Blueprint helps donors make effective, year-round investments in Democratic candidates and civic organizations. Users can get quarterly giving recommendations, track contributions and impact, download forms to donate offline, and request custom portfolios.
Hi, Product Hunt 👋🏿 I’m Mary-Lynn, Product Manager/PMM at Swing Left, and I’m excited to introduce you to Blueprint, Swing Left’s portfolio-style donation platform for sustained political giving.
Why We Created Blueprint
🤬 Political giving leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s a list of some of the complaints we’ve heard from donors (maybe you share them too):
• There are countless candidates and civic organizations out there, and figuring out
which ones to support takes too much time.
• It’s annoying to give to one candidate only to receive donation asks from dozens of other candidates (especially when you’re pretty sure you didn’t sign up for those emails).
• The desperation of those fundraising emails.
• It’s unclear if your donations are making an impact, which can be frustrating or uninspiring.
• Keeping track of your donations can be hard to do if you don’t make all of them through ActBlue.
Previously, the only way to get around these issues was to use a donor advisor—which, as you can imagine, comes with a hefty price tag. Blueprint is changing that.
😊 With Blueprint, we’re making the painful and confusing parts of political giving a thing of the past (at no cost to you):
• We do the research and analysis to provide you with a quarterly, diversified portfolio of recommended candidates and organizations (called “my Blueprint”) to support, ensuring that your money goes where and when it’s needed most at any point in the cycle.
• We never share your email or phone number with recipients, so you won’t be added to any lists.
• We never send “We need you to give by MIDNIGHT, John”-type emails; you’ll only get meaningful updates about what’s happening on the ground or what’s new with Blueprint.
• We only recommend competitive races and proven civic organizations in states where each dollar given has the capacity to make a difference. That’s why we also provide quarterly impact reports that show where the collective funds raised that quarter have gone.
• We provide an itemized breakdown of your donations in your dashboard so you can see the organizations, Senate candidates, gubernatorial candidates, and number of state-level and congressional candidates you’ve supported in a given quarter—along with the dollar amount.
✨ We’ve also added some extras to make giving even better:
• If you’re looking for something other than our standard quarterly recommendations, you can request a custom portfolio (a “custom Blueprint”), and our team will put together personalized recommendations based on your priorities and our analysis of the landscape.
• Want more of your contribution to go to organizations? Or maybe candidates instead? You can change the weighting of your recommended portfolio through your preferences to reflect your priorities.
• You don’t just have to donate online through Blueprint: we’ve also built a flow that generates a PDF with personalized wire or check instructions if you’d prefer to give that way.
• If you and your network want to strengthen democracy and/or support Democratic victories, our new Blueprint Giving Circles service can help you make an impact together. Our team will recommend giving opportunities and handle donations, tracking, and disbursements on your behalf.
📝 We’re always looking for ways to continue to elevate political giving, so let us know what you think!
@marylynncesar do you see this as a tool that companies can also use?
Also can we see any big initiatives that are happening with a certain program or endeavor?
@ahmed_elsamadisi1 Hi Ahmed! We can definitely see companies using our giving circles feature to obtain a custom Blueprint that reflects their priorities: https://blueprint.swingleft.org/...
If a company doesn't want to wade into races and only wants to focus on fair elections and fair maps, our team can create a portfolio solely composed of 501(c)(3) and/or 501(c)(4) civic organizations.
As for initiatives, our impact reports highlight specific efforts undertaken by campaigns and organizations. You can see examples of this in our 2020 EOY Impact Report: https://swingleft.org/blueprint/...
Our goal is to help our users stay informed, so if there's other information you'd like to see—or if you have thoughts on how we should present it (in app too), please let us know!
Swing Left
Swing Left