Relational organizing is quickly becoming a staple of modern day campaigning. Unlike traditional cold campaign outreach (paid staff or volunteers reach out to strangers), relational organizing involves supporters leveraging their pre-existing relationships to reach out to their friends, neighbors and colleagues. While academic research has shown relational organizing to be the most effective form of..
I spend almost every day working with campaigns around the country. Most campaigns seem to have the same playbook: start with fundraising, then move on to persuasion and end with GOTV. The logic is that money pays for advertising (to persuade voters) and staff (to recruit volunteers for GOTV). But what if your opponent has..
Now that I have had a couple days to unwind after the election, I thought I would spend a couple of minutes highlighting what we learned. Before I begin, I want to thank the DNC, Win Virginia and the DPVA. It was an honor working with all 3 organizations. Their efforts led to historic successes..
Having spent the past year working with hundreds of campaigns, we’re often asked about the efficacy of relational organizing. Prior to VoterCircle, it was extremely time intensive and/or costly to conduct this type of research. As a result, the research on the subject is limited. I found two papers in the 3rd edition of..
When I ran for office, I quickly realized that getting elected is an immense amount of work. It’s not for the faint of heart and it is definitely not something you can do alone. Since most campaigns have limited budgets, volunteers are often the key to success. Here are a few tips on how to make..
In 2014, I ran for local office in Northern California on a budget of four grand. During the race, an outside PAC came in and spent more than $100,000 supporting my opponent. As we didn’t have the budget for direct mail or advertising, we decided to try something different. We implemented a friend-to-friend outreach strategy..
When I ran for local office, I was outspent more than 30:1 and was still elected by almost a 50% margin. Since then I have worked with more than 100 campaigns in almost every capacity including: candidate, elected official, campaign manager, door walker, phone banker, data coordinator, donor, fundraiser and advisor. Here are my top..