Political Contributions – Emails, Texting, and Phone Calls…Oh My!
US presidential campaigning is alive and well, coming to you on any and all devices you own. Whether you see red, blue, or green there is no way to avoid campaign fundraising efforts, which have already reached a fever pitch in America – and it sometimes feels that policy and what a candidate stands for takes a backseat to the almighty dollar. But to be fair, political campaigns, especially those for such high-level positions as the presidency, usually require substantial resources to support expenses including staff salaries, events, travel costs, and advertising.
Running a campaign during the presidential primary in the 2020 election cost anywhere from $50 million to more than $100 million dollars. And that was just the beginning. Once the primaries were over and the party nominees began their campaigns to win the general election, it cost an additional $75 million dollars.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
With such vast sums of money being contributed, it is imperative that companies stay on top of pay-to-play regulations. If employees fail to adhere to donation thresholds or systems fail to surface excessive contributions, it could be costly in reputation and dollars.
Donations can be given to a multitude of parties and organizations at the federal, state, and local levels, and can be made through emails, texts, and calls. Due to the short timespan in which political donations really go into overdrive, a perfect storm is set in motion. Donation volumes increase, more dollars are given, and federal, state, and local municipalities all have their own ways and time frames for publicly disclosing contributions. All of this combined make donation reconciliation a formidable, time-consuming task that is highly susceptible to human error.
With the vast amount of data created and in need of review, companies need one platform that can aggregate all political contribution data to streamline both the front and back-office experience. Employees need to pre-clear political contributions with ease and compliance teams need to reconcile and investigate them in a timely fashion.
SIMPLIFY THE PROCESS
Due to the diverse nature of how and when contributions are made public, it’s difficult to manually collect data, and that’s when costly mistakes happen. StarCompliance understands the importance of timely reconciliation and now offers a daily feed of contributions as they’re made public—from federal contributions to local donations, and everything in-between. What was once an end-of-quarter nightmare of trudging through 90+ days of contributions can now be done daily, if desired, which means potential issues can be caught earlier and resolved faster.
Intertwining political contribution data into your employee compliance platform where all transactions can be hosted in a singular manner is the safest way to protect a company. Political contributions will continue to increase over the coming months as campaigns begin to gain momentum. Don’t wait until contributions are unmanageable before implementing an automated, time-saving solution.
