[6] In 1972, Craver left Common Cause to found Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company (CMS), the consulting firm that helped launch the National Organization for Women (NOW), The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) The National Council to Control Handguns (now the Brady Campaign) and grow the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, The Southern Poverty Law Center, and help dozens more nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity and Heifer International gain traction through direct mail fundraising.

[7] The post-Watergate campaign finance reforms limiting the amount of money individuals could contribute to political campaigns boosted the importance of mass direct mail with its smaller individual gifts and found Craver and Tom Mathews, his business partner, actively engaged in fundraising for the Democratic Party and liberal candidates.

[8] By the late 1970s, his firm raised significant amounts for Democratic Senate candidates, including Frank Church (Idaho), George McGovern (South Dakota), Birch Bayh (Indiana), and John Culver (Iowa).

Craver discovered that DNC chairman Charles Manatt and former vice president Walter Mondale were lobbyists for the Alyeska Pipeline Company, and that this constituted a conflict of interest with a CMS client, the Sierra Club.

[10] After working with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for ten years, CMS resigned because its client Common Cause had filed a conflict of interest complaint against Speaker of the House Jim Wright, who was ex-officio chair of the DCCC.

The organization suspended operations in early 2008 over disputes with the Federal Election Commission, lack of adequate funding and the resignation of two of its top leaders.