Sensible Washington (the group responsible for submitting the initiative to the Secretary of State, and for coordinating all of last year's volunteer efforts) has a website set up to accept donations from private individuals(check them out: Donate to Sensible Washington).

Unfortunately (in this case), in order to donate to a political organization you must disclose your name, occupation, employer--basically a bunch of information that people are fearful about providing. So far, donations have been not even enough to cover administrative costs associated with campaigning.

I legitimately don't know the answer to this: is there a difference between a public fund and the donation button on their website?

As far as paying per signature goes...SensibleWA tried REALLY hard to find funding for this. This article (Sensible Washingtonâ??s Response To The ACLU of Washingtonâ??s Refusal Of Support For I-1068) goes into the ACLU's refusal to endorse the initiative--because of this refusal, organizations with financial clout chose to avoid association with us.

All the other initiatives for Washington state had paid gatherers, except this one. Their gatherers were paid by HUGE interest groups/corporations (such as Costco, Pepsi, etc.), and unsurprisingly, all of those other initiatives made it onto this year's ballot. But I completely agree with you: providing incentive ($$) is necessary in this process.

Without funding: awareness can't be raised, myths about cannabis can't fully be debunked, there's a massive struggle to have printing costs covered, and (many) signature gatherers don't necessarily feel strong motivation to go stand out in our crappy spring weather for hours at a time. *Sigh*

I've had some time to mull this all over...so I apologize for such a long reply to such a brief suggestion.
legalizeitgirl Reviewed by legalizeitgirl on . Legalization for all in WA, we need volunteers to make it happen! Hey all, I'm a Clark County volunteer for Sensible Washington, the non-profit organization who authored I-1068, the Washington state initiative to legalize marijuana for adults 18 and over. We need YOUR help (yes, you, Washington state residents!)! We have until June 27th to gather the rest of the 241,153 signatures needed in order for this to get on November's ballot. Our volunteer-only efforts have been awesome, but we need more man/woman-power. People WANT to sign this Rating: 5