MoveOn

MoveOn is an online political advocacy organization. It describes its founding period as 1998 to 2000, in which it “launched a historic online petition and established MoveOn Political Action” and, by its own account, “redefined the landscape of political fundraising” while helping elect four new senators and five new House members in the 2000 election.

Structure

MoveOn operates as separate legal entities that share a website:

• MoveOn.org Civic Action — a 501(c)(4) focused on “nonpartisan education and advocacy on important national issues,” and the home of MoveOn Petitions, its member-run petition tool (EIN 06-1553389, IRS ruling November 2001; FY2023 revenue $6.0 million).
• MoveOn.org Political Action — a federal political committee that works to elect candidates.
• MoveOn Education Fund — an independent 501(c)(3) (EIN 83-1327936, IRS ruling February 2019).

Documented campaigns

By its own account: after the September 2001 attacks, MoveOn Civic Action ran anti-war campaigns and joined the Win Without War coalition. In 2003 MoveOn Political Action held its first virtual primary, in which more than 300,000 members voted and which produced an endorsement of Howard Dean — the basis of MoveOn’s later endorsement process. Ahead of the 2006 midterms, members made over 7 million calls to registered voters. In 2008 members endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time, Barack Obama. In 2025, MoveOn Civic Action joined the No Kings coalition.

Relevance to digital political discourse

MoveOn’s central mechanisms — the mass email list, the member-authored online petition and the member vote on endorsements — were built for the web from the start rather than adapted to it. The 2003 virtual primary is an early instance of an organization delegating a political decision to an online membership vote.