Introduction
As an at-large member and a newcomer to DSA, the organization’s finances have always been confusing to me. However, at the 2025 National Convention, the Budget and Finance Committee held a meeting for members that greatly demystified our organization’s finances. Clarifying the organization’s budget is vital to the proper function of a democratically-run membership-based organization — the better the members understand the budget, the better decisions they can make for their own chapters and for the organization at future conventions. Furthermore, this awareness is also of great importance for preserving DSA’s political and fiscal sovereignty as a working-class organization. Whereas other political organizations may receive large parts of their funding from big donors and political action committees (PACs), the DSA is almost entirely a member-funded and thus member-driven organization, whose financial autonomy enables it to act as an independent voice for the working class. Transparent finances then become a key part of DSA’s political leadership, both externally through its political sovereignty from capitalist money, and internally through democratic decision-making by the membership base itself.
The following article will cover some of the major points of DSA’s finances. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of the challenges facing DSA, nor of what was discussed at the meeting, the article will cover some key takeaways. Namely, the Spike-Cut Phenomenon and its resolution, the question of chapter finances, and the recent reform that clarified the Democratic Left’s fundraising abilities.
The Spike-Cut Phenomenon
“The Spike-Cut Phenomenon” is a defining characteristic of DSA’s finances. I use this term to refer to the tendency of DSA’s finances to grow during membership spikes following large political events (e.g., the 2020 Bernie Sanders primary, the 2024 Trump election) and fall a year later as new members fail to renew their membership. New members who joined during these spikes tend to opt for annual dues rather than monthly dues, frequently because of their lower costs and commitment. Hence, after every “spike” in DSA membership, there is an impending “cut” to the organization’s income a year after that spike.
Thankfully, there have been measures taken to address the instability this issue creates. First, annual memberships now default to automatic renewals rather than requiring manual renewals, so that members with annual dues will automatically renew them unless canceled explicitly by the member. This measure reduces the “cut” of members (and thus financial resources) after every “spike.” Secondly, the Budget & Finance Committee, together with the NPC, has launched a campaign to encourage monthly dues payments over annual ones, and the Solidarity Dues campaign has further encouraged additional dues commitments from members. The success of these campaigns has made it so that the majority of members in good standing are now paying through monthly dues. All these measures combined have stabilized the budget, giving DSA a larger income, a financial surplus, and a large cash reserve for 2025.
Fiscal Compliance of Chapter Finances
Chapter fiscal compliance is another major financial issue for DSA as a national organization that oversees hundreds of subordinate entities. The core of the issue is the relationship between chapters collecting member dues and national DSA redistributing these funds back to chapters via their allotted dues shares. The extent of the issue depends on whether or not a chapter has an incorporated status. If a chapter is unincorporated, it is virtually the same fiscal entity in the eyes of the federal government, and thus national DSA (as the higher body) is entitled to manage the funds collected by local chapter member dues. Conversely, an incorporated chapter is a separate fiscal entity in the eyes of the federal government and operates its own finances. National’s income is largely made up of member dues payments, and chapters receive a dues share in proportion to the number of members who pay monthly dues.
As a result, the Budget & Finance Committee has prioritized evaluating chapter incorporation status and the contributions that each unincorporated chapter has made or is willing to make as a part of its overall evaluations of the organization’s finances. The consent of contributions made by incorporated chapters is paramount to preserving unity in the organization. To contest the amount of a contribution would mean, at best, the division of the organization, and at worst, it could result in a lawsuit. Given that both of these outcomes are disastrous for DSA as a whole, ensuring the fiscal compliance of chapters through less confrontational means is a matter of extreme importance.
The Democratic Left Question
Bylaws surrounding the Democratic Left’s ability to raise its own funds separate from the budget allocated to it by DSA national used to be incredibly vague on its authority. Thankfully, CB03 was passed in the 2025 National Convention, a resolution that clarified language regarding the Democratic Left’s fundraising limitations. The Democratic Left is required to distribute free issues to all members. However, the previous iteration of the bylaws did not specify whether digital issues were sufficient to fulfill this obligation separately from the distribution of print issues. This confusion limited the publication’s ability to distribute print issues, as the budget for print issues was removed last year during the budget slashes. The proposal passed in this year’s National Convention (CB03) clarifies that guaranteeing free digital access is sufficient and has opened the doors for the Democratic Left to raise funds independently from the budget allocated to it through subscription fees for print issues — making it possible for the publication to create larger and higher-quality print issues.
Takeaways
All in all, the reforms made by the Budget & Finance Committee in collaboration with the NPC have greatly stabilized DSA’s finances and eased the complicated relationship between DSA national and the organization’s many moving parts (chapters, committees, the Democratic Left, etc). In addition to having generated larger incomes and cash reserves, the stabilization of the budget has also allowed the NPC to reduce internal tension surrounding the necessity of potential cuts to DSA’s activities, something that had previously been a great burden on the past NPCs. With its finances cleared up and an ambitious agenda set by the 2025 National Convention, DSA is more prepared now than ever to face the tasks at hand of building socialism in the United States.