MoveOn (formerly known as MoveOn.org) is a progressive public policy advocacy group and political action committee. Formed in 1998 around one of the first massively viral email petitions, MoveOn has since grown into one of the largest and most impactful grassroots progressive campaigning communities in the United States, with a membership of millions. MoveOn did not endorse a candidate during the 2020 presidential primary campaign; it then endorsed and actively supported Joe Biden in the general election. MoveOn endorsed Kamala Harris, then vice president of the United States, as the Democratic Party nominee for president in the 2024 presidential election. Katie Bethell has been Executive Director of MoveOn Civic Action and MoveOn Political Action since July 2025, replacing Rahna Epting.
Structure
MoveOn comprises two legal entities, organized under different sections of U.S. tax and election laws. MoveOn.org Civic Action is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, and was formerly called MoveOn.org. It focuses on education and advocacy on national issues. MoveOn.org Political Action is a federal political action committee, and was formerly known as MoveOn PAC. It conducts a wide range of activities directly, and also contributes to the campaigns of many candidates across the country. MoveOn describes the legal structure of the Civic Action as that of "a California nonprofit public-benefit corporation" and the structure of MoveOn.org Political Action as that of "a California nonprofit mutual benefit corporation," and refers to both corporations collectively as "MoveOn".
On January 17, 2019, MoveOn announced that executive directors Anna Galland and Ilya Sheyman were departing in 2019 after 6 years of serving as co-executive directors from 2013 to 2019.Stewart, Brian. (January 17, 2019). "MoveOn’s Executive Directors Announce They Will Depart in 2019 with MoveOn Positioned for Continued Impact", Moveon.org, January 17, 2019. On May 29, 2019, MoveOn further announced that its next executive director would be Rahna Epting.Berning, Nick. (May 29, 2019). "Rahna Epting Will Be MoveOn’s Next Leader", Moveon.org, May 29, 2019. Her appointment took effect during the week of October 14, 2019.Epting, Rahna. (October 17, 2019). "A note from MoveOn’s new executive director, Rahna Epting", Moveon.org, October 17, 2019. The president of MoveOn Civic Action's board is former executive director Anna Galland. Past board members include co-founders Joan Blades, Wes Boyd, former executive director Eli Pariser, former executive director Justin Ruben, and former Chief Operating Officer Carrie Olson.
History MoveOn started in 1998 as an e-mail group, MoveOn.org, created by software entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the married cofounders of Berkeley Systems. They started by passing around a petition asking Congress to "Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation", as opposed to impeaching him. The one-sentence petition, passed around by email, gathered half a million signatures, making it one of the first "viral" email-based petitions. It did not manage to dissuade the House of Representatives from impeaching the President. The couple went on to start similar campaigns calling for arms inspections rather than an invasion of Iraq, and campaign finance reform.
Opposing Clinton's impeachment The MoveOn.org domain name was registered on September 18, 1998, following the September 11, 1998, release of the Independent Counsel Starr Report. The MoveOn website was launched initially to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach Clinton. Initially called "Censure and Move On", it invited visitors to add their names to an online petition stating that "Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country."
The founders were computer entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the married cofounders of Berkeley Systems, an entertainment software company known for the flying toaster screen saver and the popular video game series You Don't Know Jack. After selling the company in 1997, Blades and Boyd became concerned about the level of "partisan warfare in Washington" following revelations of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.
At the time of MoveOn's public launch on September 24, it appeared likely that its petition would be dwarfed by the effort to oust Clinton. A reporter who interviewed Blades on the day after the launch wrote, "A quick search on Yahoo turns up no sites for 'censure Clinton' but 20 sites for 'impeach Clinton, adding that Scott Lauf's impeachclinton.org website had already delivered 60,000 petitions to Congress. Salon.com reported that Arianna Huffington, then a right-wing commentator, had collected 13,303 names on her website, resignation.com, which called on Clinton to resign.
Within a week, support for MoveOn had grown. Blades called herself an "accidental activist" and said: "We put together a one-sentence petition. ... We sent it to under a hundred of our friends and family, and within a week we had a hundred thousand people sign the petition. At that point, we thought it was going to be a flash campaign, that we would help everyone connect with leadership in all the ways we could figure out, and then get back to our regular lives. A half a million people ultimately signed and we somehow never got back to our regular lives." MoveOn also recruited 2,000 volunteers to deliver the petitions in person to members of the House of Representatives in 219 districts across America, and directed 30,000 phone calls to district offices.
According to Blades, "Then two weeks after the November 1998 election, Congress went ahead and voted to impeach. When you become active in the system and communicate to your representatives, and they don't vote in accordance with your values, your next responsibility is to support candidates who will. All of a sudden we were signed up until 2000." In response to the impeachment vote, MoveOn launched a "We will remember" campaign, asking its members to sign a pledge that "we will work to defeat Members of Congress who voted for impeachment or removal. To give substance to this pledge, we are also pledging, today, our maximum possible dollar contribution to opposing candidates in the year 2000."
In early 1999, MoveOn continued to pursue a bipartisan appeal, recruiting GOP moderate Larry Rockefeller, a New York environmental attorney and heir to the Rockefeller fortune, as the public face of a "Republican Move On" aimed at mobilizing anti-impeachment Republicans. As the 2000 elections neared, however, the organization gravitated toward the Democratic Party. 1999 also marked MoveOn's first foray into issues other than Clinton's impeachment. Following the shootings at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, Blades and Boyd launched a "Gun Safety First" petition to promote the "common sense regulation of firearms", such as child safety standards for gun manufacturers and laws forcing gun-show operators to enact more-stringent background checks on buyers.
Creation of MoveOn PAC In June 1999, MoveOn established its own political action committee, the MoveOn PAC, with the ability to accept contributions online via credit card. It was not the first organization to fundraise online for political candidates, but its success was unprecedented, raising $250,000 in its first five days of operation and $2 million over the course of the 2000 election to help elect four new Senators and five new House members. "That may not seem like a lot of money to most people, but it was a revolution in fundraising for campaigns from average citizens," Blades said. According to Michael Cornfield, director of the Democracy On Line Project at George Washington University, MoveOn's achievement created "a change in attitude" in the political fundraising community. "It is like a bell has gone off," he said. "The race is on. 'Let's raise money online.'" He compared MoveOn's achievement with the pioneering of direct-mail fundraising in the 1970s by conservative fundraisers such as Richard Viguerie.
The most significant innovation was MoveOn's success at raising funds from small donors, with an average contribution size of $35. Prior to the Internet, small-donor fundraising was prohibitively expensive, as costs of printing and postage ate up most of the money raised. By comparison, MoveOn's fundraising costs were minimal, with credit card transaction fees constituting their biggest expense. "If candidates can use the Internet to raise significant funds through small donations and attract and organize volunteers at relatively little cost and labor, it could radically alter the balance of power in politics," observed political reporter Joan Loawy. "Suddenly candidates with fewer resources are more viable and the clout of moneyed special interests is diminished."
The $2 million that MoveOn raised, however, was substantially less than the $13 million that its members had pledged they would give to defeat Republicans when passions were running high over the Clinton impeachment. According to Mike Fraioli, a Washington-based fundraiser for Democratic candidates, MoveOn missed an opportunity by waiting until the impeachment hearings were over before it began trying to collect campaign contributions. "Never let your pledges hang out there," Fraoli said. "Things change, the world changes. All the emotion that existed a year ago no longer exists today."
The 2000 elections also saw MoveOn's first effort at web-based voter registration with the launch of votepledge.org. It also weighted in regarding the 2000 presidential election, warning its members that voting for Ralph Nader could throw the election to George W. Bush. "Many (Nader supporters) say they never got into the race to play the spoiler," said an email message from Wes Boyd. "What was positioned as a safe protest vote has now become a kind of kamikaze vote."
Development of ActionForum.com In January 2000, MoveOn rolled out ActionForum.com, an Internet discussion forum designed to solicit public involvement in policymaking. "Unlike most chat rooms, in which the loudest voices often rule, the site allows members to rank the comments they respect," explained the Contra Costa Times. "Those with the highest rankings move to the top. ... ActionForum aims to be an Internet chat room with accountability. In a typical chat room, users sign on anonymously. On ActionForum, users are required to address their letters with their real names, as well as their profession and city of residence." As a test subject for the new chat form, Blades and Boyd chose one of the most controversial issues for 2000 in their hometown of Berkeley, California: a draft revision of the Berkeley General Plan, a document that aims to set the city's goals for everything from zoning laws to transportation, housing and community safety. The forum was initially greeted with enthusiasm by city government officials as an online means of soliciting community feedback. Blades and Boyd also supported the Berkeley Party, which attempted to build a political platform for the city centered around the ActionForum, with "no back room deals, no insiders," making it "unlike another political party in the world." The ActionForum.com never really caught on with Berkeley residents, and efforts to use it for municipal purposes were abandoned in 2001. In the meantime, however, it became an important vehicle through which MoveOn received advice and suggestions from its own members.