Nothing about OCPF will ever surprise you.

How it works

What actually happens to a dollar

Say you raise $1,000 on ActBlue. That isn't one contribution; it's maybe 25 people giving $40, and each one has to be reported by name. ActBlue keeps its fee and sends your committee about $960. You deposit it, and your bank reports that deposit to OCPF automatically. The state now knows the money landed before you've filed anything. What you owe next is a deposit report itemizing all 25 donors at full value with the fee accounted for, so the math ties out to the dollar. If you are running for the House or the Senate, those are due 20 April, 20 July, 20 October and 20 January in a quiet year, and in an election year on 20 April, 20 July, then eight days before the primary and eight days before the general. Every other depository committee files by the 5th of each month instead. OCPF asks everyone to file within three days of making a deposit regardless, which is the number worth living by.

We already have the donor list from ActBlue, so when the check hits the bank we match it, build the report in OCPF's own format, and have it ready for your treasurer days early. Your part was depositing the check.

Why it costs so little

Fieldhouse is one place for compliance, fundraising and field. The same system that builds your call lists and your walk turf already holds every contribution, so the compliance work is nearly free for us to run, and we price it that way. It is a feature of your campaign tools, not a separate vendor with a separate bill.

That matters here more than it sounds. Of the 311 legislative committees filing in Massachusetts this cycle, 43 pay for a campaign database and 48 pay a firm to keep their books, and only 10 do both. Everyone else, 223 committees, buys neither and runs the whole thing on a spreadsheet. The two halves have always been sold separately and priced for campaigns much larger than yours.

It's also built for the offseason. If you win, the filing obligation runs through your whole term, and most months nothing happens. The small fee is what it costs to know that for certain: every quiet month, the deadlines were watched, the bank's reports matched, and nothing needed you.

Who's behind this

I'm Dan Totten. I've spent ten years doing campaign-finance filings for Massachusetts campaigns: deposit reports, year-ends, the 72-hour clock, all of it. I'm now a law student. I built this because every committee I've ever helped had the same experience: a volunteer treasurer, a pile of checks, and a deadline nobody was sure about. The software never misses a date. I make sure nothing ever surprises you.

Pick your comfort level

The cheapest comparable software starts around $155 a month, and the compliance firms working in Massachusetts charge a flat $500 a month for a standard legislative committee. These prices are not a promotion. They are what the work costs when the software has already done most of it.

Why these numbers, exactly

Campaign finance law treats a discount as a contribution. A company that sells a candidate something below what it costs to deliver has given them money, whatever the invoice says. So every price here has to clear its own cost, and the same price is available to anyone who asks. Here is the arithmetic rather than a promise about it.

The reason those minutes are small is the whole product. Your ActBlue export is read and rule-checked without anyone touching it, the bank's own filings are reconciled against your records automatically, and the upload file for the state is generated rather than typed. What is left for a person is looking at what the software flagged and deciding it.

Every minute is logged against your committee. If the work on your account runs past what the price covers, we move you up a tier and tell you why. We do not absorb it, because absorbing it would be a contribution to your campaign and neither of us wants that on a report.