“Don’t just stop bad sh*t from happening; let’s make great sh*t happen!”

This is Part 1 of a two-part series about our updated Planning to Win guide. In Part 2, we’ll answer the questions that webinar registrants asked about planning winning campaigns. 

The stakes could not be higher. To protect our freedoms, organizations must find ways to win on issues from education to health care to immigration to trans rights — the list goes on and on. But how do we post wins in this political landscape when the noise level is turned up to 11? 

Based on our most recent Spitfire U, the answer is clear: Make a plan. 

Expert campaigners Deya Aldana (United We Dream), Kwentoria A. Williams (Children’s Defense Fund) and Tania Lown-Hect (Outdoor Alliance) joined Kristen Grimm (Spitfire) to discuss the updated Planning to Win guide and how to apply it in today’s rapidly shifting landscape. While the guide includes nine actionable steps for campaigners, our discussion focused on a few critical elements of a winning campaign plan. Below are highlights from the illuminating discussion, which you can watch in its entirety here.

  1. Define your victory. The main difference between a strategic communications plan and a campaign plan is that a campaign plan must build momentum that moves people to act toward a specific goal that results in a win or loss. It’s important to get specific. While a campaign should be grounded in an aspirational vision of what you want for the future, your actual victory has to be specific. It could be a policy change, corporate change or behavior change.
  2. Sometimes the campaign chooses you. There are two main types of campaigns — proactive or reactive. As a longtime advocate for protecting public lands, Outdoor Alliance had no choice but to spring into action after Senator Mike Lee included a provision to sell off up to 3.3 million acres of public lands in the Senate’s Budget Reconciliation Bill (also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill). 

    The alliance launched a campaign that urged senators to strike this provision. To make the issue real for people, Outdoor Alliance created maps highlighting the land that could have been sold off if the bill was approved — land that millions of Americans visit and enjoy every year. Over 4 million people viewed those maps, leading to almost 1 million people writing letters to their lawmakers against the sell-off of these public lands. The impact was truly astounding. Tania shared:

    “In our meetings with lawmakers they told us that they heard more from their constituents about public land issues this year than any other issue that they worked on. In the end, the lawmaker who proposed these sell offs publicly withdrew them, and we had a bunch of Republican lawmakers stand up and sign a letter that they would vote down the entire package if there were any public land sell-offs. Many of those legislators have gone on to join or form caucuses committed to protecting public lands in a bipartisan way.”
  3. Get a clear sense of the state of your issue. Often when campaigns fail, it’s not because the issue isn’t important; it’s because you’re running the wrong campaign. Take democracy campaigns, for example. As we go into a major election year, many organizations are running campaigns about “saving democracy.” However, according to recent polling by Kettering Foundation and GALLUP, while the majority of Americans believe that democracy is the best form of government (67%), just 24% are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the U.S. It’s hard to convince people to save something they don’t think is working. As Kristen explained:

    “The data tells us that campaigns should be about getting democracy to work well, not for people to save it. Because people are asking themselves, what has democracy done for me lately? At this point, if democracy was a staff person, they would be on a performance improvement plan.” 

    Another example is Our Home is Here, a campaign by United We Dream (UWD) to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Back in 2020, the first Trump administration attempted to end the program, which led to a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. After evaluating the campaign climate, Deya and her team decided to focus the campaign on telling stories about a group of people who were in the news daily that year: essential workers. As the campaign video highlights, because DACA allows recipients to get work permits, many recipients are teachers, nurses and doctors. This made the fight even more palatable to a broad audience, and SCOTUS ruled in UWD’s favor, citing that how the administration ended the program was unlawful. UWD is continuing to fight to protect the program today. 

    “The campaign hits really close to home. I was a DACA recipient and have loved ones who currently have DACA, so it was really important that we won to be able to keep those protections,” explained Deya. 

  1. Determine your influence strategy, or as Kwentoria said, “Find your people, know who you’re talking to and find the thing that’s going to work for them.” That requires understanding who has the power over whether you reach your milestones. What will get those folks on board?

    Following the 2024 election, Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) reevaluated which constituency groups could have the most influence on the new administration and state governments. They decided faith leaders would make the most headwinds. Kwentoria shared:

    “We know that faith institutions are so much more than just hubs for worship. They are also community resources. Your local church will run a food back and have a polling location during a local election. So there are people that are entering those four walls who are there not just to attend a worship service but maybe getting a community resource that gives them a connection to that church that they will never have with CDF … This year at our Hall Proctor Institute for Faith Leaders, which helps faith leaders integrate child advocacy into their ministry, we taught faith leaders how they can activate their communities to protect basic needs for children and families.” 

    And it’s working. Trained faith leaders helped Minnesota pass protections for the Child Tax Credit that made the state the best in the nation, and they helped pass protections for broadband actions in Mississippi, to name a few.

Final words of wisdom? I think Kristen send it best: 

“I hate for people to think we have to play small right now. I think that’s the wrong move. Think big, be imaginative, and know you can’t do it unless you try and plan to win. Let’s not just stop bad sh*t from happening … let’s make great sh*t happen.”

You heard her. 

Download the guide, and go make good stuff happen! If you’re interested in a Planning to Win training for your team or need help crafting a winning campaign strategy, reach out to Aketa Marie Williams at aketa@spitfirestrategies.com or me at annabelle@spitfirestrategies.com.