Leadership Training

A conversation among those working in the youth movement today surrounded a list of resources for candidates who wanted to run for office. Local candidates of all stripes are stepping up to the plate for the upcoming 2012 election because they want to help change the world. But once you decide you want to make an impact and take those first steps declaring you're in it to win it .... where do you go from there?

Worry not! There are so many organizations out there working with state and local candidates. To make things easier - we here at Future Majority have made a handy list!

• The New Organizing Institute has recently announced its Candidate's Project - a great resources for state and local people who want pledge to be one of their 2012 people to run in 2012.
• Democracy for America Campaign Academy travels around the country teaching skills to activists to help them be more efficient and effective in helping candidates and causes. Don't listen to them when it comes to young voters and new media though... the one we had in Wichita had a guy who said they didn't matter.... :)
• Camp Wellstone - so named for the late Senator Paul Wellstone who inspired a generation of activists to make a difference. His legacy lives on in the lives touched by programs that help train staff and candidates across the country. I think I still have a green Wellstone training manual around somewhere.
• Progressive Majority - supporting candidates running for office who want to make a difference in progressive legislation. PM works to train staff and candidates and has tons of resources on their website to get you organized.
• The New Leaders Council - started in 2007 in San Francisco and has grown to be a powerhouse organization that works within local infrastructures to train young people who work in politics, policy, government, etc... further skills so they can move up the ladder. My favorite part is that they use local leaders to teach their classes, so it becomes a huge networking benefit for these fellows as well. Full disclosure the second I met Adam Borelli I knew the NLC was going to be a thing and pledge to do anything for him until the end of time.
• EMILY's List - stands for Early Money is Like Yeast ... because it raises the dough. They got started because there wasn't a lot of money out there for women running for office and as a result there weren't a lot of women IN office. So amazing strong women joined forces to help women raise money, get good solid staffs, and win. I think I've actually been to every single training except for the candidate training that EL offers. Their fundraising manual is a Bible for anyone working in politics or running for office.
• EMILY's List has a few state spin-offs like the California List, Annie's List (Texas), and Sally's List (Oklahoma) all of which work at the local level to help women running for office.
• Emerge is another good resource for young women who want some help getting elected. They boast over 500 women they've helped train and inspire to run for office. Go them!
• PoliCorps - is a project of The Bus Project that helps train 20-24 year olds to be genius political organizers. Their program is an intensive ten week political organizing and leadership development bootcamp.
• The White House Project - got started in effort to inspire a richly diverse group of women in to the leadership pipeline.
• The Women's Campaign Forum - works as a non-partisan resource for all women at all levels of government who would like to run for office. They run the She Should Run project that gets more women candidates involved and trained.
• For LGBT candidates you can check out the Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute who runs a great training program for candidates.
• The Truman Project I heard does candidate trainings specifically for veterans but I couldn't find it on their website. What they do that is critical is help progressives message around national security policy.
• The New American Leaders Project - help prepare first- and second-generation immigrants for civic leadership. They recruit and train candidates and help bring a face and a voice to immigrant issues for sure.
• Leadership for Educational Equity - inspires Teach for America alumni - as well as others I presume - to seek leadership in politics, policy and advocacy as a critical lever for long-term change ensuring all children have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.
• The Front Line Leadership Academy - a project of Young People For and the Young Elected Officials Network that helps 20 talented young people from across the country every year. FLLA provides prospective candidates and campaign leaders the ability to learn from successful political campaign professionals.
• Running to Govern - This all partisan organization helps recruit and train people to not just run for office but how to govern as well. Hence the name...

I know there are probably tons that I'm forgetting - so please email us if you have a training program you would like to list here. FutureMajority (at) gmail (dot) com.

This past weekend I served on a panel and as a judge for a campaign training school called NEW Leadership at the Carl Albert Center for Congressional Research Studies in Norman, Oklahoma. One of the moderators commented that it's pretty difficult to quantify results from new media on an electorate, which is a discussion I feel like I often have with candidates or potential clients... heck even existing clients at least once a month!

Most people in professional politics accept that a presence online must be the norm for a serious candidate today, although many campaigns still don't believe that a professional presence is needed judging from the obscene website design and atrocious fundraising emails that I am cursed to see each week.

Depending on where you are in the country and when your primary election is being held, most candidates probably aren't on television with their advertising just yet but probably all of them have done their benchmark poll and possibly one or two tracking polls. One such candidate I'm working with has seen an eight point jump in numbers in the course of a few months. The only thing that is different is that the new media operation stepped up a notch.

Another candidate I work with put a question in his/her benchmark poll asking where the person being polled had met or heard of the candidate. This is a pretty standard question generally used to gauge the effectiveness of the media or campaign outreach. The highest number is generally something like "from TV" or "from radio" or "From the newspaper" - but because the campaign hadn't started any of these forms of outreach yet, the highest percentage was "from the internet."

When I was speaking to these young women at NEW Leadership I said that "New Media" is not a replacement for traditional media its part of a building block that campaigns should use early on to develop relationships with the electorate in a cheaper and more effective way. I told them to treat it like an online field campaign that you can eventually use to push message as well as do fundraising on.

And a big reason for all of this, couldn't have been better stated by the New York Times in a piece they posted today about the generational divide in the Columbia elections.

"Mr. Mockus “represents something totally different, something that’s not traditional,” Ms. Pacheco said. “Older people are not used to having politicians thinking outside the box.”

Using tools that are familiar to them — a Facebook page, instant messages, videos on YouTube — Mr. Mockus’s followers in New York strive to drum up support for their candidate and organize events. It is a strategy that proved successful before, they said, when a certain senator from Illinois used social-networking media to mobilize young voters and ended up in the White House."

In a close election every edge you can get is important, and an online media campaign began in October is a joke. The earlier a campaign starts online outreach the better. The the less the chance a campaign will encounter someone like me writing a blog about how bad your fundraising emails are or how embarrassing your website looks or functions.

It's like AmeriCorps, but you don't have to abstain from politics while you serve. In fact, we encourage voting.*
It's like the Peace Corps, but you won't get malaria. (We promise. Oregon's been malaria-free for years.)*
It's PolitiCorps. A term of service for democracy.

Do you know a hotshot young activist ready to run a campaign, polish up her public speaking skills, and manage a volunteer team? You should nominate her or him now.

This week PolitiCorps will accept the first dozen Fellows for the 2009 Summer Bootcamp, based in Portland, Oregon. Applications are due on March 20th.

Fellowships provide a total of 24 promising young activists a free 10 week training in high impact grassroots organizing skills and next generation leadership skills.

This national Fellowship for young progressives offers:

• A cleared path toward a career in the public interest
• Training in communications, community organizing, public policy analysis, networking, data management, and project management
• Round-table conversations with nationally-known politics, wonks, strategists, and progressive change-agents
• Close friendships with some of the brightest and most dedicated activists in the country
• Housing and cost of living stipends are offered on top of tuition for the 10 week training

PolitiCorps Fellows are college juniors, seniors, and recent graduates (up to 24 years old) who have a demonstrated commitment to progressive values and an interest in the political process.

To learn more, download our shiny brochure.

There are two applications periods for Summer 2009.
Round 1: Applications due March 20th (12 Fellows)
Round 2: Rolling admissions until the program is full (12 Fellows)

To apply today, submit a nomination form now.

*Obviously, we think AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps (and all the other Corps) are neato. Really super.

Working on campaigns is one continuous contradiction, which is to say that is an amplified/sped up version of life in general. Candidates are at both times selfless and incredibly self absorbed. Those who work in or around politics (as well as the organizations they belong to or control) run the gamut from completely immoral Machiavelli wannabes to unbelievably noble crusaders for justice (most fall someplace in between). And while it is easy enough to get discouraged by the bad side of politics, I stay involved and will continue to stay involved because of all of the amazing people that I meet.

Mike's discussion of the divide between the social justice and progressive youth politics movements brought to mind one of the most inspiring organizations that I crossed paths with during this past cycle: the Institute for the Development of African American Youth (IDAAY) and their program Don't Fall Down in the Hood. Neither IDAAY nor Don't Fall Down in the Hood are focused primarily on politics, they focus on intervention and development amongst young, poor, minority Philadelphians. Here's how IDAAY's site describes Don't Fall Down in the Hood:

I have some quibbles with this article (I'm not sure Rock the Vote should count as a progressive youth organization, and many new organizations are not included in her figures), but Iara Peng of Young People For speaks truth about the state of progressive youth funding (emphasis mine):

Last year alone, the Right invested $48 million in 11 youth-focused organizations aimed at increasing the number of ideologically friendly campus papers, fostering networks of students on campuses, shifting the way that students self-identify in terms of political ideology, providing skills and strategies training, and promoting right-wing values.

...

Collectively, we're (youth groups) doing great work, but we're not doing enough. Right-wing groups spend more than ten times as much on long-term political leadership development than we do, and financial trends over the past four years show that progressive leadership development organizations are actually, on average, experiencing a decline in revenue. Unlike their conservative counterparts, youth-focused progressive organizations are often funded with a "buying," not "building," mentality, meaning that donors want their contribution to have immediate payoffs, such as election-year voter registration, but are not focusing on investing in the strategic, long-term sustainability of those organizations.

The folks at Emerging Democratic Majority agree with Peng's assessment, and are encouraging progressives to donate more to youth training and mentorship.

Most interesting to me is the $48 million figure for conservative youth funding. That's roughly equivalent to all the money distributed last year by the Democracy Alliance.

That's not just short-sighted or disconcerting, its shameful.