Behind the curtains: What we’re doing with the 4300+ people who signed up to run for office
How we’re scaling up to help people get on the ballot.
Here’s the honest-to-goodness truth: Before we launched, we expected to have to hustle hard, spend money, and do aggressive outreach to get 100 people to even think about running for office. We genuinely thought that our team of two could call through every person who wanted to talk about it.
18 days after we launched around Trump’s Inauguration, more than 4,300 young people have signed up to run for office — and more than 1,100 people have signed up to volunteer with Run for Something.
We’ve had to figure out how to scale this quickly. So for those who are digital organizing junkies or are just curious how we’re handling this, take a peek behind the curtains at what we’ve set up, then get involved at runforsomething.net.
(And if you’re just here for the inspirational stories, scroll all the way down to meet three people spurred to run by Betsy DeVos.)
Choose your own adventure…
So you want to run for office
Yes!! That’s amazing. You’re brave, courageous, and willing to not just wage the fight but lead the fight. (Or at the very least, you’re interested in having a conversation about it.)
The first thing you need to do: Sign up at runforsomething.net/run-for-office. It’s important to fill out this form to get tagged in our system as a possible candidate.
Next, you’ll get an email directing you to look up what race you could run in and update your profile. From there, you’ll get details about our candidate intro conference calls. We’re scheduling these every couple days until we settle into a weekly or bi-weekly rhythm.
On those intro calls, you get a quick overview of what Run for Something is looking for, a few things to be thinking about as you decide whether or not to run, an overview of what campaigns look like, and a chance to ask a few questions.
After that, you can opt to keep going through our process and sign up to get scheduled for a 1:1 half-hour conversation with a Run for Something volunteer.
The point of that 1:1 is a chance for Run for Something to get to know our potential candidates and for the candidates to ask questions of someone who has a campaign background and a good sense of the resources and training programs out there.
After that, if you decide to keep going forward with running, you’ll be invited to the Run for Something Slack community, where you’ll get access to resources, training invites, and direct communication with an incredible network of political campaign alum and other people across the country.
We’ll be working with our volunteers to help identify candidates who’d benefit from further conversations about any additional investments we can make. Full transparency: We can’t give 100% of our time and money to 100% of the people who sign up to run, but we want to help as many people as possible in as many ways as we can.
So you want to help
Lots and lots (and lots!) of people are asking how they can help — if you’re one of them, thank you! In order to keep track, we’re asking everyone who wants to volunteer — whether it’s for us or for one of our candidates — to sign up at runforsomething.net/volunteer.
Right now, the most important thing volunteers can help with is talking to potential candidates. Eventually, we’ll have other things to do, from making calls to knocking doors to helping candidates with specific skills or free services. But that’ll come later.
So with that in mind, once you sign up to volunteer, you’ll get asked to fill out a very quick survey so we can get more specific details on your background and make sure you’re committed to this project.
The volunteers helping with candidate outreach are highly empowered. We’re asking you to do a little bit of work for the candidates and a little bit of work for us. You’re expected to guide the potential leaders of our party to the right next step, whether that’s a training, a high-impact volunteer opportunity, or something else entirely — and also help us find the people we can invest more time and money in.
This is important and we need folks who can commit to taking it seriously.
We’re training all of our volunteers with conference calls, optional 1:1s, and an extensive guide with lots of screenshots that walks through our free suite of online tools, including Slack, Calendly, Trello, and good ole fashioned Gmail. We’re make sure volunteers are able to efficiently and effectively have these conversations and answer any questions that might come up.
Candidate outreach is kind of like being a “political concierge service.” It’s awesome. If you’re a former field organizer who misses your best volunteers, or you’re a comms person who never got a chance to talk to “real people” on a campaign and want to, this is for you. (And if you don’t have any campaign experience, sign up and see how you feel after the conference call!)
So you want to know literally how we’re doing it
We’re using relatively cheap tools available to any progressive organization or candidate — our donations are currently processed through ActBlue, our CRM and email service provider is Action Network, and our website is hosted on Squarespace. The site was designed by Jennifer Kinon’s amazing team at OCD. They’re all great companies with top notch customer service.
Volunteers are the backbone of this organization. We’re currently raising money (our average gift is only $21! Join us!) in order to hire up a team that can support this growing network.
So you don’t care about any of that and are here for the inspirational stories
Sure, we can deliver that. In honor of our new extraordinarily unqualified and incompetent Secretary of Education, meet three people who she’s inspired to run:
A woman from Pennsylvania who signed up to run on Tuesday afternoon:
On Thursday, through sheer persistence, I was able to secure a meeting with my senator about the Betsy DeVos nomination. Working tirelessly, I (with the help of some extraordinary women) gathered over 500 letters from constituents and 11,000 signatures from educators including 8 PA state teachers of the year telling the Senator to vote no on DeVos. In spite of all of that and a meeting with his staff on Monday, he voted yes for DeVos today.
I want to run because even though it was hard work, I loved meeting with my senator’s constituents, hearing their stories, and responding to their concerns. I want to keep that work up, and I ultimately want to be the type of elected official that takes constituent concerns seriously (especially when they are the ones who will be directly impacted by the decisions I make) and advocates on their behalf (rather than on behalf of billionaire donors and special interest groups). I want to advance the progressive values my senator failed to advance today and make life better for the Pennsylvanians he and others in government have been ignoring.
An Oklahoman:
Our senators in Oklahoma admittedly heard the cries of thousands of constituents for the past 2 weeks to vote no on Betsy DeVos’ confirmation to Secretary of Education. In turn, they admittedly ignored those cries, and threw national education to the highest bidder, stuck to their party, and misrepresented Oklahoma. This has made me sick, and it’s time for me to fight.
A mom in Massachusetts:
I worked in education and education advocacy in west Africa for 7 years. Now I’m back home, and a single mom to a three year old. I know more about effective education than Betsy DeVos. How can I do something about it!?
Run for Something is committed to helping these people — and the 4300+ like them — run and win, however we can. Join us. Sign up at runforsomething.net.