Early Sunday morning, unknown arsonists firebombed a Republican headquarters in Orange County, N.C. for undetermined reasons. By Sunday evening, Republican nominee Donald Trump had blamed the bombing on Democrats representing Hillary Clinton, and by 9 p.m. that night, more than 500 Democrats and independents had exceeded the $10,000 goal of the online campaign we had started to fund the reopening of the office within 45 minutes of setting it up. That the project took off so quickly says something hopeful in a season unused to such news.

My name was on the GoFundMe account, but the project — inspired by a tweet by Zeynep Tufekci, who suggested Democrats should lend an office to the Republicans — was the work of a few friends who put it together. However, the effort truly belongs to the 520 people who contributed.

The description on the GoFundMe page notes that the funding campaign was started by Democrats, while welcoming the help of independents and others. I cannot speak for all of them, but I’m going to guess not a single one of them thought, “Gosh, the poor North Carolina Republican Party needs our money most.”