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Below is our recent interview with Jeremy Gottlieb, the Founder & CEO at GroundUp:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to GroundUp?
A: GroundUp is a grassroots fundraising platform that allows anyone to round up the spare change from their every day cashless transactions and donate it to Democrats in swing districts and Democratic-affiliated PACs. The purpose of GroundUp was to make it easy for anyone and everyone to get involved and ensure that their funds go to the races that need it the most, not just the ones with the most name recognition.
Q: How exactly does it work? How do you select races?
A: GroundUp works by rounding up the spare change from your transactions. For example, if you buy a coffee with your credit card for $2.70, GroundUp will round up $0.30 and contribute it to the candidates the user has selected on our platform. We avoid the issue of processing fees completely negating the micro-donations by virtually tracking the round up values and only charging our users when the sum of their transactions hits a $15 threshold. This way we can ensure that we end up with more donations than processing fees.
We selected our races by analyzing the most competitive races based on previous voter behavior, demographics, income levels, education levels and more. As we get more and more polarized as a society, it actually becomes easier to predict how a person will vote, or at least what their political preferences are.
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Q: Why round up with GroundUp?
A: It’s the easiest way to make an affordable donation to the races that matter most. Most people aren’t willing to canvass or phone bank for candidates, but we are willing to spend on the things that we want to do. Especially with millennials, we use credit cards frequently and if we could make a positive difference every time we eat brunch or go to the bar, we’d be a lot better off as a society.
Q: Why are 2018 elections for U.S. Congress so important?
A: Donald Trump has been an extremely unconventional president and it’s obvious that he has no care for rule of law. As it stands right now, the Republican party controls our government, by being in charge of both houses of Congress and now having a strong conservative lean on the Supreme Court, and they appear to rubber stamp nearly everything that President Trump wants to do. One could make a strong case for saying that the Republican party has become the party of Trump, so without having at least one house of Congress under Democratic control, we will continue to see Republicans lead the country over a cliff with their dangerous policies.
Beyond the federal level, the 2018 midterms will also have a very large impact on redistricting for the 2020 census as many governors who will be in power in 2020 will be elected now. Having more representation at the state level (in legislatures and the governors’ mansions) will allow states to undo voter suppression laws, enact progressive policy, and hold the Trump administration accountable for it’s many failings and illegal acts.
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Q: How committed are you to maintaining the security and privacy of your users?
A: 100%. We have never and will never sell or expose our users’ data to other parties. While we want to be able to create the easiest experience for people to donate and get involved in Democratic politics, we’re not willing to do anything that would jeopardize our users’ trust.
Q: What are your plans moving forward?
A: Following the 2018 midterms, we’ll offer our users the ability to continue to round up their spare change to larger Democratic PACs that will be laying the groundwork for success in 2020 as well as PACs that will help Democrats make gains in the state legislatures where there are elections in 2019: Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia, and New Jersey.
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