Climate Change and Democracy with Ning Mosberger-Tang

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Apr 8

Ning Mosberger-Tang is the founder and president at 1.5 Climate Strategies Group, alongside a host of other climate and civic organizations.

As one of the pioneering female engineers at Google, Ning played a crucial role in the development of Google's initial advertising platform. Transitioning from Google in 2006, her focus shifted towards combating climate change. Presently, she spearheads multiple organizations dedicated to instigating change.

This discussion spans her endeavors in political and electoral advocacy, civic engagement, and climate tech investing. With the 2024 election on the horizon, the opportunity to converse with Ning offered invaluable insights into the critical issues at stake, her priorities for the election cycle, and her strategic approach.

Episode recorded on Mar 19, 2024 (Published on Apr 8, 2024)

In this episode, we cover:

[01:47]: Ning's background, her experience at Google and transition to climate advocacy
[06:28]: Founding Innovo Foundation for conservation work and climate change mitigation
[07:23]: Ning's various initiatives, from tech investments to democracy reform
[10:00]: The importance of policy and electoral work for climate action after the 2016 election
[11:23]: Starting Blue Wave Postcard Movement to increase voter turnout
[16:27]: 1.5 Climate Strategies Group's mission and member pledge
[19:16]: Supporting investigative reporting on climate via Capital & Main and Grist
[20:20]: Focus on the 2024 elections for climate policy impact
[24:25]: Importance of state and local elections for climate action implementation
[29:39]: Ning's wishlist for future climate policies, highlighting the need for transmission reform
[30:20]: Deep dive on 501(c)(3) vs. 501(c)(4), PAC money, and the many ways elections are funded
[35:00]: The importance of building a strong ground game for elections
[39:47]: Ning's invitation to join 1.5 Climate Strategies Group
[40:06]: The Blue Wave Postcard Movement's effort to register voters in Pennsylvania
[40:59]: Oath.vote and closing words

Cody Simms (00:00):
Today on My Climate journey, our guest is Ning Mosberger-Tang, founder and president at 1.5 Climate Strategies Group, alongside a host of other climate and civic organizations. Ning was one of the first women engineers at Google and contributed to the development of Google's initial advertising platform. After leaving Google in 2006, she began to focus her attention on climate change. Today she has founded and runs multiple organizations that seek to affect change. As we discuss, her efforts range from political and electoral advocacy to civic engagement to climate tech investing. Timing-wise, I was excited to get a chance to chat with Ning during the buildup to the 2024 election so she could share what's at stake, where she's focused during this election cycle and how she's approaching it. But before we start. I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (00:54):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (00:54):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:00):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:05):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Ning, welcome to the show.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (01:20):
Thank you, Cody. Thank you for having me.
Cody Simms (01:22):
This is a very important year in the work that you do and frankly important for all of us in that it is in 2024 now, an election year, and I know that a lot of the work that you do is focused on the policy framework and the policy environment, including getting the right candidates in place when it comes to climate. We're going to talk so much about that today. But before we do, I'd like to get to know you a little bit, Ning, can you share a little bit about your background and what brought you ultimately to the work you're doing now?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (01:58):
Sure. Thank you, Cody. I am so excited to be here to talk to the MCJ audience because I know you guys are doing really important work here, have been doing it for years. I am Ning Mosberger-Tang, and I live in Bolder, Colorado, but I was born and raised in China and I went to college there. My area of study was computer science, and then I came to the U.S. for graduate school and got a master's degree in computer science. And then after that I worked for a number of years in the tech industry in Massachusetts, Arizona, and then eventually in the Bay Area. And then I left the tech industry back in 2006 to focus on climate change.
Cody Simms (02:46):
As I understand it, you were one of the first female engineers at Google, is that correct?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (02:51):
Yes, that's right.
Cody Simms (02:52):
Tell us a little bit more about your time there.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (02:55):
I was referred to Google by a coworker of mine in another company in the Bay Area, and I was super excited to be working at Google at the very critical time of that company. That was when the company was just starting up and build up momentum and becoming the household name that we know today. It was a great experience for me. They have provide really good benefits for employees, and it's also great to work with very smart, very dedicated group of people, and I have learned a lot. And also I believe I have made some contributions to the success of Google.
Cody Simms (03:34):
Namely you were on the team that built Google's first advertising platform, which is still how Google makes most of its money.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (03:44):
I know it's shocking, right? Yes. Who knew at that time that you make money through Google Ads? But it turned out that it was a very successful product and continue to be successful up to this day.
Cody Simms (03:57):
Congratulations on that journey and certainly it has, I would guess, propelled your career and propelled you into now being able to focus on other things that you have deemed important in your life. And it seems like a hard pivot to go from hard charging time at Google to saying, "I'm going to focus all in on climate change." And this was what, 2006 or so. Tell us more about how that transition happened for you.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (04:27):
Yes, that was back in 2006. One day I was looking at my three-year-old daughter at that time, my older daughter, and I was thinking, I was asking myself the question, what is her future going to be like when she's my age? And I was scared and I also asked myself what I was doing at the time, is it going to help her future? So my answer was no. What I was doing is not going to be very helpful to create a better world for her. If climate change is not mitigated, not stopped, and we don't start to go the different direction, then we are not going to have a good future for her when she's my age. And then that's when I decided that I'm going to seek a different path and going to dedicate my time and energy on climate change mitigation so that I can help create a better world for her.
Cody Simms (05:21):
Was there a trigger? In that time climate change wasn't as prevalent in popular culture as it maybe is today, was there a trigger that gave you that aha that, oh, this is something I need to think about when it came to your daughter?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (05:36):
Absolutely. Right. At that time, people were not as concerned about climate change as they're today. And were a lot of climate change deniers. Today if you talk to someone they say, "Hey, climate change is not real. It's all manmade." And you're likely not going to go very far. But I think at that time it was a lot of suspicion out there that something that we need to tackle with the kind of urgency that we need to. And for me, the triggering point was when I actually was reading the killing chart, the CO2 level, and just look at the prehistorical temperature and CO2 record and look at the correlation and look at the killing chart. It's going off the charts literally. I look at the numbers, I was like, "Oh my God, that's scary stuff." And I had to do something about it. And in combination with having a young family, my daughter was three, and it just make me make the jump without any regrets like I had to do it.
Cody Simms (06:28):
And so that's when you set up Innovo Foundation, which was your first foray. You have many initiatives that you work on. We'll hit on many of them on the show, but this foray, I think still is active today, which is your vehicle for donating to nonprofits focused on climate change. Is that correct?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (06:48):
Yes. That's when I started the Innovo Foundation focusing on climate change mitigation. That's the mission of the foundation. And I studied that in 2004, and then it started operating in 2006 and it continued to operate until this day. And the focus is conservation work, climate change mitigation, and I use that as a vehicle to do the work I'm doing today.
Cody Simms (07:12):
And it seems like, we're going to talk about 1.5 Climate Strategies Group, which I know is a heavy focus of yours, especially right now in an election season. But it seems like you have multiple vehicles through which you direct you Climate Ambition, one being Innovo Foundation focused on supporting nonprofits around climate mitigation. You have Ovonni Ventures, which invests in technology solutions to climate change. You have Innovo Foundation focused on nonprofits around climate mitigation. You have Ovonni Ventures, which focuses on investing in technology around climate change. We as MCJ are proud to be one of your investees, thank you very much for your investment. And of course, you have other initiatives focused as well around democracy reform and the like. Maybe share a little bit about some of those other efforts.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (08:07):
Thank you for learning about all that because it was a very long journey for me to discover where I can make the most impact. And the business, all the entities that you named, yes, they're all part of the vehicle, they're all the vehicles I use to make the difference. I started with the Innovo Foundation. I use Innovo Foundation to do conservation work. I actually did global work in Kenya, Costa Rica to protect the natural environment, to protect the forestry, and I like to directly mitigate carbon emissions. And from there I also started initiative called Renew Our School Program is to educate school children about climate change impact and how they can make a difference by saving energy for their schools. We set up this school district-wide energy saving campaigns, competitions between schools. The kids, they lead the effort and they're able to win a medal for their school if they're doing a really good job to save energy for their schools.
(09:07):
That effort actually was also based in Innovo Foundation. And the program has grown from a single school district now to nationwide. It's a nationwide program. I'm very proud of the work I was able to accomplish through Innovo Foundation. A lot of that are direct carbon emissions reduction work. But then I realized that it's not enough. And as you have recognized, the problem of climate change is so immense and so urgent. We have to do more than just to do this conservation work on the ground through a foundation or more. I also studied the Ovonni Foundation. Ovonni basically Innovo in a reverse order.
Cody Simms (09:43):
I didn't put that together. That's great.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (09:47):
They're focused on investing in early stage climate tech that has high potential and needs to happen. That's why I have been doing and that's why I invest in MCJ as one of the investments made through the Ovonni Ventures. And then after that 2016 had the big election happened where we lost our government to an anti-climate denying administration. That's why I realized that I have to get engaged with policy work and by extension I have to get engaged electoral work because I realized that... For example, in Costa Rica, I work with organization that saves 400,000 acres of land to protect the natural environment and to cut carbon emissions. And if you think about that, I only play a small role in that effort. But then if you look at what the administration can do with a stroke of pen, they could write off several million acres from protective status to non-protected, and you can feel free to do source of fuel development or whatnot on that land.
(10:48):
It's just that so much effort has to go into electoral work, make sure that we have a pro-climate administration and Congress and also state government so that they can use good policies to help us mitigate the climate change crisis. The impact of that is so much bigger than how much you and I as individual can accomplish.
Cody Simms (11:09):
We're going to talk most of the rest of the episode about your work there in political campaign giving and supporting candidates and all of that. Before we do, you also have some initiatives particularly around driving action. You have the Blue Wave Postcard Movement and you have the Democracy Strategy Group, both of which you've also created to help drive greater awareness from individuals. I think around changes that potentially need to happen even regardless of climate it sounds like.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (11:40):
So in order to create the kind of change I was talking about, which is to change policy, have the right people elected, we have to make sure that people turn off to vote because if the majority of Americans are pro-climate, are pro-reform, pro-democracy, it's just that their will has not been presented in the electoral outcome because people don't always turn out to vote. That's why I started the Blue Wave Postcard Movement. Blue Wave Postcard Movement, the mission is to reach out to underrepresented voters and making sure that they register and vote in all these battleground states.
Cody Simms (12:17):
And what about the Democracy Strategy Group?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (12:19):
That's another a good question. Because of my concern about climate, and I look a little bit into that, why the good policy did not pass. A big part of reason is that the majority voice has not been heard, which means that democracy, we don't have true democracy in this country. As you have seen in the data. We are not one of the most democratic countries in the world these days because we have all this structural disadvantage for the majority to have their voice heard. I'm really focusing on making sure that we can restore the fundamental of democracy, and with that we will be able to create the change we need and actually preserve the change that we made and to give them time to take effect over time.
Cody Simms (13:05):
It's about trying to reduce the amount of special interests involved in policymaking, trying to reduce the amount of campaign dollars that are flowing into candidacies from non-individuals. Would those be some of the principles of that initiative? I don't know. I'm making these up.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (13:23):
You are exactly right. Campaign finance reform and exposing dark money and the reduced amount of money's influence in politics. And also very fundamentally is making sure that everybody has the right to vote and have their voice heard, which means have the universal mail-in voting, have early voting, and prevent voter suppression from happening from all these former [inaudible 00:13:48] states, and also to ban gerrymandering at the federal level and hopefully eventually at the state level as well. All the policies I mentioned earlier about universal mail-in voting and ban gerrymandering, they're all part of bill, it's called the Freedom to Vote Act. Freedom to Vote Act was introduced in 2021 when we had a federal pro-democracy trifecta. I worked with a group of donors, activists in the background, worked very hard for a year to help pass the bill, and that's when I started this group called Democracy Strategy Group.
(14:21):
And the main purpose of the Democracy Strategy Group is to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and to make sure that Congress would reauthorize the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Basically it's the fruit of the voting rights, civil rights, voting rights reform that was accomplished in 1965, and it had not been reauthorized. But anyway, so just want to make sure that the voting rights will be protected for all the Americans and also make sure that everybody have the right to vote and their voice will be heard by passing the Freedom to Vote Act. That's my work on democracy side of things.
Cody Simms (14:56):
Ning, I have to say, I wasn't planning to say this out loud, but it's really inspiring to see you as you started out the episode saying you're an immigrant to this country and how much you have internalized the ideals of American democracy and are putting your resources and your life's work toward trying to help this country realize its fullest potential. And it just feels like such an incredible American story for you to have moved to this country, hit a home run as an early engineer at Google, after working really hard to get your master's degree and all of this, and now here you are using your resources to help advance democratic ideals in the United States. Thank you for all that you do in that regard.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (15:44):
Thank you, Cody. That's part of the reason I'm doing what I'm doing actually, because I know how different society could look like without democracy, without freedom of press, without a right to vote. And I just love to protect what we have here as a democracy. And I'm just sad to see that some of that has been chipped away, but it's not too late to save it.
Cody Simms (16:06):
Let's shift our efforts to talk about the work you're doing directly with 1.5 Climate Strategies Group. And in particular what I find interesting about this group is you have a mandate of what the group is trying to accomplish, and then you also have an ask of its members around a pledge. Can you share a bit more about both of those?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (16:27):
For sure. Yeah. I started the 1.5 Climate Strategies Group about two years ago, and the reason I started that is because I recognize how much impact we can make as a group of people instead of individuals, which I have learned from my work with the Democracy Strategy Group. And I learned from that and I carried that to my climate work and I studied the 1.5 Climate Strategy Group. And the namesake of 1.5 Is to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees C from the pre-industrial level and also has a dual meaning of we are urging foundations, wealthy individuals, and donor advice funds to dedicate 1.5% of their net assets on climate change mitigation work every year until the end of this decade. That's 1.5 degrees C and also 1.5%, and we call it 1.5% for 1.5 degree. That 1.5 is really important for us.
(17:26):
That's a group of donor advisors and also foundations coming from all over the country who care about climate change and come together to figure out what we can do to help. Every two weeks we invite an organization to make a presentation about their project, which has to be catalytic and also has to be underfunded, and then we try to get these catalytic, underfunded climate solutions resourced through our donor collaborative.
Cody Simms (17:56):
And so you are focused on movement builders, you're focused on also electoral candidates, I suppose. It's a whole host of different pathways toward pushing action on climate. Is that correct?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (18:10):
Yes, we are very open-minded. We welcome different ideas, different solutions because climate change is such a big problem. We need a very comprehensive solution to address that. We are not cherry-picking different ideas. Our criteria is that the idea has to be catalytic. It's going to create much bigger impact over time and also that it's underfunded has not been paid enough attention to. One example of that is Climate Reporting Climate Communications. That actually was our first project and we want to make sure that the issue of climate change and also the corruption in state governments by the fossil fuel industry has to be caught early on and has to be exposed. We supported organizations that are doing the reporting work and to shed a light to this is very important issue and that's for us, it's one of the catalytic solutions that is actually still underfunded today. You may not be surprised to hear that, but it's completely underfunded.
Cody Simms (19:11):
Can you share anything about the different programs you have directed dollars toward in that space?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (19:16):
In the space we supported Capital and Main. Capital and Main is Investigative Reporting Unit focusing on holding governments, especially state governments accountable for climate change work. And they are in five states now. We help them expand it from two to five states through our first project. And the other one we have supported is Grist, G-R-I-S-T, you may have heard about that. It's pretty influential in terms of sharing climate solutions and whatnot with the audience, especially in the online format.
Cody Simms (19:47):
Grist is like the original climate newsletter and media publication I think, certainly one that I've been reading for a while. I know in talking to your colleague, Greg, a lot of the agenda for the last six months or so at 1.5 Climate Strategies Group is very focused on the upcoming election. Can you share a bit about what that looks like for you? And I'd like to spend a little bit of time unpacking a bit more about how donation capital and political giving impacts elections.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (20:20):
We support a range of climate projects. We call it climate project, but actually there could be electoral projects that'll have a climate consequence down the road. For example, we supported Down Ballot Climate Elections, which are very important elections that are happening under the radar. They're not federal elections, they're at a state or lower level, but they're very important elections because people who are elected to the city council, to the county commissions, or to the public service utilities that have outside impact on climate change. We have supported the Down Ballot Climate Elections as an example, and we have also supported the 2022 House Elections all across the country, making sure that it did not happen. But we were trying to help us hold the majority in the U.S. House. At the time, I think we were one of the very few groups we thought that was even possible, and we recognized that there is an underfunded solution right there for climate if we can actually hold the majority 2022. A pro-climate majority, then we are living in a very different world right now.
(21:24):
We invested millions and millions of dollars in that election cycle to hold a House majority, and we were short for a few seats, but I'm very proud that we were able to make a difference there even though we were not able to hold a majority. But I think we got us pretty close partly because of our effort. And then after 2022 going to 2023, we were actually supporting policy work. It's the odd year, is not big electoral year, so we support a lot of climate policy work and mainly focusing on IRA implementation is the Inflation Reduction Act implementation. Making sure that Inflation Reduction Act will be implemented efficiently, effectively, and equitably in the country. We supported a lot of capacity building work in different states, including many red and rural states. And going into this year 2024, our focus will be back in elections again because it's the biggest mover of climate policy. If we can win election, then we can hopefully get a pro-climate trifecta again and then pass bigger and better bills next year in January for climate. This year we are going to be very engaged in electoral work.
Yin Lu (22:33):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally each week. We're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more.
(23:19):
Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to MCJcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (23:34):
I'm assuming when it comes to IRA implementation, that part of your strategy aligns very closely with the down ballot elections because it is often state and local governments that are responsible for implementing elements of the Inflation Reduction Act benefits. Am I correct in making that assumption?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (23:55):
That's very much up to the state and sometimes to even community groups, even a lower level to draw down the federal funds and then put them to good use in projects that have climate change mitigation impact.
Cody Simms (24:08):
Are there any examples of a state or local election that you can share where the choice between candidates was incredibly stark in terms of one's ability to implement positive climate policy and one who was clearly going to obstruct it?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (24:25):
Yes, I think sometimes in some states we have a [inaudible 00:24:31] government at the state level, perhaps it's all republican, some anti-climate people. And then at the city level, we have a lot of pro-climatic folks. One example is in Ohio we were not able to get much happening at the state level just because the state was controlled by an anti-climate majority. But we were able to make some progress in cities like Columbus and all these cities where there is a progressive government. And so we focused on working with those city governments instead. The IRA is designed so that the cities and also communities, they don't have to get the state agency, state approval to draw down the federal funds. In those cases, they could just directly draw down the federal funds if they're well organized. I don't know if that answer your question, but yeah, it definitely make a difference who is in charge at what level.
Cody Simms (25:21):
How are you getting the knowledge and the insight of 50 states and all these local elections and whatnot to figure out which ones have significant leverage and are winnable such that they are ones that you and the group should be focused on?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (25:42):
We have partners. We have very good partners. For example, we partner with Climate Cabinet. Climate Cabinet is a great organization and they identified local races that we have significant climate impact down the road and then also identify races that we can win and we should win, and then we work with them to send resources to what they have identified. As a rule of thumb, we always try to work with partners because we are only few of us. We are trying to fix this very big problem in a very big country, and we have to work with groups that are on the ground, groups that have the expertise in this work. For example, Climate Cabinet is one of our partners.
Cody Simms (26:22):
Caroline Spears from Climate Cabinet has been on the pod before. It was a long time ago, it was a few years ago. But for those who want to learn more about the work they do in identifying Down Ballot Climate races, go back to the pod archives and look up the episode that Jason recorded with Caroline of Climate Cabinet. It's a good one. Okay, share then maybe a bit more about your strategy and how you operate.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (26:46):
How we operate is that we have executive director who is Greg Rock, and then we also have some consultants that we contract with and we also have a member engagement director, technological director and whatnot. But mainly I want to share with you that we have a steering committee. It's a group of individuals who are not paid and very dedicated and very knowledgeable, and we try to leverage their expertise and their passion and their knowledge to help us source projects. And the decisions that we make as to which projects are going to go ahead and get an opportunity to present in our group is decided by that steering committee. Right now we have about a dozen, 10 to 12 members of the steering committee coming from all over the country and different backgrounds. That's super helpful. That's part of the structural question I want to address.
(27:41):
And then in terms of strategy, this year we have decided that we are actually going to go all in for protecting the U.S. Senate majority because if you talk to people around the country, different groups, large groups, small groups, a lot of people are not very hopeful that we can hold a trifecta but a lot people are hopeful that we can win back the trifecta.
Cody Simms (28:02):
Trifecta meaning President, House, and Senate, yeah?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (28:05):
Exactly. Right at the federal level. But we think we have a path. I think we can get a White House and we can take back the U.S. House and then we can also protect the U.S. Senate majority. But in order to hold a Senate majority, we have to make sure that we win all the competitive Senate races that we know about like Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona as well. [inaudible 00:28:29] Senate races in those states in order to hold a majority, but then I think we also have some backup states that we may be able to pick up a seat or two. For example, Texas, Florida, and maybe even Nebraska. I know some of them could be long shots, but I think it's not totally impossible.
Cody Simms (28:48):
And is the goal to hold the Senate majority in order to avoid potential painful repeals of elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, or is the goal to be able to advance further climate policy and to ensure that the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure laws benefits are fully realized?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (29:10):
In order to stop the repeal we can take back the House majority, which is probably the easiest one in the trifecta. Or we can hold the White House and then ensure that Inflation Reduction and other good federal funds won't be repealed. But in order to make more progress on climate, have better policies. For example, if you want to fix the grid, want to do a transmission reform, then we have to make sure that we can hold a Senate majority, have trifecta, so we can pass better bills.
Cody Simms (29:39):
Okay. You said fix the grid or have transmission reform. What else is on your wishlist?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (29:43):
I think transmission is probably on the top of my wishlist because I think we need to fix the whole infrastructure, just that we need to do that as if we're building a federal highway system. I think that is the big problem because otherwise what 80, 90% of the new renewables will not be able to get plugged into the grid so we have to make sure that we fix that problem. And other than that reform, also the permit reform, transmission and permit reform. Other than that, I think we just have to double down on the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and hopefully can get that federal funds out to people as quickly as possible.
Cody Simms (30:20):
Can you share with us a bit about how money works in elections? There are multiple conduits for giving. As far as I understand it, you can make a direct campaign contribution to a candidate. That's what probably most people are used to doing if they're giving money in an election. You can do that through an aggregator group like GiveGreen or ActBlue or WinRed if you're so inclined. And that can go through an aggregation channel that gives to multiple candidates at once. But if you don't want to give to candidates, you can give to PACs or Super PACs. You can give to 501(c)(3)s that create ground game and build infrastructure. You can give to 501(c)(4)s that I think can directly work with candidates and coordinate with them. And then there's a bunch of other pathways as well. I don't understand this clearly as well as I'm sure you do. Can you break this down a little bit for us?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (31:15):
Sure. Yeah. There are many different ways to fund elections. If you want to send money to candidates, I agree with you, I highly recommend that you donate that through the GiveGreen channel. If you give the money through GiveGreen, the candidate knows that it's coming from people who are concerned about climate change and environment, and then they'll be more likely to implement those policies.
Cody Simms (31:37):
So if you were going to give to the binding campaign rather than going to JoeBiden.com or rather than going to ActBlue, you would say give to him through GiveGreen, for example, or to a Senate candidate, same thing. And then they know, hey, this money comes from the climate movement.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (31:51):
A lot of these federal candidates are on GiveGreen, and then that's the best channel to give. I give most of my candidate donations through the GiveGreen platform. In terms of funding types that's 501(c)(3), which you can give out of your donor advice funds or you can just give from your bank account as a tax-deductible contribution to different groups, and they can use the money to turn out voters and educate voters. You can do that in an early part of election. It's early part of election season, first few months of this year would be super impactful. And then as time moves along, I think you give to 501(c)(4) because those organization that use the 501(c)(4) money to fund the operations, and also they can do more political spending with that kind of funding. For example, they can differentiate the Democratic candidate versus the Republican candidate and educate voters about how different they are, and they can also use the 501(c)(4) funding to advocate for climate policies for example. That's what you can do with the (c)(4) funding.
Cody Simms (32:54):
Just to make sure I understand, so 501(c)(3) is tax-deductible, but it's a little bit more hands off in terms of how involved it can get on specific candidates or specific policies, whereas 501(c)(4), a donation is not tax-deductible, but the money can directly go to organizations that are advocating for specific candidates or for specific policies. Is that correct?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (33:16):
501(c)(3) can do some advocacy work, it's a small percentage, I think 20% or so, but 501(c)(4), all money you can spend on advocacy is not a problem. And then with the (c)(4), they cannot talk to a voter about Democrats, Republicans kind thing. You cannot tell them, say, "Hey, why Democrats are better, why Democratic policies are better for climate." Cannot do such things but with (c)(4), you can do that.
Cody Simms (33:40):
And then what's a PAC or a super PAC? What does that mean?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (33:43):
The PAC funding you can go all in and use that money to make the biggest impact in the electoral outcome. You can talk about the candidates, talk about what this candidate supports and why they're better. That's why the PAC money is most impactful, have direct impact for the electoral outcome. We can do a little bit of that with (c)(3), but not much.
Cody Simms (34:01):
It seems like PAC money is often who I see funding TV advertisements, for example, are often created by and funded by PACs.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (34:10):
Yeah, it's a large expenditure that you can have a Super PAC or whatnot, and then you can go through the TV and then talk about this candidate or again, the other candidate.
Cody Simms (34:18):
Are they allowed to coordinate with candidates directly?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (34:23):
The Super PAC cannot coordinate with candidates.
Cody Simms (34:23):
But the candidate, obviously you hear them at the end of the message saying, "I endorse this message." The candidate is able to see the message and decide to endorse it before it airs.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (34:31):
I don't think the candidate can endorse that.
Cody Simms (34:33):
They don't. Maybe those aren't PAC ads.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (34:35):
That would be the candidate ads.
Cody Simms (34:37):
And the candidate ads would be funded by the direct campaign contribution.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (34:41):
That's right. Your campaign contribution, especially when you made a campaign contribution late in the cycle, and they usually go to ads. That's why it's good to fund the candidates early because if you fund them early, then they could use that to scale up the operation, hire the right people to help them win the campaign.
Cody Simms (34:59):
Most of us who aren't super deep in this like you are probably experience elections primarily through advertisements, and yet I think a lot of the expense of an election is about building out a ground game. It's about establishing your beachheads in specific locales or specific states. Can you explain more about the importance of those dollars and how effective they might be?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (35:23):
Yeah, I think the beachhead is a phrase, I haven't heard that, but yeah, you can set up campaign office in different districts and they can use that a campaign office to organize volunteers or have some staff member there and to mobilize the people in the district to vote for you.
Cody Simms (35:38):
Now we're getting through primary season, so presumably whether it's House, Senate, or Presidential at the federal level, the candidates are getting close to being set, is now the time that they need those dollars is now the time that campaign contributions are most impactful for driving those ground game build-outs.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (35:59):
Now it's a good time to give campaign contributions to candidates, yes. But in addition to giving campaign contributions to candidates, which is often limited as a cap, I think it's also good to give funds to organizations that are doing ground work to reach out, register, and turn out voters.
Cody Simms (36:16):
There was so much attention on this in Georgia in 2020 with the work Stacey Abrams did, for example, she was no longer running for office, but she created this huge ground game across Georgia through her nonprofit organization. And so how do people find those? Those don't seem easy to know where to look. It's easy to know, hey, who's running for Senate in this state? I'm going to go give money to this candidate. It's much harder to know what's the ground organization that's driving impact in terms of voter registration for example.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (36:48):
That's a really good question. Georgia, Stacey Abrams played a huge role there. And also there is Georgia Alliance for Progress, basically is the state donor table that organizes getting funding from out of state and in-state and then use them to support the voter registration and turnout effort. That's a really good question. I think you're getting into the nitty-gritty details there. If you have contacts of the state donor table, we now have about more than 40 state donor tables in the United States, and Colorado has really good ones called Colorado Donor Alliance, Georgia is the Georgia Alliance for Progress. More than 40 states have donor tables like that. Usually they are my first contact. If I want to invest in the state I talk to a donor table, ask them, "Hey, which organizations are doing voter registration work, for example, and then which organizations are going registering Latino voters?" And you can ask them very specific questions and then they can help connect you with the right organization to support.
Cody Simms (37:47):
If you live in a state that has a competitive election in state or House or is a swing state presidentially, and you live in a state you found out somehow has a positive nonprofit ground game organization, what percentage of dollars would you recommend to someone give to candidates relative to ground game?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (38:10):
I think it depends on your campaign budget. As I said, the candidate contribution is capped and then you can donate to both primary and general so two times of the cap per person. Basically that's how much can give. If you want to give $100,000, then yeah, you have to give most of that to organization beyond a candidate. But for example, if you have a budget of 10,000, I think that maybe split half the candidates and then the organizations,
Cody Simms (38:37):
It's such an important point. I think my assumption is most people don't think about that. They think about who's the candidate I want to support and I'm going to give them money. And the problem is, of course, you may love that candidate, but as soon as the election is over, the momentum there for the most part is gone. Whereas if you give to a ground game organization, presumably they're going to continue to build ground game for future elections as well.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (38:56):
Yeah, exactly right. Very insightful. In addition to that, the ground game, meaning the local groups that are engaged in elections, they can also hold the candidates accountable once they're elected. That's a very important part of that too. It's not just getting elected as a hold accountable and also the same groups can spend the electoral years pushing forward group policies. Supporting the ground game, supporting the local groups is the way to build the movement over time. Candidates just they win election one time and then next time could be another person. Yeah, I think both important, but I think people often forget about the ground game.
Cody Simms (39:33):
We're coming up on time here. I've really learned a ton from this. I so appreciate you sharing what you're doing, and again, appreciate all the work that you do in this space. For folks who want to learn more about 1.5 Climate Strategies Group, where should they go?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (39:47):
They can just go to 1.5, O-N-E-P-O-I-N-T-F-I-V-E, climate.org and then they'll be able to see that there's a join the group button that if you're interested in joining us, you can just click on the button and then we'll talk to you about that.
Cody Simms (40:02):
What more do you want to make sure to have shared with all of us?
Ning Mosberger-Tang (40:06):
I also want to share that we have a Blue Wave Postcard Movement. We are right now registering voters in Pennsylvania as we speak, and we have just released 400,000 postcards for Pennsylvania to make sure that some of these underrepresented voters register to vote. Our plan this year is to do 5 million postcards reaching out to 5 million households, and all of them will be in key battleground states and districts. If you want to do something in your home or write some postcards with your friends, go to bluewavepostcards.org. I would like to share with people that a lot of the investments in candidates are actually wasted. For example, the challenge to win Kentucky Senate seat, which was basically nearly impossible, but a lot of people contributed to the candidate who end up losing by a very large margin.
(40:59):
There is a website called Oath.vote. It's O-A-T-H dot V-O-T-E. I'm actually on the advisory board, but it's an organization that are trying to evaluate all the candidates and making sure that people know who are the ones who actually need funding and who has the chance to win. It's really important that you give money to candidates who can win and also who need support. Anyway, so check out oath.vote when you have a chance and before you give to candidates.
Cody Simms (41:30):
Ning, democracy is a very messy process, we appreciate the work you do to help try to make sense of it for those of us who don't have as much focus or time or energy to put to work understanding how to pull the levers in the system, and thank you for all the work you do for helping to ensure positive climate policy is able to get enacted.
Ning Mosberger-Tang (41:55):
Well, thank you for all the work you do as well, Cody, you are helping a lot of people to find the best way to engage to make sure that we can win this climate fight.
Cody Simms (42:04):
All right, thank you.
Jason Jacobs (42:05):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (42:09):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about power and collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (42:19):
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Yin Lu (42:32):
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Cody Simms (42:41):
Thanks and see you next episode.