ActBlue

History

ActBlue was founded in 2004 by Benjamin Rahn and Matt DeBergalis. Rahn and DeBergalis were joined in 2005 by Jonathan Zucker and Erin Hill. Zucker took over as executive director in 2007; he was replaced by Hill in 2009. In 2023, Regina Wallace-Jones replaced Hill as president and CEO of ActBlue.

Both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential nominees, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, used ActBlue during their primary and general election campaigns. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 primary campaigns also used ActBlue for fundraising. Sanders' use of ActBlue was particularly notable as it represented the first time a major Democratic presidential candidate eschewed money from super PACs in favor of grassroots fundraising. This strategy would later be replicated by other Democratic political figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, all the candidates used ActBlue.

In 2023, ActBlue announced that it was laying off roughly 17 percent of its staff as part of what the group said was a "restructuring" that would help ensure "long-term financial sustainability".

In December 2024, 142 consultants, campaign staff, nonprofit staff, technology vendors, donor organizers, donors, and academics signed a letter to ActBlue saying the organization needed to do a "better job" of protecting Democratic contributors from being "exploited". In February 2025, seven senior staffers resigned from the organization. Resignations included the highest ranking legal officer, the vice president for customer service, and a technology staff member who had been with the organization for 14 years. Two unions representing ActBlue employees wrote to the board noting an "alarming pattern" of departures that was "eroding our confidence in the stability of the organization". As of March 5, 2025, the reasons for these departures were not publicly known.