Progressive groups and Democratic organizations are raising money at a pace more closely resembling the frenzied weeks before an election than the typically sleepy months just after one. | Getty Progressives pour cash into anti-Trump resistance

Fighting President Donald Trump is proving lucrative.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised $24 million in online donations last weekend. That sum, taken in while the group was waging a legal struggle against Trump’s executive order banning travel by citizens of certain countries, is more than six times what the group typically raises online in an entire year.


And other progressive groups and Democratic organizations are having similar fundraising success, raising money at a pace more closely resembling the frenzied weeks before an election than the typically sleepy months just after one. Democratic congressional groups, state-level candidates and nonprofit or advocacy groups also are reaping millions from pledges to oppose Trump and stand up for progressive values in the early days of his administration.

The fundraising wave has even buoyed little-known Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat whom the liberal Daily Kos website endorsed last Thursday for a House special election. Daily Kos members have since donated nearly $400,000 to Ossoff — more than the group had ever directed to any campaign other than Elizabeth Warren’s 2012 Senate run.

“We fully expected, under any Republican president, to see an increase in everything from donations to organic following,” said Greg Berlin, a Democratic digital strategist in Washington whose clients include Ossoff. “But with Trump, it’s like everything is multiplied.”

Ossoff is running in the district held by Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Although the traditionally conservative district has not elected a Democrat in decades, Trump barely carried it over Hillary Clinton in November, and enthusiastic Democrats hope a special election following Price's expected confirmation will turn into a referendum against Trump.

“We think [Ossoff] could be our first million-dollar candidate ever, and soon,” Daily Kos political director David Nir wrote in an email. “And one reason we think so is that our email list — which we’ve been building up for many years — has jumped from 2 million on Election Day to 3 million now.”

Other organizations have seen their email lists balloon, too. The DCCC said Thursday that its list swelled by 675,000 (more than 20 percent) in January, as it raised more than $4.1 million online — surpassing fundraising in any odd-year month ever.

Mindy Myers, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Tuesday that her group is “on track to be one of the best the DSCC has seen in an off-year.” And the Democratic Governors Association said its digital fundraising total this January was 11 times more than in January 2015, although a spokesman declined to give exact figures.

“It’s an encouraging sign for the elections starting in New Jersey and Virginia this year,” DGA spokesman Jared Leopold said. “Democrats are fired up and ready to participate.”

The broadest signal of the financial wave comes from ActBlue, the widely used digital fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and causes (and a growing number of nonprofit groups), which raised its 1.5-billionth dollar in January. The organization took 10 years to reach the $1 billion mark last March; ActBlue took less than a year to raise the next half-billion dollars, including more than $25 million in January, compared with $6 million in January 2015.

“People are looking for ways to have their voices heard at this moment,” said Erin Hill, executive director of ActBlue. “For some, it’s going to a march or rally, for others, it’s contributing online to an organization they are supporting, and for some, it’s all of the above.”

ActBlue also signed up more than 100,000 new users in January for its “Express” feature. That function saves credit card information so that donors can make one-click donations in the future on any ActBlue pages, which most Democratic congressional campaigns use for online fundraising.

Similar jumps across Democratic politics cover everything from fundraising totals to email list size to fans on social media. Outspoken Democratic senators like Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, who are also among the subjects of 2020 presidential speculation, saw their Twitter followings spike in January. Booker has gained about a quarter-million followers since Jan. 1, while Gillibrand’s more modest account still grew nearly 50 percent, from about 214,000 followers to 307,000.

Other senators’ campaigns actively demonstrated how Democrats are trying to take advantage of the energy in their party. Several running for reelection in 2018, including Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, recently replaced the front pages of their campaign websites with landing pages, urging visitors to sign petitions opposing Trump’s immigration order, adding more email addresses to their campaign lists. (Brown’s campaign declined to comment and Baldwin’s did not respond to a request for comment.)

Political enthusiasm is by no means restricted to the left at the moment — Trump’s campaign and affiliated committees just reported raising millions in small-dollar donations in December, as Trump and his supporters basked in the afterglow of his victory.

But the large protests Trump sparked in the first two weekends of his presidency are a sign of the huge organizing potential on the left at this moment, said Berlin, the Democratic strategist. Showing up for something in person is typically the “really high bar” of what a campaign will ask of supporters. Making a small donation and especially signing an online petition is much easier, and it has happened by the millions in the past two weeks.

“The last time there was a Republican president in his first term, there was no such thing as online fundraising or organizing,” Berlin said. “So, we’re in a lot of uncharted water here.”

Joe Rospars, who was the chief digital strategist on former President Barack Obama’s campaigns, noted that new groups popping up amid the surge in activism may prompt a second wave of eye-catching results later, even if the current energy on the left fades.

“There are these groups that are just starting and getting a ton of interest and people signing up, but they may not even have a bank account yet,” Rospars said. “... So there will be a delayed effect of what’s happening now when some of these new organizations mechanically get things going and put down their roots.”

“People are doing Part One now, but I think it’s going to continue even if the moment comes down,” Rospars continued.