The Campaign Workshop Blog

Thought leadership is not used to its true potential in public affairs. With so much noise out there, engaging thought leaders to build a public campaign around a policy or public affairs goal can be really important. Especially these days, separating your issue from the rest and making it a priority is a necessity. Similar to storytelling , thought leadership is about engaging community stakeholders to tell their reasons behind moving an issue forward.

A member survey can be a useful tool to get a sense of how your members feel about specific issues. Traditional phone surveys used to be the only option to keep tabs on the pulse of your organization. Luckily, it’s often easier and more cost-effective to poll your members online these days. Below are some factors to think through in executing a member survey that will achieve your goals and reach the right people—all without breaking the bank.

When I started on the campaign trail, I was lucky enough to go through the Campaign Management Institute, where I became focused on grassroots political campaigns and met mentors through college programs and internships. Meeting folks who had made careers out of political campaigns, advocacy and public affairs, encouraged me to go on the road, pursue a career in politics and find a political campaign job and become a campaign staffer.

If you’re looking for your next career move that makes a difference, check out nonprofit job boards to find openings in the areas you’re interested in. Below, we compiled a list of boards that will help you find the right fit. Check out our larger list of job boards, jobs banks, and search firms here.

Finding a paid internship in politics, public affairs or political consulting is not easy. Oftentimes, hours of web research end in disappointment with search results offering unpaid internships with unclear job descriptions. Many small businesses have given up on internships altogether, paid or unpaid, because they could not find value.

Advocacy video is all over social media and across the internet. Video has really become an essential channel for leveraging support on an issue for nonprofits. It’s no wonder why, many advocacy organizations and nonprofits have supporters with compelling narratives, and video is a great medium for storytelling. But we’ve seen too many small or mid-sized nonprofits that still choose to avoid creating an advocacy video strategy because they have a limited budget.

Dave Fako founded Fako Research & Strategies (FR&S) in 1998. His career in politics, public policy, and government affairs spans over thirty years. Over his career, Dave Fako has developed strategies for statewide, congressional, state legislative, and municipal candidates, in addition to referendums, and has advised numerous public policy, advocacy organizations, and national and regional private sector companies.

Even before the pandemic, running a grassroots campaign was hard. And in the age of COVID-19, running a successful grassroots campaign with a network of engaged volunteers can feel nearly impossible. There are always going to be volunteers who sign up for shifts and do not show up. While it may seem easier to get people to log onto a Zoom volunteer shift than it would be to get them to drive all the way to your office to volunteer in person, when folks are at home there are a lot of potential distractions that can keep them from logging on.

As a former Obama White House Staffer, seasoned campaign organizer, former Harlem Children’s Zone team member, and now the Executive Director of Rust Belt Rising, co-author Paul Kendrick brings a fresh take to the idea that what’s past is prologue.

Pollsters shouldn’t be the only members of your team who understand how to build an effective survey for your advocacy or political campaign. Becoming a smart consumer of campaign polling data is a must.  this post will help you ask pollsters thoughtful questions. Good polling will help you utilize your budget efficiently, think strategically about your goals, and assess risks and opportunities in your electoral landscape.

During the time of COVID-19, getting together and sharing stories is an impossibility. So, when my mom turned 80, my sister came upon an easy user-generated content tool to organize friends to send a message to my mom for her friends and family. Five days and a few tutorials later, using Video Hug, we had organized a couple dozen 80-year-olds to send a message to my mom you can see the finished product here.  

If you don’t think TikTok is valuable, think again. Young voters made up a good portion of 2020 voters on a national and regional scale, increasing by 10 percentage points from the 2016 to 2020 elections. This upward trend is promising since only 30% of young people report being contacted by a campaign or party. Engaging young voters, especially on TikTok and other social media platforms, could make young voting rates go even higher.

If conventional wisdom holds that young people are uninterested in politics, then the past two election cycles have been anything but conventional. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, young people are more interested in politics than ever before.

This is often the time of year when folks think about updating or building a new advocacy website. You may have a had the same website for years now, the look is stale, the platform is old, integrations are bad, and your site is not achieving the goals you would like it to. If your team is thinking it is time to update or redo your website but is unsure where to start, this is the resource for you.

Field strategies are an important part of campaigns, especially for voter contact, data collection, GOTV, and persuasion. Whether you are running a public affairs campaign or a political campaign, field strategies won’t get the yield you were hoping for if you don’t have the right planning, preparation, and field strategies behind them.

Red tag political mail is a mystery to some. You may wonder how the United States Postal Service (USPS) treats the massive amount of campaign mail that moves through the postal system each election. The "secret" is red tag political mail US postal service tag 57 – a container tag that is designed to give more visibility to political mail, so it is given expedited status but sent as bulk mail. We write about this in our direct mail e-book.

Incumbents are hard to beat. Campaigns start out with great intentions, but if you want to beat an incumbent, 94 percent of the time, challengers- (non -incumbents) will fall short. Many folks try, but on average, only 6 percent succeed in their quest to beat incumbents.

Lame duck session should not come as a surprise. After election season is over, it’s easy to just want to hole up, make sour dough bread, chicken soup and shut off your political brain for a while. But across the country, as well as in Congress, we are about to go into the legislative season and lame duck sessions.

Every year groups go to Washington, D.C. or their state Capitol to try and impact legislation. At the same time, they are there with a dozen other groups doing lobby visits and it’s even hard to get nonprofit lobby days on the calendar. Lobby days can be a complicated business, but we’re here to help.

Choosing the right political advertising for your political campaign can make the difference between winning and losing. Which political advertising medium a campaign chooses depends largely on their strategic objectives, targets, and, of course, budget.