School Board Campaign Resources
These tools serve to empower anyone to fight for quality public education. Right now, parents, teachers, students, and community members across the country have an incredible opportunity to support school board members and start or join campaigns to galvanize support in their communities. Together, we can change public education for the better, and along the way, we can change our political system as well.
Recruiting and Developing Candidates
Use this checklist to assess what challenges or opportunities are happening in your school district, and identify the key issues that you’d like to focus on in your campaign.
You can use this list of questions when you sit down with a potential candidate to assess their reasons for running, relevant background experience, and values alignment.
You can use this worksheet to develop a “Story of Self,” a personal narrative format developed by longtime organizer Marshall Ganz to communicate who you are, why you’re running, and what experience you’ve had that motivates you to take action.
Getting Ready to Run
Use this checklist before you launch your campaign and set goals for the different areas of work. This planning worksheet also links to relevant information in Section 3 that walks you through each area of work.
This resource from Run For Something is intended to give you a basic understanding of the filing requirements in your state and where to turn for information on how to run for office. It includes how to get on the ballot in each state, key deadlines, and key resources and contacts in your state.
Building a Winning Team
Use this guide from PowerLabs to facilitate your first team meeting. Research shows that a strong “team launch” is a critical factor to a team’s success.
Use this guide to assign roles to your team members according to their skills & availability.
Fundraising
The linked budget templates provide sample budgets at three different levels (small, medium, and larger races) that give an overview of campaign expenses & priorities you can choose. The fundraising templates provide examples of how you can make a fundraising plan for each month of your campaign to raise the funds that your campaign will need.
This training from the National Democratic Training Committee walks through how to make an effective fundraising ‘ask’, helping you overcome any natural discomfort you might have and helping you develop effective skills for making fundraising asks.
Communications & Messaging
Our guide provides top-line messaging advice based on our studies of different messaging approaches to defend public education against right-wing attacks.
This 5-step “messaging roadmap” is a summary for how to put research-backed messages into action to fight back against far-right attacks on our schools and kids.
You can use this worksheet to develop a “Story of Self,” a personal narrative format developed by longtime organizer Marshall Ganz to communicate who you are, why you’re running, and what experience you’ve had that motivates you to take action.
This sample stump speech from the National Democratic Training Committee highlights key elements of a stump speech and how to put the different elements of your core narrative into a stump speech.
This sample communications plan from the National Democratic Training Committee walks through several steps for how to assemble a plan.
This slide deck walks you through key lessons on using both an offensive and defensive approach when facing escalated attacks from far-right opposition
Field & Organizing
Win Number Calculator & Voter Targeting Calculator
Use the Win Number template to calculate the number of votes needed to win in your particular race. Use the Voter Targeting Template to figure out how big your Persuasion & Mobilization Universe should be.
Use the Persuasion & Mobilization Universe Template to figure out which groups of voters and how many you want to target for persuasion efforts.
Use this tool to make a calendar with your campaign’s goals for the number of doors knocked and voters identified for each month of your campaign. You can add additional columns for your goals for texting, phone banking, and reaching voters through public events.
This worksheet breaks down each type of leader or organization you should consider when it comes to seeking endorsements.
Co-Governance
Co-governance is a collaborative approach between elected officials and community members/organizations that extends beyond election day. We must have a plan to support our candidates after election day with co-governance strategies that starts with building lasting people-powered campaigns. Check out the School Board Candidate Toolkit from HEAL To Win for more guidance.
Use this checklist to review important steps in transitioning from campaigning to co-governance, looking at the pre-election phase, immediately after their election, and in preparing for future campaigns.