the potluck
The Wisconsin potluck
A potluck works because nobody brings everything. Here is exactly what it takes to put Wisconsin on the table — the bills, the work, and how far along we are — in the two currencies that actually pay for it.
Bring a dish
$0 of $500
Nobody has brought a dish yet.
Lend a hand
0 of 58 hands
No hands pledged yet. One hand is one hour.
The two meters are kept apart on purpose. Hours are never converted into dollars and added to the total — money is money, and work is work. The dollar figure beside the hands is only there to show what volunteering is worth, valued at $30/hour, a little above what one adult needs to live on per the MIT Living Wage Calculator.
Who’s at the table
Everyone who brought a dish or lent a hand to Wisconsin and asked to be named. No amounts — a potluck doesn’t seat you by what you carried in.
The chairs are empty so far.
Tim built Wisconsin’s pages and set the table. Whoever comes first gets the first seat, and everyone after that can see they weren’t the only one — which is most of why this works.
What’s on the bill
These are the bills the $500 pays and the work it takes — not a receipt that adds up to it. Cash lines are somebody’s real invoice. Hands lines are our estimate of the work, and they say so.
What Wisconsin law says about its voter fileNot yet researched
We have read 12 states’ voter-file statutes line by line, and Wisconsin is not one of them yet. Reading it — what it costs, who is allowed to have it, what may be done with it — is part of the work this table pays for. We would rather say “we don’t know yet” than put a number on it.
Whatever the answer, one rule does not move: no feature built from voter data is ever paid-only. Contributions pay the bills. They never buy access. How we source data →
Bring a dish
Any amount, once or monthly. Every payment is counted publicly against Wisconsin’s total the moment it clears — the same transparency we apply to candidates’ money, applied to our own.
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 the costs 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.
Lend a hand
The other currency, and the one most tables actually run short of. Tell us how many hours you can give Wisconsin and what you’d like to work on. No money, no commitment you can’t change — pledge again any time and it revises what you already offered.
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. Volunteer pledges are not donations and are not binding. Questions: billing@thedems.org.