The Campaign Workshop Blog

Running for political office is a daunting task that can be exceedingly taxing without a campaign manager at the helm to help run the show. For first-time candidates in particular, getting a viable campaign off the ground is more than a full-time job. Fundraising call time alone is all-consuming, taking up to three to six hours per day of your time five days a week. With so many moving parts to a campaign, there’s no harm (but rather, lots of value) in investing in a campaign manager. A full-time manager is worth the expense.

Kelly Dietrich is the founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, the largest organization in the country singularly focused on providing free campaign training for Democratic candidates, staff, and local leaders. He’s spent more than twenty years in Democratic politics working campaigns all across the country at every level of government. His specialty is new campaign creation, strategy, and fundraising. After getting his start on a congressional campaign in Kansas in 1997, Kelly went on to work and advise dozens of candidates for U.S House, Senate, governor, mayor, and more.

Campaign management done right means everyone wins. When I first started to work in politics and was a campaign staffer, running campaigns, I learned how important managing up was. 

When was the last time you saw something particularly eye-catching in a political campaign ad online? We spend so much of our time online these days – for work and for play – and digital ads are everywhere we look, so it’s easy for your political campaign’s creative to get lost in the shuffle.

At The Campaign Workshop, we will often get calls from folks who are thinking about starting up a political campaign for the first time but don’t know where to begin. To get a sense of where they’re at in the process and learn more about their race, I usually ask the same four questions and then try to give them some suggestions and tips. But too often, candidates won’t have the answers because, in many cases, they just didn’t know the questions.

I traveled to Manhattan in May to attend the Adobe 99U Design Conference. I had never attended this type of conference before, so I was concerned it could be very brand forward and salesy. Luckily, it was not. In fact, it wasn’t anything I expected at all. Speakers were very philosophical, and workshop sessions were inspirational rather than technical. To be honest, some of it went over my head, but that was the point. To get us creatives to look up and into the future.

Every year and every election cycle, we all have important decisions to make about which political campaign to throw our time and resources behind. Whether you’re looking for a full-time job on a campaign, or simply a volunteer opportunity, it’s important to be thoughtful and strategic about which political campaign you choose.

Deno Seder is an expert in political advertising and crafting advocacy and political videos. He has worked with candidates across all levels of government, for various advocacy groups, and on ballot measure campaigns. From creating video ads urging voters not to cast a ballot for Donald Trump to aiding in the effort to ban Greyhound dog racing in Florida, Deno has a wide array of experiences in the political space.

Eric Schnure is a former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore who has been a freelance writer and communications consultant for over 20 years. Eric has spent his career helping elected officials, business and nonprofit executives, and entertainers hone their public speaking. He is known for incorporating humor into his speechwriting which led him to cofound the Humor Cabinet, a communications consulting firm.

With platforms like Squarespace and WordPress, it’s become pretty easy for campaigns to set up their own political campaign websites. That being said, now that the average joe can build a website without a backend developer, it’s now harder for a website to be seen via organic search. Simply put, there’s a lot of crap out there that your site is competing with.

EveryAction offers a suite of digital, fundraising, and organizing tools for nonprofits all in one unified platform. In this 7 questions interview they talk about the exciting changes they are making to their platform in the new product roadmap and how nonprofits can better use digital tools to achieve their goals. 

Now more than ever, digital programs are integral parts of almost any political campaign and learning how to read a digital report is crucial. Understanding digital reports not only allows you to understand how your digital campaign is performing, but also allows you to make optimizations to ensure that you are making as large of an impact as possible.