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https://runforsomething.net/
lib recruiting mechanisms
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Run for Something’s 2022 Strategic Plan
Where we started
Five years ago, on January 20th, 2017, Run for Something officially launched into the world as nothing more than an idea, a website, and a strategic plan.
Every year since, in the service of living our values of transparency and accountability, Run for Something puts out an updated plan laying out what we’ve done, what we learned, and what we’re going to do next.
Our work is long-term and strategic; we don’t pivot from cycle to cycle. Instead, we’re always deepening our efforts, refining our program, and prioritizing as the moment requires.
With five great (and hard) years behind us, we’ve done some amazing things, learned some tough lessons, and grown carefully.
As of the end of 2021: We’ve recruited more than 90,000 people to consider running for office, endorsed more than 1800, and elected 637 all-stars to local office in nearly every single state!
All that is just the beginning. 2022 will be a big year for Run for Something and more importantly, for democracy. It’s all on the line.
But before we get into it: As we hit a big milestone in the lifetime of the organization, we want to take a moment and step back to review what we’ve accomplished year by year.
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Together, this team — that includes the staff, candidates, volunteers, supporters, lurkers, cheerleaders, and even the haters who make us want to be better — has built something incredible.
In 2017 (also known as year one):
15,000+ young people entered the Run for Something pipeline
We had 72 endorsed candidates, 35 of whom won their elections
More than 6000 individual donors supported our work
We engaged 60+ partners, 2000+ active volunteers, and 500+ mentors entered our network
We invested $200,000 in VA, split across candidates and re-grants to partner organizations who did canvassing in our candidates’ districts
We held the first ever National Run for Office Day, during which 2500 people signed up to run for office in 24 hours
We did all this with a team of 5 (by the end of the year) and a $750k annual budget
By the end of year two, 2018:
The pipeline of potential candidates grew to over 28,000
We hit 650 endorsements and 200+ wins in 40 states — RFS was responsible for 10% of all flipped state legislative seats in 2018
We ran first-of-their kind TV and print ads in Florida to recruit candidates to run against NRA-backed opponents
Our volunteer network now numbered over 8,000
On the second National Run for Office Day, more than 9,000 people signed up to run
We commissioned first-of-its-kind research, and learned some fun facts, like that 10% of people who sign up with us actually run for office; that RFS districts have 1% higher turnout on average over comparable districts; and that one the biggest value-adds we can bring to candidates is community.
Our small team did all this on a $1.6m budget
After two years, we were really cooking with gas. Year three, 2019, ended with:
46,000 young people now in the candidate pipeline
Our lifetime endorsement number hit 953 candidates and 304 winners. We flipped seats on the Indianapolis city-county council, helped the youngest woman ever elected in Ames, IA, and elected the first Somali-American in Lewiston, Maine, among other things.
We now had 10,000 volunteers working with us.
We launched runforwhat.net, an innovative public tool allowing people to look up exactly what offices were on the ballot in their community.
We ran $100,000 of recruitment ads in Texas — ultimately, 20% of non-incumbent Democrats running for state house came through the RFS pipeline.
On the third National Run for Office Day, another 5000 people signed up with us 40+ partners participated
Our partnerships continued to grow, as we launched the Grassroots Redistricting Project with Swing Left and Arena, and kicked off focused candidate-recruitment-via-text efforts with Contest Every Race.
We grew and formalized our alumni advisor program, as every new endorsed candidate got matched with someone who’d been in the same shoes in years prior.
We engaged every Democratic presidential candidate around signing the Down Ballot Pledge, promising to build the party from the local candidates on up.
We did all this on a $2.2 million budget.
Then came 2020, year four — an exhausting, overwhelming, exciting, heartbreaking year:
We ended the year with more than 65k young people who’d entered the pipeline to consider running for office.
Our lifetime stats grew to 1,480 endorsements, 488 winners!!
Once the pandemic began, we hosted the Front Row Seat series, spotlighting incredible leaders pushing for local change
We launched resourcesforcampaigns.com — a hub for COVID campaign strategies — which had 20,000 visitors
We hosted the Armchair Chat Series — conversations with expert practitioners — that reached 2 million+ viewers
We expanded our alumni advisor program and built new platforms to promote candidates (like the podcast)
We raised $100k for state legislative races through RFS Ascend and $100k for Black candidates running for local office through ActBlue tandem fundraising.
We ran our messaging poll around public safety, helping candidates talk about tough issues
We built and launched an internal candidate tracking tool to manage the thousands of interactions we have with candidates through and after the endorsement process
We ran another round of research, debriefing with our candidates and further refining our program
We did all of that on a $2.6m budget
That brought us to year five, 2021 — which somehow, in spite of the odds and everything going on in the world, was Run for Something’s best year yet.
Our candidate pipeline grew from 67,000 to more than 90,000–2021 was our best recruitment year yet.