ORCA (Online Reporting of Campaign Activity) is the PDC’s web-based campaign finance management system. You can use it to file C-3 and C-4 reports. 

If you have not registered your campaign, you need to submit a registration and have it verified by PDC staff to use ORCA.

How to get started

Once you have registered and received confirmation that your registration was processed, you can access web-based ORCA by logging into your campaign finance account.

FILE ONLINE

If you are not already logged into Secure Access Washington (SAW), the system will redirect you to the SAW log-in page. Once you are logged in, you will see your campaign under Committees I file for. Click on the dollar sign to open your campaign.

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Screenshot showing Committees I File For page in ORCA

Set up a new campaign in ORCA

After your registration has been verified by PDC staff, you can initiate the ORCA setup in the Campaign Finance application.  Click on the dollar sign.

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Screenshot of ORCA showing verified campaigns

Decide if you want to use the ORCA product or vendor software. Then click on your choice.

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Screenshot of ORCA showing choice of filing in ORCA product or vendor software

 

The following instructions are for the ORCA product. Follow the series of questions to set up your campaign.

You may see a Campaign start date. Choose the earliest date in which you had activity for your campaign. Click on the question marks for additional information.

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Screenshot of ORCA showing import choices for carry forward balances and contacts, contacts only or no import

 

Choose the election by clicking on the dropdown arrow.

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Screenshot of ORCA page showing election choices

After you choose your election(s) click out of the dropdown menu to proceed.

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ORCA screenshot showing setup screen for campaign

 

A new campaign may not have information to import. If you have never reported via ORCA, or you haven’t opened a prior campaign since before April 2021, the system won’t find information to import.

If you think you have information to import from a previous campaign, choose either Yes, Carry forward balances and contacts or Yes, but contacts only.

Then choose the campaign from the dropdown list. If you choose Yes, Carry forward balances and contacts the balances from the previous campaign will show up and previous contacts will be imported into your campaign.

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Screenshot of ORCA showing setup screen and indicating where carry forward balances will appear, if they have been imported

 

If you are only importing Contacts, select Yes, but contacts only. Then choose the campaign from the dropdown list.

When you are ready, click on Setup Campaign. Your campaign will open in ORCA's web-based system. You can start entering contributions and expenditures.

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Screenshot of ORCA campaign start page

 

NOTE: If you are currently using an older version (lower than version 1.4) of the PDC’s ORCA desktop software, contact the PDC at pdc@pdc.wa.gov for assistance

 

ORCA Help and Training

Additional online electronic filing options are available for lobbyists, independent expenditures and others.