate PAC” pledge, first launched in the 2018 cycle to urge candidates to reject money from corporate PACs, citing the groups’ corrupting influence. More than 100 candidates signed the pledge, nearly all of them Democrats, with dozens getting elected to Congress that year.
“[The] corporate PAC pledge was controversial, but an important tool in taking back the House in 2018,” said a third former End Citizens United employee. “The staff grew and was able to support candidates in a lot of different ways. It was the right issue for the moment. Everyone who was there for that time would talk about it as the peak cycle.”
Their influence was clear the following year. Seven Democratic presidential campaign candidates signed End Citizens United’s pledge to make their first legislative efforts focused on ambitious campaign finance reform and good-government proposals.
During the 2020 election cycle, the group raised $42 million, while spending $14.2 million on independent expenditures and giving more than $1.8 million directly to candidates, according to FEC data. The “No Corporate PACs” pledge was even bigger that cycle, with more than 150 incumbents signing on.
Then, the cracks started to show.
A few incumbent members of Congress who had taken the pledge in 2018 went on to accept corporate PAC money once they were in office, laying bare the limits of a voluntary pledge. Democrats never came especially close to accomplishing the group’s core mission of enacting campaign finance reform, despite having a trifecta in the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, due to the Senate filibuster. And digital fundraising began to falter.
Its fundraising tactics still frustrate critics, especially in light of its declining spending on elections. They argue that End Citizens United positions itself as a good-governance group that’s not delivering on its promises to donors.
“The people sending $15 are not sending $15 for salaries and high-paid consultants. They’re sending $15 to fight against Trump and elect good people,” said a fourth former End Citizens United staffer. “That’s not what’s happening anymore. ECU has lost focus. They should be asking themselves, what are we actually delivering for our supporters?”
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