May & june 2025 Transparency Report
As part of our commitment to transparency, we intend to tell you monthly where our money comes from, and what we spend it on. May and June are mostly startup costs, and funded almost entirely by Jude.
All our PDC filings are 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 biggest single expense by far was the filing fee of about $1,833 on May 9. That falls under Administrative expenses.
Also in that category: about $75 in monthly bills, and $350 in other one-time start-up costs.
The Voter Outreach category is for advertising and voter contact. Again, we had a lot of start-up costs - the biggest of which was about $300 for a headshot and portraiture session.
We picked Clark Rowan Photography for his diverse portfolio and reasonable pricing, and got some fantastic photos we’ve used for advertising, business cards, and Jude’s candidate statement.
We also had printing expenses for posters and business cards.
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.
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Our standard administrative expenses are the campaign’s phone, website, and email bills, costing about $75 per month.
Each month, we’ll report these standard administrative expenses, and any changes we had in price, or unusual expenses.
For example in May we had about $350 in the one-time costs for preparig to file for office - a PO box and a campaign phone to keep campaign work separated from personal activity, and the ElectJude.com domain name for this website.
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We don’t think you need to spend much money to get donations, but sometimes it helps.
If we use any of your money on convincing other people to give us money, we want you to know that.
We aim to keep this slice of the pie small - we’d rather spend your money on voter outreach and community good.
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Voter Outreach is anything that helps us get people to vote for Jude. Usually, this means fliers and advertisements, but it can be other things too.
Each month, we’ll report what we spent money on for awareness, GOTV, or other campaigns that help get voters in the booth for Jude.
In May, our main expense for this was photography. Jude needs a headshot for the candidate statement, and we needed photos for the website and future advertising, which is why we categorize this as Voter Outreach.
This category also includes costs for printing campaign literature, posters, shirt, shirts, and stickers.
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We are trying to do Good in this campaign, not just get Jude into office.
A lot of that doesn’t cost money - Jude’s volunteer work usually doesn’t have costs associated with it, and Jude has waived reimbursements for his transportation costs in the campaign. So while that is good being done, it doesn’t show up in this category.
This expense category has the money we spend on making life better for King County.
Due to campaign finance laws, Jude’s campaign committee cannot donate directly to charity. But as long as it is part of a campaign activity, we can pick up donated goods and deliver them to local charities, and we can do things like the Hydration Station that we ran at CovTown Pride.
We’ve already shared the costs related to the hydration station in June, but that doesn’t explain the other $100 we spent in that category - again, we had a lot of one-time costs for things like directional signs, push pins, and tablecloths. They could arguably fall under “Administrative” costs, but as they were bought for the primary purpose of interacting with the community, we put them here.
Current Finances
| May | June | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Balance | $0 | $2,978 |
| Total Deposits | $3,000 | $0 |
| Total Withdrawals | ($22) | ($972) |
| Ending Balance | $2,978 | $2,006 |
| Petty Cash | $0 | $10 |
This section is about our bank accounts. It’s to let you know how much runway we have, without needing Jude to contribute more of his own money.
In May, we started with empty coffers, but Jude provided an initial deposit. Most of our expenses that month were before we had the bank account fully set up, so Jude paid for them as donations in kind, and don’t appear in this section After getting the bank set up, that initial self-contribution lasted through June, and we have about $2000 available for July’s expenses.
Contributions
May and June were almost entirely self-funded by Jude. He contributed a total of $5484 to the campaign, between in-kind contributions (most of the campaign startup costs we talk about above) and an initial deposit in the campaign account.
Our designer, Esperluette Creative donated $1000 of in-kind design work for us in June, including remaking our logo, website, and business cards.
Although we hadn’t explicitly solicited donations, we received one for $50! They were kind enough to cover the $3 processor fee - but that will show up in July’s graphs, because it was caught in bureaucratic limbo with our donation processor.
A note for reference: We will never take donations from corporate PACs.
Upcoming Expenses
In July, we expect to go to several more events. We’re already scheduled to attend the Enumclaw 4th of July parade, Black Diamond Miner’s Day, and Covington Days.
Miner’s Day will have a stall fee and insurance costs. Insurance is about $150, and stalls cost about $100. We also expect to buy more ice and some campaign literature.
We did receive an alert that we got a donation at the end of June, but since Anedot didn’t deposit it before June 30, that will be represented in the July report.
Our donation goal for July isn’t monetary, but quantity - we want at least 5 individual donors to contribute to the campaign. We can afford to fund our upcoming needs on our own, but we need to show our endorsers that we have community support.
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 a booth at an upcoming town event.
Will you help Jude help your neighbors?