Q&A of the Day – Making Political Donations Without Being Scammed & And How To Detect Them
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: Brian, I wish to donate to help President Trump but am concerned about the various texts and emails I receive asking to help by giving a donation. With so many websites that appear to be, but may not be affiliated with a particular person or group, how do we know which website(s) are directly donating to President Trump?
Bottom Line: It’s a good question, because to your point, there are more texts, emails and political websites than ever before making it more complicated than ever before to ensure that if you want to make a donation, that the money is in fact going to your candidate of choice as opposed to potentially a scammer looking to take advantage of the political season. Following former President Donald Trump’s conviction in the New York state case, all known fundraising records have been shattered. The first record that fell was team Trump raising $34.8 million in what are called “small-dollar” donations within the first ten hours. Record fundraising played out straight through the weekend with Team-Trump raking in approximately $70 million in small-dollar donations with a total of over $200 million through the first three days with the large donor dollars added to the mix. Total political spending across all races for the 2024 cycle already exceeds an eye popping $9 billion. When that much money is following you know that the scammers will follow. So, about that...
A good rule of thumb when addressing political donations is the same as the best practice for paying bills. To go straight to the source. Some text messages are legitimate, some aren’t. Some emails are legitimate, some aren’t. Just as it’s not a good idea to use a text link or texted phone number to pay a bill, it’s not a good idea to use a text link or texted phone number to make a political donation either. But you identified another issue... Even when you’ve tried to find the correct website you were unaware of which ones were official and which ones weren’t.
Donald Trump’s official campaign website is hosted and processed by WinRed – which is the largest Republican hosting service in the country. Most Republican candidates and office holders across the country and in Florida use the WinRed service for their campaign websites. Additionally, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Florida do as well. When you go to WinRed’s website you can search for candidates by state and specific offices. If you want to shop at a candidate’s store – for those who sell merchandising – you’ll see a button to shop. If you want to make a direct donation there’s a button for that too. That’s the best way to ensure your money is going where you want it to go. As for minimizing the potential spam messages you receive and detecting legitimate campaign communications for potential scams...
One of the reasons you may be excessively spammed by even what turn out to be legitimate campaigns is due to federal law. Political campaigns are exempted from the National Do Not Call Registry (imagine that – when federal politicians created a law to limit spam, they exempted themselves...). However, there are a couple of things that you can do to limit legitimate campaign messages. If you receive a text message under federal law, you may always opt out of future messages by texting the word “stop”. If you do this, you should receive a text back that tells you that you’ve been removed from the text list. If you receive a text message and it either doesn’t contain the disclaimer stating you can “stop” future messages, or it does but doesn’t remove you from the list – that is almost certainly a scammer. This applies to email communications as well. You may always request to unsubscribe via a link that’s on the bottom of an email. If it’s an email soliciting a donation that doesn’t include the button, or if it does but it doesn’t stop emails from coming via that email address, that’s almost certainly a scam as well.
Often politically active people end up on numerous lists. This is why, for example, you might find yourself being asked to donate to a candidate you’ve never heard of in a state you’ve never lived in. Typically, people think that type of thing is a scam but it’s probably not. This commonly happens when making political donations while also allowing for your contact information to be collected and used or shared with other campaigns (the fine print stuff you probably don’t read through). When you do come across spam you have multiple ways to attempt to deal with it as well. That includes blocking the number that you’re receiving messages from in your phone, marking messages as “junk” and also forwarding the spam text messages to the FCC by using the number 7726.
Using these techniques you’ll quickly see what’s real and what isn’t if you’re inundated with political messages. Fines for violations can cost campaigns up to $50,000 per violation. It’s a fine that’s high enough to ensure that legitimate campaigns comply with the rules. If you want to make a political donation and/or shop at a candidate's store (which is considered one in the same legally) without getting on so many lists in the future, read the fine print and opt out of future communications.