Course Description
This course is designed to provide you with a “How To” guide for running a grassroots political campaign. Whether you are a candidate for public office, working as campaign staff/key volunteer, an issues advocacy group or a member of a para-campaign organization such as a local Tea Party group, you will benefit from the lessons contained in this course. We will explore the need for leaders who have an understanding of the times, and desire to become servant leaders at the local, state and national levels of our government. As a result of this course, you will be able to develop strategies for organizing and running a grassroots based political campaign. You will also learn about actual techniques for using technology in a political campaign that you can apply to a Get Out The Vote strategy to elect your candidate or support your issue campaign. In order to achieve these objectives, this course is divided into five modules.
1. Course Introduction
In this module, we provide an overview of the course learning objectives, what is included in the course, and how you can best take advantage of the course materials.
2. Biblical Basis for Political Leadership
Many people are called into politics because they feel the need to correct an injustice, provide sound leadership in a time of crisis, and genuinely serve people. In this first module, Biblical Basis for Political Leadership, you will learn how many individuals in the Bible faced similar circumstances. If we are to use the political process to save our nation, we need to review these lessons lest we become the same sort of leaders we now detest. This module stresses the need for new leaders who are also Godly leaders, and is subdivided into six parts.
- Module Overview
- Lessons from Nehemiah, Joshua and Jesus Part I
- Lessons from Nehemiah, Joshua and Jesus Part II
- Characteristics of Servant Leadership
- To Succeed, We Must Delegate
- Recap of Module Learning Objectives
3.
Organizing Your Campaign.
Political campaigns are fundamentally about a contest between one or more candidates for an elective office, or to promote one world view of how to deal with issues vs. another. Therefore, just as in business or sports, political campaigns requires a sound organizational foundation if it is to be successful. In this second module,
Organizing Your Campaign, we apply precepts from the celebrated Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu’s book,
The Art of War, to the things you must consider when developing your campaign organization. In running a campaign, we must organize people, train them, identify and deploy campaign resources, raise money, communicate a vision of what we propose to accomplish, and focus all these activities so they come together on election day. In running a campaign, we must “be like water.” Changes in circumstances will require us to have a fluid response. This module is designed to help you anticipate the kind of ground we will be fighting your political campaign on, and is subdivided into eight parts.
- Answering the Seven Questions of a Campaign
- Organizing Basics
- Identifying Winning Campaign Issues
- Creating a Campaign Message
- Providing Oversight and Resources
- Building Your Campaign Team Part I
- Building Your Campaign Team Part II
- Module Summary
4.
Using Technology in Your Campaign.
In this third module,
Using Technology in Your Campaign, we will talk about creating a plan to use technology to organize supporters and communicate the campaign message. Though not the only topic in the subject of technology, the Internet, and all the various tools that people can use associated with it, is a key aspect of this module. Keep in mind that all technology are simply tools – nothing more. While much of politics is still face to face communication, the Internet is THE method to use to organize your supporters and rapidly share information. To win elections in the 21
st century, we must learn how to use and manage these tools. This module is designed to help you visualize what kinds of online tools are available, how you might integrate them with your campaign, and how to integrate the use of these tools into your overall campaign strategy. It is subdivided into eight parts.
- Module Overview
- The 5 Steps in Creating your Social Media Plan
- Determining How People will Volunteer and Give Money
- Creating and Sharing Content Online
- Distributing Your Campaign Content
- Training and Informing Volunteers
- Using Technology to Get Out the Vote
- Module Summary
5.
Get Out the Vote In this fourth module,
Get Out the Vote, we discuss creating a coordinated strategy to deploy the various components of our campaign organization to get the vote out on election day. We’ll apply the aspects of biblical leadership, creating a campaign organization, and using technology we’ve covered in previous modules to direct a coordinated social media and neighborhood grassroots to plan in our end game campaign strategy. This module is subdivided into eight parts.
- Module Overview
- Having a Map and a Calculator
- Get a Calendar and a Rolodex
- Organizing Your Volunteer Leaders
- Creating a Voter Funnel
- Thirty Days to Go Until Election Day
- Module Summary