The Campaign Workshop Blog

Keith Rosendahl is the past campaign manager for Henry Cuellar for re-election as Congressmen for the 28th Congressional District in Texas. We asked Keith some questions about how COVID-19 has changed the way campaigns run, especially in the lead up to the 2020 election.

Relational organizing is the process by which campaigns, groups, or individuals harness their personal relationships to effect community change. It is a form of organizing that is specific to an individual’s personal network in which they mobilize those relationships into taking action.

ActBlue is a nonprofit organization that aims to increase public participation in politics primarily through grassroots campaign fundraising. Their grassroots political fundraising tool allows Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations to increase their individual donations and build a grassroots-funded movement.

Anyone who has worked in the nonprofit industry for long enough will tell you that it is full of quirks and choosing the nonprofit consultant that is right for you is no easy task. Time and time again, we have nonprofit clients come to TCW after hiring the wrong firm.

We originally wrote this blog post on how to build a grassroots movement in 2016, and it’s amazing how much things have changed in the last four years. For most campaigns in 2016, canvassing was still the go-to way to build your grassroots movement and was a tried and true way of connecting with people. Some smaller campaigns had built their entire programs around a relentless canvass strategy and talking to every voter in their turf.

For many issues, legislative advocacy is the best and only way to bring about real change. But there’s a lot of different ways to engage in legislative advocacy. There’s the traditional “inside game” where you work to provide resources and information to lawmakers. There’s also the “outside game” where you work with a network of volunteers to provide pressure on legislators from the outside.

Ruth Bernstein is president and CEO at EMC Research, a national polling and opinion research firm. Ruth leads polling on a wide variety of political, policy, and marketing projects. She is especially proud of her work helping to elect women and people of color to office and securing voter approval for education, transportation, minimum wage increases, and environmental protection. We asked Ruth 7 questions on membership surveys and how they can benefit your organization.

Political direct mail is one of the most effective ways to reach voters, but I’ll be the first to admit: all that paper takes a toll on our environment. At The Campaign Workshop, we’re passionate about protecting our natural world—luckily for us, so are a lot of the printers we work with.

This past week we've seen folks across the country come together, demanding criminal justice and police reform. Here at The Campaign Workshop, we stand with those fighting systemic and institutionalized racism in our country. We are taking a critical look at ourselves to change and grow into better advocates for Black lives. There is a lot of work to be done, but police violence against Black communities must end.

Every digital advocacy campaign is different and has unique goals. Therefore, there are a variety of metrics that you should focus on depending on your goals. There is not a one-size-fits-all benchmark or metric to track the success of every digital advocacy campaign.

Lincoln Mitchell is a political analyst and writer based in New York and San Francisco. In his book, San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third Place Baseball Team, Mitchell explores how San Francisco became a city of contradictions as one of the most socially liberal cities with some of the worst income inequality in the United States.

You don’t need a clipboard for online petitions, but you do need a strategy. Online petitions are a great way to bolster your supporter base around an issue. You can use a digital action as a hook to get folks involved with your campaign or cause in the long run. List building isn’t always easy, quick, or cheap—make sure you plan ahead so you can do it right and make the most out of your new supporters.

A Down-ballot campaign is a great starting place for first-time candidates or folks who want to start working on campaigns. Getting involved in your local or state government is an important and noble task. State and local governments combined spend more than the federal government and some county governments are bigger than state governments.

So you send your final political direct mail file off to the printer and breathe a sigh of relief—until you get your printer proof. Now what? The political printing process continues long after you finalize designing and proofing your direct mail file in-house.