Fund the infrastructure
Trustworthy data has a hosting bill.
TheDems.org is independent civic infrastructure: live FEC money trails, turnout maps, and county pages for Democratic organizations. Nobody’s ad budget pays for it. Here is exactly what it costs to run — and what it costs to run it at the security standard you should demand from anything touching civic data.
What it costs today
These are the platform’s actual monthly line items — not estimates, the real bills:
Line items last updated 2026-08-11. FEC data itself is free — your tax dollars already paid for it. We pay to make it legible.
The next step: SOC 2-tier security
The next step is SOC 2-tier infrastructure — the audit standard banks and governments require of vendors that handle sensitive data. For a platform asking Democratic organizations to trust it with member rolls and money, it is the right bar. It is also a real price jump:
That jump — roughly 30× the baseline — is why this page exists. Officer rolls, member signups, and donation records deserve audited, certified infrastructure, and audited, certified infrastructure is priced for companies, not volunteers. Sustained monthly donations are what close that gap.
The milestones
What the money builds, in order, stated before it arrives. Each beat unlocks the next — starting with making the company legally real.
Where your state stands
Chip in
Every payment is counted publicly against the state’s total the moment it clears — itemized on the public ledger, the same transparency we apply to candidates’ money, applied to our own. Give once, or give monthly and be one of the regulars — the people a table plans around.
Read this before you give
- Who runs this. TheDems.org is built and run by one named person, Tim Gaull. There is no company behind it yet — the first $500 raised files one, and that milestone is published like every other.
- Not tax-deductible. Your contribution is not a charitable donation and is not tax-deductible.
- Not political money. Nothing you give here goes to any candidate, campaign, or party. It pays for the infrastructure line items published on this page.
- Counted in public. Every payment is added to its state’s public running total the moment it clears — itemized on the public ledger — and a receipt goes to your email.
- If this ever ends. If the project winds down, remaining funds after obligations go to Global GAIN, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building the democracy workforce.
TheDems.org is independent infrastructure and is not a candidate, party committee, or PAC. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see your card number. Questions: billing@thedems.org.