The Campaign Workshop Blog

7 Questions with Dave Fako on Political and Advocacy Polling

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.  Dave Fako has developed expertise in state, local, and…

Membership Communications Can Make a Difference

In our socially distanced world, having a thoughtful membership communications strategy is more important than ever. For labor unions and advocacy organizations effectively engaging members across mediums can make a real difference.  Activating members  to turn out in elections or put pressure on lawmakers to pass legislation is a core part of member communications. Here are our tips for taking your membership communications programs to the next level: Plan ahead for short- and long-term programs…

Advocacy Engagement Goes Further with A Funnel

Getting more advocacy engagement for your organization involves finding new supporters and turning them into dedicated advocates. But getting people to make the transition from giving you their email address to taking action on your organization’s behalf requires a thoughtful engagement strategy. We created an advocacy funnel to show different actions you could ask your supporters to take and what value can be assigned to each action. The more personal the action is, the higher its value.…

Grassroots Campaign Planning - Get Your Virtual Volunteers to Come Back

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…

Author Paul Kendrick Discusses His New Book Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election 

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. In Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election, Stephen and Paul Kendrick present the story of Martin…

Pollsters- How To Work With Them & Be a Smart Consumer of Polling 

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. A good campaign pollster will understand your goals…

Advocacy Tactics Have Shifted Over Time

Advocacy tactics and advocacy campaign strategies have changed a lot over the last 20 years. When I was a Chief of Staff in the New York State Legislature, I don't remember ever seeing a real  public affairs campaign around public support of an issue that focused on legislators. The main way groups moved legislation was to hire a…

User-Generated Content Tools to Build Storytelling for Advocacy 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.   The whole…

TikTok changes your social media presence to engage young voters

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…

Young voters have some interesting and important habits that your campaign needs to know about.

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. From the 2014 to the 2018 midterms, turnout among young voters doubled…

An Advocacy Website RFP Can Help You Build A Winning Website

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. Before you send out an advocacy website RFP or just rehire the folks who built the last…

Field Strategies That Get Results During COVID-19

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. Now, during COVID-19, the importance of setting goals is greater than ever. Make sure you have a complete plan before you deploy any field strategies or other…

15 Effective Advocacy Campaign Tips for Public Affairs Campaigns

Running an effective advocacy campaign takes skill and planning. No matter how big or how small your effort is, having some basic structure can make a huge difference in your assets and results. Here are fifteen tips to run a winning advocacy campaign: 1.    Have clear and measurable goals for your advocacy campaigns. Primary and secondary goals are important for effective advocacy campaigns. Be sure you understand what they are from the beginning, and don’t confuse your goals…

Red Tag Political Mail, Does Your Mail Qualify?

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…

A Political Communication Strategy Needs Good Speechwriting 

Every good political communication strategy should include a plan for speechwriting. Even if your campaign doesn’t anticipate churning out a ton of speeches, make sure you have a process ready to go for writing and finalizing speeches. If you’re running for office even at the local level, chances are you’ll want to have a speech prepared at least for Election night. If you’re intimidated by the speechwriting process, don’t panic—you can follow a simple formula to write a good speech.…