July 2025 Transparency Report
July had some cool events, and our first proper donations!
As always, our PDC filings are available on the PDC site: https://www.pdc.wa.gov/political-disclosure-reporting-data/browse-search-data/candidates/3331909#overview
How We Spent Your Money
Our Administrative expenses were fairly standard - $300 to pay our Campaign Consultant, and about $80 for our monthly bills.
We didn’t have a lot of expenses this month, but the expenses we had were beefy.
The Voter Outreach category had this month’s biggest expense, for a full $1000. This was to get access to the VoteBuilder software through WA Dems. This software helps us organize our canvassing and constituent calling efforts. If you’ve gotten a text, call, or visit from us, VoteBuilder probably told us to contact you.1
Community Good is our proudest category - it’s the money we spent on building relationships with the community, and making things better for them. In this case, we ran a hydration station at CovTown Pride, and spent $40 on 320 water bottles (which will last us for about 3 events), and about $35 on ice, which we can’t use again for obvious reasons. Alongside meeting that basic need, we also made things better for Pride-goers in an arguably trivial way - passing out paper bags to anyone overburdened by merchandise. That cost us about $135, and we have plenty leftover for events we attend over the next couple months.
And finally, Fundraising. This was simple. A cash box and some receipts. We weren’t soliciting cash donations at CovTown Pride, but we wanted to be ready in case they were offered.
Current Finances
| June | July | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Balance | $2,978 | $2,006 |
| Total Deposits | $0 | $2,175a |
| Total Withdrawals | ($972) | ($1648) |
| Ending Balance | $2,006 | $2,531 |
| Petty Cash | $10 | $10 |
Our expenses were higher than we expected this month (we weren’t expecting VoteBuilder to cost quite what it did!), and we didn’t meet our donation goals, so Jude needed gave the campaign account a bolus of $2,000 from his own finances.
We have enough in the account for standard work for August, but will definitely need more donations or another contribution or donation in kind from the candidate to get through the new events and canvassing we’re planning for August.
a A disclosure: Due to a mistake during a return, a store refunded one of Jude's personal purchases worth $110 to the campaign bank account. We have already requested guidance from the PDC about how to correct and report this error, and we will document that fix in an upcoming transparency report.
Contributions
This is a weird-looking month for contributions for sure! The group in-kind donation kind of blows the scale out of proportion.
That $4,000 donation-in-kind comes from the Washington State Democratic Central Commission (WA Dems). We bought access to VoteBuilder from them, which is is valued at $5,000. Because WA Dems only charged us $1,000, and they covered the other $4,000, that is considered a $4,000 donation-in-kind.
To be clear: getting an In-Kind donation means that we did not actually receive money in our accounts from WA Dems, just the product.
In good news, we did get money in the accounts from our other 3 donors - one who donated at the end of June, and two small-value donors from July!
b,c,d One donation occured during the last week of June, and was still with our donation processor at the end of the month. This donation was documented in June's transparency report, but is more accurately represented as it is here, as donated in July.
Upcoming Expenses
Our Plans
In August, we have some exciting events coming up!
First, we’re ordering our first batch of 100 yard signs, which we expect to cost about $5/sign, for $500, and a total of about $600 in stickers and brochure printing.
We also have our proper kickoff event on August 24 and you’re invited! We’re budgeting $1,000 for that event between renting a park pavilion and an AV system, buying food, and any decorations we need. We hope to get 100 guests and more than enough donations to recoup that cost.
And finally, we have our standard $380 in administrative expenses - plus an extra $50-100 if we need extra hours from our campaign consultant given this month is so busy.
All told, our donation goal for August is $2,500.
Stretch Goals
Obviously, we’d love to get more than exactly enough donations to get through the month. Here are the stretch goals:
With $500 more, we would send our first mailer out. It costs just over $1/postcard to print and send targeted mail, so we could reach about 450 people that way.
With $1000 more, we’d want to set up a multi-day food drive in front of a grocery store to benefit a local food bank. We’d spend about $250 on printing signs and getting permits to post them for a week, and spend the other $750 on a 60 cent/household every-door direct mail campaign for the 1200 households closest to the grocery store.
Call to Action
If you can afford to help us reach these goals, you know exactly how we will be spending it. So check out the links below to visit our donation site and contribute!
Help us meet our goals
$5 could buy 1 hour of ice at a hydration station event.
$25 could pay our email hosting costs for 1 month
$100 could pay for our next batch of brochures.
Will you help Jude help your neighbors?
1If you don't want us to contact you, you can let us know at ElectJude.com/DoNotCall