Hello Friends!

Thank you for visiting our GoFundMe page! 

We are training the next generation of organizers who want to work at the local, state, and federal level. There have only been three black women presidential campaign managers in our nation's history. Worse, many young people from underserved communities have no clue that politics is a real career path. 

That has to change. 

Community colleges can at times feel overlooked by local, state, and federal political campaigns as an incubator for talent. There are 2.1 million community college students in California, with roughly three out of four students being a person of color. At the same time, campaign volunteers are often the first to be future recruits for paid campaign positions due to their proximity to paid staffers. Unfortunately, students from 2-year institutions are less likely to volunteer on a campaign because a majority of their time outside of education is spent working full-time and attending classes. 

Community colleges should be a critical population for political campaigns aiming to recruit talented students who also reflect a local community’s culturally and ethnically diverse communities for campaign work. Although most community colleges offer “courses in government, foreign policy, political philosophy, and comparative government,” most do not currently offer a workforce development program to move students into political campaign professions. One reason is 2-year students are less likely to have the financial means to participate in extracurricular activities. Nearly 61% of community college students come from households earning $30,000 or less, while the average 2-year student spends up to $17,000 a year on tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and transportation. Even with financial aid, 2-year students are shouldering additional living expenses to attend college.  

The purpose of the community college campaign training program is to provide students interested in civic engagement the skill-sets in campaign writing, grassroots organizing, data organization and analysis, email storytelling and fundraising, and financial management. This is a paid internship program to ensure students with financial constraints are not deterred from the opportunity to participate. Additionally, the program will assist students who complete the training with job placement in political campaigns.

The Training 

Winning Margins is to host an electoral and grassroots training for Southern California community college students on November 9th and 10th in Long Beach. Click here to apply. 

The spring training has not been scheduled. 

Your contribution would cover: 

(1) Trainers 
(2) Training supplies and materials 
(3) Training venue 
(4) Training refreshments and lunch and dinner for trainees
(5) Financial aid for students with childcare costs, travel expenses or who have to miss a work shift to attend the training.
(6) A job placement program to support trainees who complete the training to find paid employment in grassroots organizing and electoral campaigns. 

The Program Curriculum 

(1) Building a Campaign Vision: a comprehensive look behind crafting and implementing a campaign vision for your candidate. 
(2) Communications: focuses on effective communications tactics and mediums that can influence voters to engage with and support your candidate. 
(3) Data: voter data and analysis impacts every part of a campaign, from campaign office location to digital ad placement. We will examine the role data has on modern campaign strategy and address important questions to ask when analyzing voter information. 
(4) Email Outreach: how to write a strong engagement email and how to structure a powerful subject line. 
Supporter/Voter List Acquisition: this portion of the training focuses on the offline and online tactics needed to grow a dynamic email list. 
(5) Grassroots Organizing: grassroots organizers are critical for any campaign operation. From volunteer recruitment activities to candidate events, the campaign organizer is the linchpin that keeps a campaign running. This section breaks down a day in the life of an organizer and how their work directly influences department outcomes and election results.