Today I received a fundraising e-mail from ActBlue, the funding clearinghouse for national progressive Democratic candidates which sometimes collaborates with Daily Kos. It was dynamite. I have quoted it here in its entirety to give the reader the correct context:
"The GOP proved once again that they don't have the tech chops to compete with us.
"They rolled out a new feature (one we’ve had for 6 months) and it wasn’t PCI compliant. What’s that mean? Well, it’s not secure. Donor’s credit cards could get hacked. And it took us bringing it to their attention to get it fixed and secure. Anything that risks undermining confidence in making political contributions is bad for everyone.
"Security is our #1 priority here at ActBlue. You and millions of others of people trust us, and we take that very seriously.
"Thanks to the support of thousands of donors just like you, we’ve built the biggest, most advanced, and most secure fundraising system in the country. But we’re never satisfied.
"The engineering team at ActBlue, which I'm proud to lead, has committed to an ambitious development timeline for 2014 and the only way we can hit it is with your support.
"Can you chip in $5 a month to make sure we have the resources we need to staff up, expand our server capacity, and, most importantly, continue spending significant resources to guarantee we have the most secure system possible?
"ActBlue is independently audited every year to confirm that our security is top notch. I’m never nervous when they come, because unlike the GOP we don't take any shortcuts when it comes to security. Security is a moving target, and we're constantly working to stay cutting edge.
"Our team is extremely talented. We’re small, but together we’ve build a system that’s helped securely raise over $440 million in just 9 years. And here’s what we’ve got on tap for next year:
"Expand our capacity to 50,000 contributions an hour - Upgrade our testing and analytics capacity to aid thousands of data driven campaigns and organizations - Continue to invest heavily in security to thwart attempted hacking attacks - Innovate new and easier ways to donate to your favorite campaigns
"The only way we can move forward is if we hit our end of the year fundraising goal. We need 1,000 donors to step up right now and commit to supporting ActBlue in 2014. Can we count on your support?
"From all of us at ActBlue, thanks.
-Nate, Braulio, Decklin, Chris, Matt, and Bill, the ActBlue Technical Services Team
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