A ballot question that would establish a commission to advocate in favor of overturning the Citizens United court decision has raised $272,000 so far, according to a campaign finance report released Friday.

But paying to gather enough signatures to get the question on the November 2018 ballot appears to have sapped most of the resources of the committee, which currently has just $5,900 in the bank and $51,000 in liabilities.

"There was some money spent gathering signatures. Now that that's over, we plan on doing quite a bit of grassroots fundraising, all small dollar donations from lots of different folks," said Ben Gubits, associate director of the Concord-based American Promise Initiative, which is advocating for the ballot question.

An aide to the ballot committee said the group planned to run its campaign mostly through volunteers, who have been sending emails and gathering endorsements. Gubits said the campaign will rely on a grassroots network to hold phone banks, write letters to the editor and contact voters.

The American Promise Initiative has contributed $89,000 toward the effort. Jeffrey Clements, the president of American Promise Initiative, donated $13,500 and loaned $15,000 to the campaign.



Many of the other contributions are small dollar donations -- sometimes as little as $5 or $10 from people around the country. There were 3,600 donations of $100 or less, totaling $55,000.



Asked whether it is hard to raise money for a campaign to get money out of politics, Gubits said polling shows most Americans want to overturn Citizens United, and "people understand it takes money to organize and run effective campaigns."



The ballot committee, called "People Govern, Not Money,"was formed by American Promise, a national organization aimed at getting citizen support for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.



The 2010 decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing a candidate as long as they did not coordinate directly with the candidate. Overturning the decision would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.



The ballot question would create a Citizens Commission in Massachusetts to research, report and make recommendations to assist in drafting and promoting a constitutional amendment.

If the effort is successful, the group hopes to conduct similar initiatives nationwide.