Meet the Moment, Spend the Surplus: Why We Must Invest in an Organizing DSA Today
December 3rd, 2025
In 2025, DSA stands at another crossroads. Right-wing authoritarianism is advancing in the United States; the Trump administration, MAGA, and a growing white Christian nationalist movement are attacking immigrants, unions, movement organizations, transgender people, and the multiracial working class as a whole with renewed intensity.
But at the same time, millions are inspired to fight back with renewed energy. Zohran’s victory in the New York City mayoral race, the Starbucks strike, and mass mobilizations against ICE and the MAGA agenda all point to the key fact we already know: socialism beats fascism when we organize at scale and in the open.
The conditions for major gains are real. There is a crack in the door to challenge AIPAC’s influence, pull thousands of workers into new unions and fresh struggle, and win better conditions and public goods for millions. DSA could play a decisive role in that opening—if we choose to build for it.
The Problem: DSA’s Chapters Are Engines Running Low on Fuel
Despite the moment, our national organization has slipped into a pattern of underinvestment. Years of austerity budgets, aggressive staff reductions, and underspending on organizing infrastructure have limited coherent support for chapters to develop and engage their membership as organizers. The national organization began this year with a significant surplus fueled by successful dues fundraising efforts and the burst of new membership growth. Both of those trends sustaining throughout this year have contributed to an even larger surplus as we approach 2026—but that surplus has not been used to support organizing.
In the absence of robust nationally-coordinated campaigns like Medicare 4 All, Pass the Pro Act, Strike Ready 2023, and No Money For Massacres, most of DSA’s current growth, political education, electoral work, and community organizing begins at the chapter level. The sustained growth of some national DSA programs, like our National Labor Commission’s strike solidarity funds and National Electoral Commission’s solidarity slate support efforts, have meaningfully enhanced the campaigns of a select number of chapters. But as national endorsements lose their value due to National Political Committee grandstanding and lack of deep, effective resources, that divide has only intensified for the larger chapters. Chapters across the board face uneven resources, minimal field support, inadequate tech and administrative systems, and importantly no scalable national strategy for growth.
Over the past year, DSA’s national membership has grown massively — and, without national lead campaigns, that growth has been largely driven by the efforts of chapters. In 2025, chapters are the center of DSA’s outward-facing mass organizing campaigns that create the conditions to actively recruit new members. Due to underinvestment and lack of strategic direction from leadership, the national organization has played a still relatively limited role in sharing resources and successful organizing strategies to foster active growth, which all chapters could adapt if these resources were more readily available.
The National DSA budget surplus now sits at about $2 million — even before fully accounting for the surge of new membership growth through the November 2025 election and the ongoing 2025 recruitment drive, through which we have seen DSA grow from 80,000 to over 90,000 members in less than two months!
The Opportunity: Use the Surplus to Build a Bigger, Stronger Organization
A budget surplus shouldn't sit hoarded away—nor should it exist simply as a rainy-day fund or as a payday for national leaders. A socialist organization should invest its resources where they matter: in growth and capacity. That’s how we expand the membership, develop cadre, and build an organization capable of meeting this political moment.
The resolution Strong Chapters, Strong DSA lays out a practical and ambitious plan to do exactly that.
What the Resolution Proposes
Increase the Financial Support to Chapters by a Small but Meaningful Percentage.
The resolution will create a grant program pegged to chapter size and member growth in the 2026 budget cycle, in addition to the existing chapter dues share. The program will create two grant funds:
A $600,000 Organizing Grant fund pegged to chapter size.
A $400,000 Growth Grant fund pegged to new membership growth over the previous year.
The grant program will ensure :
predictable revenue for chapters,
no layoffs for national staff,
no reduction in national programmatic capacity, and
alignment with long-term membership growth strategy.
Hire More Staff to Support Chapters Directly.
These hires would be staggered to ensure onboarding stability and fiscal responsibility. The resolution proposes adding:
4 Organizers, prioritizing 2 electoral campaign organizers who can support chapters in best practices for running their own electoral campaigns in the upcoming major election cycle of 2026; and staff organizers dedicated to coaching chapters, onboarding new leaders, and driving sustainable membership growth
1 Tech/Development staffer to increase capacity to build better chapter-facing org tools, improve the membership database, and support new member orientation
1 Communications staffer to expand our video, graphic, and social media capacity, to better promote exciting work from across DSA chapters to our whole membership, and project DSA leadership outward to the public
Fund the Chapter Matching Funds Program.
This would revive and increase funding for a proven system of grants allowing chapters to apply for matching funds for office rent and staff support. This program may be competitive, but should be transparent, regionally balanced, and focused on chapters showing active growth and real organizing momentum.
Create a Fund Chapter Growth Working Group.
To ensure this doesn’t just become another resolution sitting on a shelf, the NPC would appoint a mixed working group—including NPC members, and key staff —to deliver within 90 days:
A detailed program design
Rubrics for awarding both Organizing and Growth Grants
growth metrics
staff role descriptions
a full implementation timeline
Bake All of It Into the 2026 Budget.
The next budget must reflect the political commitments of this resolution: the CGP, new staff, dues-share adjustments, and a clear allocation of surplus funds toward chapter development.
Winning the Future Requires Building Now
We’re entering a period where the political terrain is both one of danger and opportunity. The Right is powerful—but the working class is moving. DSA’s size, capacity, and clear strategy will determine whether we are footnotes to this moment or one of its drivers.
Our chapters and members have already shown what’s possible: the Zohran campaign, the Strike Ready work, abortion defense work, tenant unions, strike solidarity, and the explosive membership growth coming out of solidarity efforts. But none of that continues to scale across our whole organization without reinvestment, both politically and with resourcing.
Strong chapters running bold campaigns are how we build a socialist movement worthy of this moment. Strong chapters are how we fight the right. Strong chapters are how we win. This resolution is a concrete path to get there.
