It’s no secret that corporate money and lobbyists are a quiet but powerful force in the political scene, both at state and federal levels. Working as a lobbyist in Richmond, Heidi Drauschak saw first hand the influence her firm had on legislation.
“I was not a huge fan of our clients, which tended to be corporate or special interests,” she said. “I was experiencing this effective political tool; but how can you change the client up and give everyday people access to a system that works so well?”
To answer that question, Drauschak created CrowdLobby, which was founded in March last year and launched its website last week.
Crowdlobby is a crowdfunded lobbying platform, where users create and pledge money to legislative campaigns. If the campaign hits its funding target, the users are charged for the contribution and participate in a crowd vote to hire a lobbyist to push the legislation.
Users aren’t charged unless the campaign hits its target.
The platform adds significant transparency to the lobbying system. Contributors can see who the potential lobbyist-for-hire is before pledging money, and during campaigns, they receive updates from and can communicate with the lobbyist. People who haven’t contributed will get general updates on campaigns, but only contributors can see specific details on what the lobbyist doing and interact with them.
Crowdlobby, based in Richmond, launched with nine campaigns, five of which are concerned with Virginia state legislation. It plans to cover both state and federal lawmaking.
The five state issues include redistricting, marijuana decriminalization, minimum wage, school funding and energy metering. State funding targets are $50,000 to launch a campaign, federal targets are $250,000. Individual contributions are capped at $1,000 for state and $5,000 for federal.
Anyone can create a campaign for free, but there are requirements: It has to abide by a standard discrimination policy and offer a specific legislative fix, like creating an independent Virginia redistricting commission. More importantly, for any campaign that goes live on the site, there must be publicly available polling data that shows 50 percent of the affected population is already in favor of the fix.
Drauschak said she wanted to structure CrowdLobby as a nonprofit, but strict lobbying regulations would immediately negate that model. True to its mission, the company was funded partially through a $30,000 Kickstarter campaign this summer in lieu of private investment.
The company is still testing its model as it launches the initial campaigns, with the goal to have a handful run through the full process in a year, Drauschak said. And it may supplement the lobbying efforts in the future.
“As we grow, we may be doing our own polling and grassroots efforts that would aid campaigns. We may reconsider, but those are decisions that would go to the crowd.”
