Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D.I.Y.ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.
When this series first began, we also ran a tagalong series called “AARGH: Horrible mistakes you should avoid!” Due to feedback, I’ve moved away from dealing with that as frequently, but since it has been several months, this week I’m taking time to focus on making sure your activist organization or political entity doesn’t find themselves involved in bad deals.
Whether you are a candidate, a county party or an outside entity, it won’t take long after your formation for people to start pitching ideas at you about how to spend money. And it is tempting — after all, people gave your organization or candidate money to spend in hopes of electing more and better Democratic members, right?
Still, it is easy for your organization to get trapped into some bad deals. Let’s talk about how you can avoid bad deals in your efforts.
Is there a YELP for campaigns?
Every day, when I get up in the morning and check my Gmail accounts, I will have at least ten emails about “potential opportunities” being offered by companies pitching products or services. Whether it is printing press access, shirt design, website design, polling data, focus groups, software or any other service there are certainly vendors who will fill the marketspace to provide tools to any organization or political entity.
The real question is: how do you know if any of these organizations are actually any good? How do you know if they are reputable? I mean, an email from “Let’sGoBlue! Shirt Printing” seems attractive, but what exactly do you know about them?
And here is the rub. Unfortunately, most individuals don’t have a great Yelp type service for campaign services and sales. So, you need to apply standard consumer rules:
- Check the terms of the agreement. What is the exact cost?
- Is the organization I’m buying from Union made, or does it support a union?
- Is this something you actually need?
- Is there a local source for this product?
- Do you know anyone who has worked with this company and how did their experience go?
Every dollar your organization spends can help people get elected or promote your cause or it can be wasted on trinkets you don’t need or efforts that don’t pay off.
Do I really need this?
Every week I receive a few email about suggestions for future Nuts & Bolts. And, as always, feel free to email at tmservo433@gmail.com. A few months ago, I received this email which I asked for permission to quote:
Hi Chris,
We have local election this spring for our city government. Turnout is always terrible. Last time Ward 3 had 574 votes. We want to replace that officer. There are 1,131 registered Democratic votes, but less than 200 voted in the last city council race in this ward. There are four people running for this seat. We conducted a direct poll and called 90 individuals about how they would vote.
Our chair thinks it might help encourage voters if we had better polling to show our candidate can win. Could you recommend someone we could use cheaply?
My answer was pretty straightforward: Nobody. Use absolutely nobody. In a race where you know that less than 20 percent of registered Democratic members voted, but if you were to get say, 350 of the Democratic voters to show up you are almost guaranteed a win, the idea of spending money on polling data struck me as a gigantic waste of money and resources.
We had a call with their chair and others and recommended they throw all their money and resources into knocking doors, pizza parties for volunteers and hauling people out of their houses if they had to in order to get votes.
More campaigns find themselves tempted to spend money on items that they feel make their campaign big time. Whether it is polling data or video feeds on Facebook and elsewhere, these spending priorities often come at the expense of smaller and far more effective expenses.
Judge your universe and set your goals. For the record, their candidate did win in Ward 3, prevailing with a nice bump in local Democratic voter turnout.
Read the Fine Print
A US House candidate recently dropped out of their 2018 run for office and contacted me about their negative experience. The biggest complaint they had was the result of a deal they had made with a national fundraising group about building money into their campaign.
What they didn’t realize what they signed was the terms of the deal: out of every dollar raised into the campaign, almost 30 percent was marked as “overhead” which was payable to the fundraiser. This included money not raised by the fundraiser, but money raised by the candidate or local efforts as well. In other words, if a candidate held a house party in their district and raised $10,000, an organization in DC who ran an online fundraising campaign for them would receive a large sum of money—even though they had nothing at all to do with the exercise.
The influx of new candidates eager to change the system has also resulted in a lot of candidates who are going to be abused by predatory practices that take advantage of their inexperience as to the deals they are signing.
Some of these deals are borderline criminal. Candidates have sent me proposals from vendors and firms that included elements I’ve never seen or heard of before from consultants, some of which are truly repellant.
One candidate, preparing for 2016, found an out of state firm willing to work with them only if they picked and controlled their treasurer, who would exist in their offices. Other candidates signed into agreements and suddenly found that their FEC reports all listed Knoxville, Tennessee as their mailing address, re-routing potential fundraising and finance reports states away from where they were located.
Before you sign any agreement with any company, be a safe consumer. Read the fine print. Talk to a few other people and let them read it too. No matter how mad you or others may be at “The party” or any other entity, the people inside of those organizations do not want you to be financially abused as part of your election efforts, or, if you are an organization, we don’t want your organization to be abused either.
Predatory campaign practices are certainly a real thing, and making sure you read the fine print is incredibly important.
If it doesn’t feel right, don’t.
No means no. No matter how many others recommend or support a private company pitching you business, if it doesn’t feel right to you, do not do it. Even if they are a reputable company and have great work product, great relationships are built on a level of trust and a willingness by both sides. If your organization, campaign, or party entity isn’t comfortable with a vendor for whatever reason, just walk away.
If you move forward with expenditures you are uncomfortable with in the beginning, you will find that you quickly second guess and will be very unhappy with the finished product, no matter what the purchase.
Sometimes, you have to trust your gut.
Final thoughts
In the political world we often forget that organizations are the customer. Customers do have certain rights and key among them is not being abused. As you build your organization members will be far more accepting of leadership that deploys resources smartly than one that wastes money on efforts that are sub-standard or don’t work.
Over the next year, expect hundreds of new pop-up entities promoting all sorts of options to become available to your young organization. Some of these options will be fantastic, incredible resources. But there will also be scams, bad plans and abusive agreements.
Before you sign the dotted line, make sure you’ve evaluated all your options and that you know exactly what you are getting into.
Next week: What to do with problem members & volunteers?
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Nuts & Bolts: Building Democratic Campaigns
Contact the Daily Kos group Nuts and Bolts by kosmail (members of Daily Kos only). You can also follow me on twitter: @tmservo433
Every Saturday this group will chronicle the ins and outs of campaigns, small and large. Issues to be covered: Campaign Staffing, Fundraising, Canvass, Field Work, Data Services, Earned Media, Spending and Budget Practices, How to Keep Your Mental Health, and on the last Saturday of the month: “Don’t Do This!” a diary on how you can learn from the mistakes of campaigns in the past.
You can follow prior installments in this series HERE.