A website and community to help those who are running for public office — particularly local office — has been a vision of mine for some time and I’m so happy to bring that vision to life with the launch of CampaignPlanner.org.
That’s great Craig, but why do we need this site?
This is the site I wished were around when I started working in political campaigns. I had always looked for a place to network with other people running for office and professional political operatives — to learn the best practices of campaign planning, and to find a few templates that would make me more efficient with the very limited resources I had available at the time.
Of course, there were some sites that handled education, like campaign courses or 3-day intensive planning seminars, and a few of them were pretty good. Expensive, but good. And believe me, I tried them all and bought them all. I was a sponge for information.
There were even a few list serves that connected campaign pros to candidates, but mostly those were leftover lists of staff members from previous presidential campaigns and they weren’t interested in working for candidates at the local levels because there wasn’t enough money to cover their salaries. When you’re running for local office you’re probably going to spend less than a few thousand dollars total – and campaign pros are going to cost you a few thousand a month. The economics just didn’t make sense, so first time candidates are left to fend for themselves.
And templates don’t really exist in the political industry because so few people have worked on enough campaigns to actually standardize what they do, or they just aren’t process oriented enough to plan ahead. The ones that are good – well they move from campaign to campaign and take things with them but rarely make that available for others to use.
Unfortunately, I was never able to find that one site which brought all those separate campaign planning subjects under one roof, so I had to create everything from scratch on my own.
And that’s what makes CampaignPlanner.org so great!
What is CampaignPlanner.org?
CampaignPlanner.org is a place where you can drop in and get advice on a topic where you might be stuck, find some help for your campaign, or to download a few resources and templates that let you do it all yourself! It’s a place where learning is democratized and put back into the community for the common good.
In fact, everything on this site is aimed at giving you the knowledge and resources you need to run your own successful campaign (or someone else’s campaign if you’re volunteering for them) — and at any level of office you choose.
We do this through:
- article content, like the blog post you’re reading right now
- community forums with discussion topics
- public affinity groups
- coursework, lessons, and private group cohorts
- a document repository with campaign templates and guides
- a private social network to connect with and message other candidates, elected officials, and campaign pros
This sounds great, so how do I get started?
There are a few places to start:
Campaign Readiness Checklist
If you’re thinking about running for office, checkout our Campaign Readiness Checklist. It walks you through 40 questions you should be asking yourself to assess whether you’re ready to run a winning campaign. At the end of the checklist, you’ll determine your Campaign Readiness Score and have a list of things to work on to make sure you’re thinking about the right things as you start your campaign.
You can download the free Campaign Readiness Checklist here or by clicking the button below.
How to Launch a Winning Political Campaign
This is digital course that walks first-time candidates step-by-step through everything you need to do in the first 30 days of launching a campaign, from filing paperwork to building a team and setting your campaign up for success!
The course opens up in November, with registration starting in October. Save your seat here, or click the button below.
The Monday Memo
This is our version of a newsletter, except we loathe political spam too – so we’re only going to send you one email per week, on Monday, with a new tip for you to implement in your campaign. If you haven’t already signed up – checkout the form at the bottom of this page.
Thanks, and I’ll see you out there!
Craig
