Volunteering: The Best Way to Plan Your Political Campaign
The best way to help yourself is by helping others, and few ventures illustrate this axiom better than political campaigning.
If you’re interested in running for office, then odds are that you’re the type of person who likes to take the initiative and get things done. You like depending on your own talents. You take pride in solving problems without help.
Here’s the problem: no matter how talented or intelligent or hard-working you are, you can’t run a successful political campaign by yourself.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t get pretty doggone far on your own shoe leather. But a single volunteer can make your work immeasurably easier, and a few donors can help finance effective advertising.
Marching to victory on election day is much more difficult if you’ve never volunteered your time for other candidates before . . . and not just because working on campaigns brings valuable experience (which it does, without a doubt).
The experience line is pretty obvious. Let’s take it a step further.
The fact is that helping other candidates with their campaigns is the single best way to get future help with your campaign.
People with whom you make phone calls, knock on doors and seal envelopes just might do the same for your political campaign in the future. By proving how hard you’re willing to work, you’ll form strong friendships and meet other volunteers who will go to bat for you someday, too.
A word of warning, though: don’t volunteer for anything if you’re only trying to help yourself. Not only is it vile, but it’s also easy for others to pick up on. If you’re just there to scout the talent, people will know that you don’t genuinely want to help.
Instead, find candidates and causes that you truly believe in, and volunteer your help because you want to. Even if you don’t ever run for office, you’ll have a great time, make plenty of friends, and learn more than a few marketable skills in the process.
And if you do end up becoming a candidate yourself someday, plenty of friends will show up to help . . . not because they have to, but because they want to.
Related Political Campaign & Local Election Strategies:
killercampaigning on November 15th, 2009
Oh, and don’t forget: it doesn’t matter what your talents and aptitudes are, there is always something you can do to help a campaign!