This App That Shows Which Politicians And Parties Retailers Give Money To Is Going Viral. Here's How It Works

Yahoo

30-03-2025

Ever since Donald Trump was re-elected, there have been growing calls among critics to fight back against his agenda by changing our spending habits. For example, people have talked about taking on no-buy challenges for the next four years and called to boycott retailers like Target that have renounced DEI. And in these conversations, one app keeps being brought up over and over: Goods Unite Us.
Founded in 2017, Goods Unite Us is a free app that allows you to see at a glance how corporations and their executive leaders finance political parties and campaigns. Recently, I sat down for a call with Goods Unite Us CEO and founder Abigail Wuest to learn more about how the app works, the hidden side of money in politics, and her own experiences in politics as a local elected official. Here's our conversation:
BuzzFeed: For people who may not be familiar with Goods Unite Us, can you share a quick elevator pitch for what you do?
Abigail Wuest: We try to make corporate political donations or contributions more usable and available for consumers so that consumers can use that data when they're making purchases.
The point is to allow consumers to align their purchasing more closely with their vote now that we are in an era with such dramatic corporate money influencing elections. If you're buying something and your purchases are actually going to influence elections in the opposite way as your vote, you don't want to do that as a consumer or a voter.
And we do that through analyzing and aggregating Federal Election Commission political contribution data for companies and their senior executives, and then we give you a snapshot of that in our app.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images, Goods Unite Us
BF: How and why was Goods Unite Us started?
AW: We actually started goods unite us after Trump got elected the first time. It was a year when there was an election with so much of an increase in corporate money in politics. And it was after that election that my husband and I were both sitting around thinking about, okay, so how do we protect the integrity of elections in light of the fact that the United States Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision has elevated corporations to people, in the sense that they have first amendment rights, and so they can basically contribute as much money as they want into elections, as long as it's through dark money channels.
And so, in light of all this corporate money that has come into politics, we really felt like something needed to be done to help start offsetting the corrosive effects of that money in politics. And one way we felt that we could do that was to simply shed a little bit more light on the money going in from corporate sources so that the electorate can just know that and make better decisions.
BF: Can you tell me a bit more about how and where Goods Unite Us sources this campaign finance data?
AW: We get our data from the Federal Elections Commission database, which makes political contributions public. We aggregate that data, and we have a research team that basically pulls that data for any corporate PAC money. So corporations can't donate to individual campaigns directly, but they can do it through a corporate PAC.
And then we also track the senior executives in a company because we feel the senior executives, even their individual contributions, do signify a bit more of how the company itself is acting politically. Those senior executives are the ones generally who profit the most from sales in a company and a company's success based on consumer spending.
So we include corporate PAC money and then donations from senior executives, and if a company has less than $10,000 altogether that has been donated, we basically said that's de minimis. Anything below that, and we give them a green score, which basically means that the company is not dramatically affecting elections, but if it's over that amount, we give them a red or blue score. We give a percentage, and then we also tell you what level — whether they're minimal contribution level, medium, or high. Because obviously, the high and very high levels of contributions are what's really affecting the elections, like SpaceX or Tesla, for instance.
Goods Unite Us, Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
BF: One big question I often see in online conversations about Goods Unite Us is whether or not the app is up to date. How often is your data updated?
AW: We update it constantly. Our big updates happen after the FEC reporting deadlines when there's new data to report.
One reason, I think, some people wonder if our data is updated is because we don't just give a snapshot from one election cycle. We actually give it from three election cycles. So under who this company donated to, you might see individuals that weren't in the last election. You might see Hillary Clinton or someone like that, and that's because we go back six years instead of just a one or two-year election cycle.
We think that it's important to give a bigger picture so that a company doesn't donate one way up until right before the election and then just kind of switch their allegiance.
BF: As you've been doing this work, are there things you've learned about corporate money in politics that might come as a surprise to the average person?
AW: In our app, one of the cool things that we do is track the company up through a parent company. So you can see, if you go to our app and you check a certain brand, it will have the score for the overarching parent company itself, and it will indicate who that is.
A lot of companies have been bought by other companies, and you will see that now your very left-seeming companies — outdoors companies, athletic companies that cater to hikers and bikers— a lot of them will end up having a more conservative contribution history, simply because of who the parent company is. And so we get a lot of surprises — people being like, 'Oh no, so and so is not aligned with my spending,' and it's a surprise to them.
But I think also one surprise is what companies donate a lot and what don't. Randomly, you will see companies, like a shoe company, that you wouldn't think would get all that invested, and they're a big giver for some reason. And then you'll see other large grocery store chains that you would think would be more involved in lobbying, giving very little.
Smith Collection/Gado / Gado via Getty Images, Goods Unite Us
BF: Are you working on any other projects at Goods Unite Us?
AW: We actually have a tool that has just come out called Index Align, which we are unfortunately having to charge for because it costs a lot to compile. What we're doing with Index Align is tracking down the individual issues for people because we get so many people wanting to know [about spending toward] issues like DEI or abortion.
Goods Unite Us has historically only stayed in political contributions because that's the top-down approach we see as the most important: Who are you electing? Because those people are really affecting these policies.
However, so many people want the issues that we have figured out a way to do it in a that is objective, which is taking our FEC data and looking at what politicians a company is contributing to and how they have actually voted on these issues in the past, so we you can sort the company and find out how are the people that that company is putting in office are helping to put in office. Are they pro-DEI? Are they anti-DEI? Are they pro-choice? Are they anti-abortion?
I think we're up to 15 different big issues now, and so that is kind of a fascinating tool. It also shows you what percentage is reported money from FEC and what is dark money, which is also fascinating because dark money is a huge, huge percentage, and we just don't know where that's going so or who that's really coming from.
BF: Are there any other tools that you personally use or recommend to people who want to learn more about the causes that their everyday spending supports?
AW: Open Secrets. I believe they're a nonprofit, and they do a really nice job as well. It's less consumer-friendly because it's not in the form of an easily usable app, but it's a good resource. It explains questions about what is a super PAC versus a corporate PAC, versus what's dark money versus not dark money. And so it's a nice educational tool.
Goods Unite Us, Ivan Zhaborovskiy / Getty Images
BF: You mentioned dark money. What exactly is dark money in politics, and how do you ferret that out?
AW: Dark money is, unfortunately, a big part of the problem, and it is something we just can't track successfully because it is money that does not have to be reported to the FEC.
Dark money is usually through a 501(c)(4), which is a type of nonprofit that has to do a certain amount of nonprofit activities but can do a certain amount of political activities as well. Those specific nonprofits don't have to list their donors, and they don't have to say what it's spent on. That's the most common form of dark money.
There are also super PACs that can take certain donations of any amount. There are no restrictions on them. Now, after Citizens United, they're called independent expenditures, and those are super PAC money. What that really means is that it's a political action committee that is not coordinated with a campaign. So as long as they stay separate from the candidate and the campaign, they can take in as much money as they want. They're not subject to the rules, the FEC rules on maximum contributions. They can take all this money. This is what Elon Musk did with his super PAC, and then it can just spend money promoting that candidate, independent of the actual committee or candidate.
But of course, now, with a weakened FEC administration, there's a lot more coordinating going on than there should be anyway. So, basically, when you hear dark money, it's money that's not being reported or money where we don't actually know what it's being spent on or who it's coming from. And that's a big portion. What we track at Goods Unite Us is actually reported money, which is still a big part of it, but it's actual contributions to the candidates of the committees
BF: Wow, that just does not seem like it should be happening. Switching gears a bit, I'm curious how your previous work as an elected official has informed the work you're doing now?
AW: I was on the county board here for Dane County [Wisconsin], which is where Madison is, and it was a fascinating experience. I think I see why we don't have as many people running for office. It's a grueling experience, especially with so much money in politics. And I was disheartened by how much focus was put on raising money.
I did win, and I got on the board, and that was wonderful. I love the aspects of governing where you could actually make those changes that you always sit around wishing you could do. But the process of getting elected is not a fun one, and I think it weeds out lots of people who would otherwise be wonderful elected officials. If we had a better system for electing people — if we had state-funded or federally-funded elections, where you don't have to worry about the money — and you just have to worry about the ideas and the governing strategies.
SOPA Images / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, Goods Unite Us
BF: Oh my gosh, I love that idea. We can dream, right? What was that like for you, running a campaign as a woman in this weird political era?
AW: I definitely benefited from meeting with some women who were in the state legislature before I ran, and I remember saying to them, "Well, I'm just not sure if I'm qualified."
And this woman, Chris Taylor, who's a wonderful politician here in Wisconsin, was like, "Only women say that," and she was like, "Your two opponents haven't even gone to college, and you are a lawyer at the Department of Justice. You're qualified."
I've said that now to a bunch of other people that I know, a bunch of other women who are applying for certain jobs or something like that, and they've said, "Well, I don't know. I have an imposter syndrome." And I'm like, "No, no, you're good to go."
BF: Thanks so much for talking with us today. Is there anything else you want people to know about Goods Unite Us or money in politics?
AW: The goal of Goods Unite Us (and what I think many of our goals should be) is a really a nonpartisan issue. It's really about campaign finance reform and the need to reform the system in order to protect the integrity of the outcomes and make sure the outcomes reflect the population and the voting population.
Just making the political activities of corporations available really helps to serve that goal of allowing you to keep your money from going out into the world and undermining your actual vote.
One way we can help keep that corporate money from corroding our system is to make sure that that money is kept in line with how we're actually going to vote. And so, really, this is about elections and respect for our democratic process. I think this is a time when we really need to rally around and protect our democratic process because it's we're in a bit of a constitutional crisis right now and we need to figure out who we are. I do have faith in the American people, and hopefully, our structure is sound enough that we will weather this. Now that so much corporate money is affecting elections, we need to be really careful where we spend our money so that that money doesn't work against us.
Goods Unite Us is available for Apple and Android.