Take the Oath

Making Donations You Can Count On

By Steve Schear

Fundraising for Democratic and progressive campaigns is like a vast field covered with sludge. First there are tons of manipulative texts and emails from legitimate candidates and organizations. Then there’s even more pleas from moneygrubbers who want to achieve financial security and pay for a second home by taking advantage of people donating to save democracy. Finally, a lot of fundraising seeks donations for candidates who don’t have a real chance to win or who will win whether or not you donate.

I’ve been a grassroots fundraiser since 2020. About three years ago, I saw that large amounts of money intended to help Democratic campaigns were being siphoned into the pockets of fundraisers, ad agencies and consultants. I felt a responsibility to do something but didn’t know what to do. This past fall, I became involved in the Scambusters group and began to dig deeper into deceptive and inefficient Democratic fundraising.

In this field of sludge, I found a fundraising organization that stands out like a diamond in the mud — Oath. Brian Derrick and Taylor Ourada started Oath in 2022 to maximize the effectiveness of pro-democracy donations while also protecting donors’ privacy.

Finding the Best Places to Put Our Money

A huge amount of Democratic money is wasted on non-competitive races. In 2020, Amy McGrath raised $94 million for her Senate campaign against Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. McGrath’s texts and emails created false hopes that she could win, yet she lost by 20 points and never really had a chance. On the flip side, in 2024, Adam Schiff spent $62 million to win his Senate seat by 18 points, a race he had little to no chance of losing.

Most people lack the time and capacity to research which donations will have the most impact. Brian Derrick calls this problem “information asymmetry.” For example, it’s impossible for most people to know whether a campaign poll claiming its long-shot candidate is “only two points behind” is legitimate or a manipulative trick. “That asymmetry is what’s driving a misallocation of resources across the political ecosystem,” says Derrick. “That’s why Oath needs to exist, to rebalance that asymmetry by empowering donors.”

Big Data Leads to Big Impact

To identify truly competitive races, Oath has developed an algorithm combining human research with hi-tech data. “We’re building a system that can pull in hundreds of thousands of data points,” Derrick says. “We are both scraping and pulling data, plus purchasing data, plus doing research, and working with partners’ internal data systems to build a really comprehensive look at the political landscape. Then we use the algorithm to make sense of it.”

Oath’s algorithm has three components. The first is competitiveness. “We want to focus the dollars on the races where fundraising is likely to be a decisive factor,” Derrick says. The second factor is the stakes, “what are the consequences of winning or losing this particular race?” Stakes rise when a Democratic win could flip a legislative chamber, ensure a state Supreme Court majority, or result in winning multiple state and federal elections at the same time. The third factor is financial need. Oath analysts assess how much money candidates and their opponents have raised, then consider outside contributions to determine an optimal spending level for campaigns. The need for additional funding then gets factored into the Oath assessment.

This graph shows Democratic spending In 2024. 10+ means Democrats won by 10 points or more. Zero to -5 mean Republicans won by five points or less. As the graph shows, the majority of Democratic donations went to less competitive races. Oath, by contrast, funneled the majority of its donation into the most competitive races, those in the 0-to-5 categories, where donations made the difference between winning and losing.

With a staff of 15, Oath does a comprehensive review of elections nationwide, including, Derrick says, “every federal race, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, along with every gubernatorial race, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Supreme Court, and State Legislature. And we do local races as well.” Not every local race, however. “We look for high-impact local opportunities, races like the Maricopa County Recorder, which could play a really important role in Arizona elections and how votes are counted. We look at school board races, where there are book bans up for debate.”

Oath’s algorithm creates an impact score for each candidate. “The higher the impact score, the more likely your dollars could be decisive,” says Derrick. Visitors to Oath.vote can use impact scores to make informed decisions about donations. Oath’s impact analysis also recommends the best candidates to support at any given time. Oath.vote also lets you research a particular issue, e.g. climate change or abortion, or a particular location, e.g., Iowa, to get Oath’s recommendations for donations most likely to make a difference.

Oath Is Free and Does Not Share Your Information

Oath takes none of the money donated through its website, relying instead on tips to pay for operations. Your entire donation (less credit card processing fees) goes to campaigns.

Privacy is another huge bonus. Oath only provides campaigns and candidates with legally required information — your name, occupation, and employer. “Email and phone is never legally required, so that never goes,” says Derrick. In addition, Oath requires candidates and organizations to agree not to use donor names for future contacts. (Unfortunately, Oath won’t take you off existing email and text lists owned by data vendors.)

Taylor Ourada and Brian Derrick

Growing Fast

Derrick and Ourada met as students at Ohio State University in 2011 and became best friends. For a decade, Derrick worked in fundraising while Ourada worked in tech. In 2022, they combined their talents and started Oath. That first year, $2 million flowed through Oath to candidates and campaigns. By 2025, Oath donated just under $40 million to candidates, Derrick says, “and we’re projecting right now over $150 million for the midterms.”

Oath.vote now lists 1,000+ candidates and organizations. If you think a group or candidate should be added, fill out this form and Oath will apply its algorithm to see whether donations will matter.

Oath Promotes Ethical Fundraising

Using Oath’s ethical fundraising platform has another important benefit. “The bigger Oath grows, the more we can set high standards for campaigns in soliciting and spending money,” Derrick explains. “Because if we have a lot of donors acting in coordination, saying, ‘This is how we want the future of political giving to look,’ we can incentivize candidates to follow better practices in order to receive funding from this giant pot of money.”

As far as I can tell, there’s no downside giving to Oath, and lots of upside. So when donating, take the Oath.

Steve Schear is an organizer from Oakland and a member of Scambusters, a team working to improve Democratic fundraising by exposing PACs wasting Democratic donors’ money.