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SMT is developing online digital campaigning training for electoral and ballot initiative staff and key volunteers.

Ready to deepen your electoral campaign skills to build grassroots engagement and win in the digital age? Here’s an affordable way to join a cohort of peers and ramp up your skills.

We expect the first trainings to start in spring 2020. Contact us if you’d like to collaborate.

Over the last 6 years, SMT has run online training for staff from over 1,700 organizing groups and unions. Trainings have ranged from one-off webinars to a robust Digital Campaigning Certificate Program for movement organizers. More than 200 people are enrolled this year, with the next cohort starting in September.

Who this is for

• Electoral campaigners, organizers, field, communications and fundraising staff who want to deepen their digital campaigning skills
• Activists, staffers and candidates who want to help shape effective electoral campaigns that build grassroots engagement for justice and advance a sustainable future
• Candidates who want to win and do it in a way that lays the groundwork for victory on a progressive policy agenda once in office
• Those who need to wage aggressive, efficient ballot initiative campaigns and activate thousands of people in a small window of time during the election season – directly or in supportive roles through progressive organizations

What it includes

• Live sessions on digital strategy, tools and tactics for electoral campaigns – in a condensed time frame to deal with campaign scheduling realities. This can include small group sessions set up to respond quickly to needs identified by partners.
• A diverse instructor team with deep offline and online electoral experience
• Ongoing access to SMT’s extensive, online up-to-date course library in digital campaigning. Assignments to watch particular video clips from the online video library will be made before and between live sessions.
• Ongoing access to a peer community of progressive digital campaigners via Slack, including a channel just for electoral campaigners.

Cost

In general, each live session will cost $40-$50 per person. SMT seeks partnerships to invest in much lower group rates, reducing the cost further for everyone. This is the same cost structure SMT has used in all of its training.

Niche in the electoral training ecosystem

SMT’s goal is to provide high quality training online (not in-person) at a very low cost so that a maximum number of people can access it.

SMT sees this training as an add-on to excellent campaign training that is already available in these ways:

• SMT training goes deeper into digital campaigning
• It uses an explicit lens of laying the groundwork for movement building
• Its primary target audiences are staff of down-ballot races, and organizational staffers who are involved with electoral work and ballot initiatives
• It is designed to scale – so there are no limits to participation. Larger registration numbers will prompt more small group sessions.

Some ways we invite collaboration

Group sponsors. We welcome partnerships with organizations and networks that may be interested in sponsoring a “group rate” – providing access to their network at a significantly reduced cost. In that case, SMT can set up a registration portal so that the sponsor simply shares the URL for that page with their network. Here is an example of what that looks like for SEIU which has 70 staffers in SMT’s current Digital Campaigning cohort.

Advisors. Select people working in this arena have been invited to provide feedback and guidance as the program develops. SMT will acknowledge these people with appreciation at the bottom of the program’s landing page. The time commitment for this role is small but important – it might include reviewing the curriculum topics list a couple of times, a phone call for guidance or an introduction if it makes sense.

Digital campaigning Instruction. SMT sees value in exposing trainees to the range of support available in the electoral training organizational ecosystem. If you offer particular relevant expertise and are with a non-profit organization in this space or working as staff on a campaign, it may make sense to be a guest instructor.

For more information: [email protected]