In your daily interactions, how much time do you spending thinking about the intentions of those around you? Before you agree to accept a loan from a bank, or decide how to respond to your boss’s email, do you consider the integrity of the person you’re working with?
How about when you’re watching the news? Or reading articles? How often do you consider the intention of your information outlets?
With Vote Smart, our intentions are clear. We are here to provide free, factual, unbiased information on candidates and elected officials to ALL Americans. That is our only intent. For that reason, we hold an ironclad policy regarding what kind of support we can accept, as it is one of the key ways we protect our information systems from any perception of bias or hidden agenda.
We are funded entirely by individual contributions and by foundation grants. The vast majority of our support comes from mostly small donations (averaging $35) from our members—about 25,000 of them. The rest comes from philanthropic foundations that do not have corporate ties, and are prohibited from lobbying.
As a small non-profit with an ambition to serve all Americans, you can imagine that our expenses are high but our funds are low. It costs $3,000 a day to keep Vote Smart up and running, to provide citizens with access to the facts. While we pride ourselves on our integrity, we also have experienced the downside of keeping this high standard. While we are forever thankful to those generous citizens that support us and allow us to continue protecting democracy for all Americans, we are still at a financial disadvantage in comparison to other information systems that are not bound by integrity and intention.
Despite any financial stress, we never waiver on our policy. We actually refuse contributions from corporate sources, labor unions, special interests, the government, or any group that lobbies government at any level. We do not support or oppose any issue, candidate, party or cause.
As we move closer to the 2016 elections, fundraising is of the utmost importance. If you believe in integrity and the good, honest intentions of an organization, click the button below to make a year-end gift to Vote Smart and ensure that Americans across the nation have access to information they can trust.
