Campaign financing - the least you need to know
School Board elections are not controlled by the same rules that are used for council/mayor/MLA or MP races. Donations are not limited, but nor are they tax deductible as a political donation (as far as I understand it).
The rules (or lack of same) are in the Candidate Information book (page marked 44; 56/104 in the pdf version).
Here is the CBE website page where disclosure statements are posted when they are received after the election. You can see the last by-election and the 2013 disclosures there.
Below, is what I wrote on my Donate/Volunteer/Lawn Signs page regarding donations (and I've expressed the same to anyone who has donated or is contemplating donating).
Please read the following before donating, so that you know what my commitments have been and how disclosure works.
- There are no tax receipts available for donations to School Trustee election campaigns. You will just be helping out, from the goodness of your heart!
- Donations of $100 or less do not call for disclosure.
- For donations of over $100 you are asked to provide the information needed for a disclosure form that Sara must submit after the election. The disclosure form becomes publicly available, within the Board of Trustees section, on the CBE website.
- Sara has committed to not take corporate or union donations so please make personal donations only.
Thank you so much for any contribution you are able to make!
So, I'm not going to provide individuals' names yet, since I told my donors that it would happen after the election. But I will attest to the fact that every donation is from an individual friend (or couple) that I know personally. One friend wanted to give money from a business account. When I explained that I wouldn't take that, and why, we laughed since it wasn't the kind of company that could possibly have any nefarious reason to contribute to an education system, within whose boundaries she doesn't even live. Nevertheless, I explained I had to stick to the rules I'd set for myself and she said she'd make it from her personal account instead.
So far I've raised $4,014 .
$1,114 is from a whole bunch of friends in amounts of $100 or less, each.
$2,900 is from friends who each gave over $100. The largest donation so far is from friends/neighbour couple who are very eager for me to do well. They gave $1,000. Two were for $500 and the rest have been for $200 or $250.
I will self-fund whatever I spend that is not raised from donations.
So, I hope voters will decide what this means for them, looking at me as an individual candidate, and in comparison with what they are, or are not, learning about other candidates. More on that in the next blog post on this topic!
Where does the money come from? In my case - friends and family.