But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic tech organizations and have participated in ground work for political campaigns. The most positive impact you could possibly make is money.
Political campaigns need thousands of volunteers. But someone who has no skills or education can volunteer. The supply pool is giant! But campaigns need millions of dollars in order to survive. It’s way harder to raise a dollar because in order to donate to campaigns the person usually needs to have discretionary income. And to move the needle financially for a campaign, you need to be fairly wealthy.
At the end of the day, maximizing your salary and donating, say 10k (2.8k direct + 7.2k via PAC) to a political candidate that you believe will make a way bigger positive impact than working for minimum wage or free for that candidate. Because your skills aren’t being used optimally. If you take a paycut from 300k to 60k, are you still comfortable making that donation?
Anyways, my personal mantra is to maximize income at impact neutral companies or positive adjacent. And then commit to donate a significant chunk of income to positive impact organizations. Don’t know if this helps or not.
I think there's a buried over-simplification here. It's rare to find politicians whose views 100% line up with your own, and too often, politicians are willing to flip their views to satisfy a donor (who, even if you donate 300k-60k=$240k, will not be you). Even if you mostly agree with the politician, you're taking a gamble that your contribution doesn't really end up with the positive impact you desire.
A better argument would be to put the $240k/year into a WayneLi2 Foundation, which directly acts only on whatever you define as good. Of course, in the beginning, the endowment is too small to do anything, but give it several years, and perhaps the donations of a few people who share your vision, and you'll have more control over the direction of the positive impact.
For those of us who don't have that kind of cash, picking an organization whose focus is limited to its mission serves as a boon to know that our efforts will create the impact we'd like to see.