While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to crafting a winning campaign strategy, there are a couple rules of thumb when it comes to building a budget with communications tactics that will set you up for election night elation (and of course, some broad fundamentals to keep in mind for running to win). Let’s dig into the thought process that will drive you toward the tactics that are right for you.

Eight years ago, we started The Campaign Workshop blog to share our knowledge with an online community of advocates, nonprofits, labor unions, staffers, campaign operatives, political candidates, and progressive groups and organizations. Today, we have over 1,000 blog subscribers and 20,000 monthly unique page views to our website, which has far exceeded our expectations.

When should I start building my coalition? In short, yesterday. but to find your way coalition mapping will help.

There are so many different types of ads that it can feel overwhelming to choose which ones to use for your digital advocacy campaign. You can certainly use all of them, but there are some that are likely better suited to your campaign than others, depending on your goals.

Launching a community advocacy campaign can seem intimidating – where would you begin? There are countless campaign tools available to you, but they don’t mean anything if you don’t know what to do with them.

How do you leverage grassroots advocacy? Start with a cup of coffee.

Advocacy mail does not always get the credit it deserves. Part I of this post takes you through the basics of putting together a letter package for your advocacy mail campaign. Part II walks you through making the most of a letter package that includes a reply device (buckle up!).

Advocacy campaign testimonials have a unique ability to highlight the human impact of your issue. By recruiting community members who have been directly affected by your issue to share their stories, you can make the seemingly arbitrary stakes of policy decisions more tangible for people.

We often find that a digital advocacy campaign is expected to meet multiple organizational goals at once. Unfortunately, you can’t really have it all. So how do you choose an objective and what digital strategy is likely to achieve it?