Talk:Organizing for Action

Merge with Organizing for America
They are the same thing — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.90.111 (talk) 01:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Wrong. Organizing for Action supersedes Organizing for America. They are not the same entity. -- Scjessey (talk) 03:15, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * They might as well be the same thing. The article could read like this: "Upon Obama's reelection, OFA was renamed Organizing for Action and became a 501c4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.90.111 (talk) 14:57, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But they are not the same thing. They have two completely different purposes. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But they are the same thing. They have the same purpose--to promote Obama's propaganda and are both shell organizations for his activity and politics. Besides, merging the articles could even have a section describing the differences between Action and America.98.221.90.111 (talk) 01:40, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * As soon as you said "to promote Obama's propaganda", the value of your opinion dropped to zero. There will be no merger. One organization was to get Obama re-elected, whereas the other is to motivate the public to support policy. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The value of your own opinions just did the same thing. Your bias is showing, and is coming through in your asinine opinion that the articles should not be merged.  The two entities are the same thing, just under a slightly different name. Learn to administer fairly or get off this site.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.137.119.45 (talk) 08:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Disclosure
I'm not sure that the actual text of this reverted edit is covered at all in the body, let alone "adequately." The body used to say that the group has not disclosed its donors and their amounts, and now it says they will ("after March", "every quarter", etc.)

Apparently they have since reversed their position: Free Beacon, March 21; PublicIntegrity.org, March 21. And a recent leaked memo is not very encouraging, either:


 * "In addition to the previously reported 'board of trustees' whose members are expected to raise at least $500,000, it turns out there is an even higher tier of donors who are granted entree to the board of directors if they raise $1 million for two consecutive years.... The 30-member board will include a 10-person council made up of 'leaders in industry' committed to supporting the group’s agenda." —NYT, March 26

I suggest that some of the edits over the past week are neither neutral nor well-researched. EllenCT (talk) 23:51, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've clarified that 501c's aren't required to disclose their donors in the body of the article, but OFA has decided to do so anyway. The OFA has not "reversed their position", nor do the sources you cite imply they did. In fact, to the contrary, your sources say, "Most 501(c)(4) nonprofits involved in electioneering or issue advocacy — liberal or conservative — don't release donor information in this manner, nor do they self-impose limitations on the kinds of donations they receive," as OFA has voluntarily chosen to do. Xenophrenic (talk) 16:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Controversy
There is controversy regarding this non-profit, especially considering the continuing direct links with President Obama and their actual aims (are they a political organization supporting the President or are they an educational non-profit).ABLegler (talk) 15:08, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * This is no "controversy". First of all, controversy sections are examples of extremely poor writing. They are basically "shit magnets". Secondly, a 501(c)4 is prohibited from supporting political candidates, but Barack Obama is not a candidate for anything. This is non-neutral garbage. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:46, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

The "donations for access" section is too long and detailed, and worded in a non-encyclopedic journalistic reporting style. Any sentence with "but" in it needs a review. The twitter thing shouldn't be a complete independent section, and shouldn't be written to cast vague aspersions about nonprofit status — it needs to be more to the point and part of some section regarding ongoing relations with the President. Perhaps these two can be combined. There is indeed a controversy here, but what's important isn't the fact that a controversy exists but that certain events have drawn attention and we can say and link to what they are and what that attention is, briefly. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:54, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Organizing for America
Sources treat them as the same organization with a legal restructuring. Daask (talk) 20:25, 22 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Yep, that looks to be the case. I support the merge. Marquardtika (talk) 21:45, 22 February 2019 (UTC)


 * no one has objected to this merger proposal so it doesn't seem controversial. I think it's safe to go ahead and do the merge. Marquardtika (talk) 19:33, 11 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Organizing for America's website ofa.us now redirects to allontheline.org, a campaign to end gerrymandering, I'm not sure what that does to your plans for merging? --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 13:41, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose merge, on the grounds that a formal switch from Democratic party allegiance to nonprofit 501(c)4 (non-partisan) is a major restructure and so the histories are best kept separate. The history of the organization is clearly describe on both pages, and they are well linked, so I don't think that anyone will have a misconception over the current party's focus. Klbrain (talk) 07:41, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Closing, given the uncontested objections and stale discussion. Klbrain (talk) 10:34, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussing merge again
I'd like to discuss the merge again. The page for Organizing for America starts with "Organizing for America, then Organizing for Action, (OFA)". It's really confusing that both that page and this page refer to their main topics as "Organizing for Action". Are these actually two separate entities? Is there a way we can either 1) merge these into a single article, or 2) if they really merit their own articles, can we make clear in each article the difference between both organizations? Llightex (talk) 13:32, 17 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Just to add, it appears from reading both articles that Organizing for America became Organizing for Action later. However, the Wikipedia page for Organizing for America says that it *is* an organization that still exists, while Organizing for Action is *no longer* an organization because it merged with the NDRC. That seems to contradict the earlier statement. Llightex (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've removed the statement of equivalence from the first sentence, but just to avoid the current lack of clarity; happy for this to change if a merge is agreed upon. On a technical point, Llightex, it's best to indicate a direction of the merge using merge to and merge from, and to include a link to the discussion. I've just added a discussion link to the page where it was most needed, as the discussion link was sending readers to the wrong page. As I said in the earlier discussion, I think that they're sufficiently distinct to keep the pages separate, and suggest that the rest of the articles could be quite simply reworded for consistency with this principle. Nevertheless, I don't feel strongly on this point, so a merge would not be unreasonable. On balance, weak oppose. Klbrain (talk) 17:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)