Building your campaign team by Steve Grubbs

As you start your campaign and begin putting together the people who will assist the effort, think of your campaign team as a three-headed beast.  Each of these three heads must be alive and well for a campaign to operate effectively.

Head One:  Honorary Campaign Committee

There are certain people who you may want to be associated with your campaign even if they aren’t going to invest a lot of time or money.  What you do want from them is the use of their name as a supporter and perhaps, for them to sign a letter to voters endorsing your Campaign Strategy effort.

As a new candidate, you need to create a sense among the opinion leaders that your candidacy is legitimate and well regarded.  This will help to bring many good things to your campaign, not the least of which is votes.

Honorary campaign committee names might include leaders in the fields of business, labor, agriculture or the local religious community.  It could include former elected officials or local sports heroes.  You may want the leaders of the Farm Bureau, teacher’s association or a neighborhood group.  Or, if you are less known in a particular neighborhood or county you will probably want a well known name from that geographic region.

As you approach these people and ask them to support your effort, you will likely want to emphasize you aren’t asking for their time or money.  What you are asking for is the public use of their name as a supporter.  If they say yes to your first request, you should see if they will be willing to sign a letter to voters later in the campaign.  This can be an important endorsement for the group in which they are influential.

A mailing to farmers can be buttressed by the endorsement of the local Farm Bureau leader or senior citizens may be impressed by the support of a local family doctor who has been practicing for fifty years.   Having noted the importance of these endorsements, I need to emphasize that endorsements alone are a fairly weak way to gain votes. But when endorsements are used to deliver two or three good reasons to support a candidate, they can be an effective way to open doors and persuade voters.

Head Two:  The Worker Bees

While its important to have well known and well respected community leaders supporting a candidacy, it’s equally important to have the backing of people who are simply committed to seeing that the basic tasks of a campaign are well executed.  This means finding the worker bees:  those people who can be relied on to successfully accomplish important campaign tasks.

These individuals are frequently not flashy or wealthy, but they know the value of work and are willing to part with their time for a cause they believe in.

Identifying individuals who will fill the working positions is critical but at the same time, can be very difficult.  And while the specific positions that are required will vary from campaign to campaign, there are some that seem to be consistently needed no matter the year or office being sought.

Here are some positions you should look to fill:

Yard Sign Coordinator:  The individual who will see that the locations are lined up, the signs are designed and ordered and volunteers show up to raise them on yard sign day.

Treasurer:  This position is not to be confused with your finance chairman.  Instead, the treasurer’s job is to write the checks, see that the register balances and see that legally required disclosure reports get filed in a timely fashion.  Finding a reliable person to do this job can keep you out of jail and out of the newspapers.

Volunteer coordinator:  Every campaign needs volunteers.  Whether it’s to get a mailing out, walk parades or distribute literature, campaigns are volunteer dependent.  Finding someone who is good at lining up volunteers and who is also organized enough to see that they’re time is well used when they do show up is critical.

Some other positions that might be helpful to have filled are:  event coordinator, coalitions coordinator, campaign manager and scheduler.

Head Three:  Finance Committee

The third head of the campaign beast is the finance committee.  Its relatively easy to figure out who should serve on this committee, but a lot tougher to actually sign them up. 

The question to ask oneself is simply this:  Who has enough influence among potential major donors in the community that just the association of their name opens doors to donors and wallets?

These people are frequently bankers, probate attorneys, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and leaders of business associations. 

It’s enough just to have these leaders lend their name to your effort, but you also need a few who will go further than that.  You will want some members of this committee to 1) be willing to sign fundraising letters, 2) attend major donor meetings with you and hopefully have at least one or two who will 3) open their home for a fundraising event.

The key to signing up the members of this committee is to start with the easiest one first.  Once you have their name on board, use it to leverage the support of others.  The more influential names, the easier it gets to add others.

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Creating a campaign team is a critical first step to building your candidacy.  Thinking in terms of these three different groups will help you classify the types of people you need to pursue.  It’s not unlike building a football program.  Finding the right coaches, athletes  - and of course – alumni, are all integral parts of a strong and winning program. 

If you have questions or thoughts on this article, please feel free to email me at Steve@VictoryEnteprises.com