Year-round giving through Blueprint
Mary-Lynn Cesar
Swing Left Senior Director of Product Management
In her role as Senior Director of Product Management, Mary-Lynn Cesar leads the team working on Blueprint, Swing Left’s platform for impactful year-round political giving. She joined Swing Left in 2019 when the Flippable and Swing Left teams merged.
What is Blueprint?
Blueprint enables donors to support both Democratic candidates and civic organizations. Last year, Blueprint was named the most innovative financial product of 2020 by Fast Company. This year, Blueprint is helping donors invest in Virginia-based grassroots organizations that are doing the critical, on-the-ground work of engaging voters, especially in marginalized communities, in what will be an important election year.
What are the civic organizations Blueprint supports?
This quarter, Blueprint is supporting three Virginia-based grassroots organizations:
Casa in Action is the foremost Latino and immigrant organization in the mid-Atlantic region and a national leader in supporting immigrant families and ensuring that all individuals have the core support necessary for full participation in society.
Casa in Action
New Virginia Majority organizes within Latinx, African American, Asian American Pacific Islander and youth communities, to vote, mobilize, and engage to end mass incarceration, build just economic policies, protect immigrants and preserve the environment.
New Virginia Majority
Progress Now promotes progressive ideas and causes with creative earned media strategies, targeted email campaigns, and cutting-edge new media to improve the communications effort of the entire progressive community in key states.
Progress Now
Why invest through Blueprint?
The thing I find most exciting about Blueprint is that it builds on Swing Left’s strategic targeting to support civic organizations on the ground. Blueprint’s portfolio is updated quarterly, and the civic organizations that we include are chosen based on the current races and districts that Swing Left as a whole is focused on at the time. It’s a very cool way to donate year-round, but to make sure that your donation is going to the organizations that will have the greatest impact on grassroots organizing and voter turnout in key elections.
How can folks learn more about Blueprint?
You can read more about Blueprint, our giving strategy, and our portfolio at blueprint.swingleft.org. You can also sign up for an account, or sign in through your Swing Left account, to get email updates from Blueprint about our portfolio.
When you’re not working on Blueprint, how are you powering up for the elections ahead?
I spent a lot of the Trump years wondering how the Republican party got to where it is, so one thing I’m reading to try to better understand the political moment we’re in is the book Reaganland by Rick Perlstein. He is a master historian—he has chronicled the Republican party from Lyndon B. Johnson to Nixon to Reagan. The book is about how both parties, the Democratic party and the Republican party, moved to the right in the late 1970s. It’s really interesting so far, but it ’s really long. It’s almost 1,000 pages. So I’ll report back next year.
