Alphabet Soup for 2017

Under construction as of 3 June 2017. Expect this to be accurate by 5 June 2017.

Stanley Grossman (past International Treasurer and DNC member) wrote a piece called "Alphabet Soup" for the first DA Handbook. It was a helpful guide to the many acronyms that are too-easily tossed around our discussions. The latest version of Stanley's work is from 2013 and available here.

This informal guide draws from Stanley's work and intentions, although it is much less discursive. We hope that these short descriptions will help orient new leaders and we welcome your comments and further questions.

The Democratic Party

DPCA = Democratic Party Committee Abroad

This is the official name of the governing committee of Democrats Abroad (DA). The DPCA is the group responsible for the mission of DA and it is distinct from all the Country Committees and the full membership of Democrats Abroad. The members of this committee are listed in the Charter Section 2.2. As Stanley wrote:

The DPCA is registered with the FEC. If you go to www.fec.org you can see how much money we raised and spent each month going back to sometime in 2001. As a registered party, we are bound by contribution limits. In particular, no American can give us more than $32,400 in each of 2013 and 2014 (the max will be adjusted by inflation in 2015 and 2016).
In addition, we can engage in political activity like taking out pro-Democratic ads and giving money to any federal candidate or political party.
I could stop at that but there is another source of confusion. In our Charter, we refer to “DPCA members.” Anyone new to the organisation would find this term confusing. We are all members of DA from the time we sign up, aren’t we? Since DA is, in some sense, a synonym for the DPCA, how can someone simultaneously be a member of DA but not of the DPCA? The simple answer is that when the Charter refers to DPCA members, it really means voting members of DA.