Democrats have a solid backup plan if ActBlue, the party’s most prominent online fundraising engine, gets shut down by federal investigators.
Oath, a burgeoning platform that racks in donations for Democrats, directed over $35 million dollars to candidates during the 2024 election cycle. Now, as ActBlue is in danger amid scrutiny from the White House and congressional investigators over allegations of corruption and fraud, Oath president Brian Derrick said his organization is uniquely positioned to stand in for ActBlue should Democrats’s top fundraising powerhouse go dark.
Oath will be the sole platform where donors can find every single federal Democratic candidate if ActBlue is temporarily shut down, he claimed on Friday during an interview with the Washington Examiner. His organization has accelerated the process in recent weeks to get every candidate on it in preparation for the 2026 election cycle and more than doubled the size of its team since last fall, Derrick revealed.
“What we did was accelerate our timeline for how we ensure that all of these candidates are active on the platform. In the case that ActBlue were to be temporarily unavailable to donors, that we would have continuity of services and they could continue to donate through Oath,” he said.
“We are also making clear to donors that in a worst-case scenario, that Act Blue is even temporarily unable to process donations, that Oath will stand in that gap and ensure that there’s continuity in Democrats ability to fund the races that matter most,” Derrick continued.
His announcement comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate and “take appropriate action” concerning allegations that online fundraising platforms such as ActBlue are used to funnel illegal “straw” or “dummy” contributions to candidates and committees.
Hundreds of donations made on the platform over a 30-day period ahead of the 2024 election came from foreign internet protocol addresses using prepaid cards, which could violate U.S. law, the memo read, with Trump’s action coming as ActBlue has faced countrywide accusations of a wide range of wrongdoing, including laundering contributions from terrorist groups.
Derrick said Oath has taken a number of steps to tap in for ActBlue if it is shut down, even briefly, by the government.
“So the steps that we’ve taken were to ensure we had every federal candidate onboarded and activated on the platform, so that donors could find any Democrat that’s running for U.S. House, U.S. Senate, in addition to the dozens and dozens of competitive state races, also on Oath and ensure that they can continue to make those donations no matter what happens with this memo and the status of ActBlue,” he said.
CHAOS AND FRAUD: A LOOK AT THE ALLEGATIONS FACING ACTBLUE
Still in the early years of growth, Oath hauled in under $40 million for Democratic candidates last year compared to ActBlue’s staggering nearly $4 billion. But it is growing by leaps and bounds, Derrick said, projecting it would “move hundreds of millions of dollars” through the platform this cycle after bringing in $2 million during its inaugural 2022 cycle.
“We are doing that by building something that’s hyper-scalable,” Derrick said. “We’ve more than doubled the size of our team since the November elections, have raised additional capital to build more tech infrastructure to support that kind of volume, and are partnering with technology platforms that are going to enable us to scale as quickly as we need to in order to handle the volume of donors coming to us.”
