Transit Campaign Plan Outline
Your organization and coalition have been invited to embark on a six-month exercise to develop a detailed
campaign plan aimed at winning a dedicated and substantial funding source for transit infrastructure and transit
oriented development in your state. In a ten to fifteen page document (more if necessary), the campaign plan
should outline the specific funding mechanism to be pursued and contain several key sections:
 a campaign situation analysis that sets the stage for strategies, tactics and activities of the plan
(introduction and situation analysis);
 a description of campaign goals and objectives;
 a listing of campaign targets;
 a campaign strategies section that defines and describes the campaign’s primary strategic
approaches to achieving its goals and objectives;
 a section that documents the tactics and activities and timeline that will need to be undertaken to
implement each main strategy;
 a structure of the campaign section designed to ensure high-impact campaign implementation; and,
 a campaign budget section that will specify funding needs drawn from the situation analysis.
This will be a confidential document that is not to be circulated beyond the planning team. The plan (or a
redacted version if necessary) will become part of an application to raise the necessary funds to implement the
campaign plan.
Smart Growth America will provide funding and other resources to your coalition to carry out the campaign
planning process and ensure that a competed, high quality plan emerges by the intended deadline. A timeline
of the nine-month planning process and a draft template for the campaign plan are provided below. Once the
template has been agreed on, the planning work should commence with the goal of have a final plan ready by
June 2010.
Campaign Plan - Document Template
1) Introduction and Situation Analysis
Introduction
Describe briefly the transit operations and transit-oriented-development policy issues on which the campaign
will focus, the importance of the issue in your state, the need for policy reform, and the anticipated
governmental processes and time horizons for addressing these issues. This section is designed to provide the
factual background required for an outsider, such as a funder, to move easily through the planning document
without confronting major informational obstacles.
Situation Analysis: External Environment
Describe the challenges, opportunities, factors and forces that arise in the political, economic, social,
environmental and other arenas external to each of the lead campaign organizations and that will have
important impacts on the success of the campaign. Those opportunities, challenges, forces and factors include,
but are not limited to:
 the economic and fiscal climate for the issue in the state;
 public awareness and opinion – the state of both on the issues; reasons for the current state; what we
know and need to know;
 orientations of key decision makers on the issues– governor, state legislators, state DOT and other
relevant departments;
 stances of key opinion leaders and their potential to be mobilized – editorial boards, local officials,
community leaders, experts, etc.;
 state of media coverage of the issues: extent and quality;
 messaging: what appears to be working/not working with key audiences and why;
 likely opposition and supporters and their respective strengths and weaknesses; and
 relevant lessons from recent administrative and legislative initiatives.
Situation Analysis: Internal environment
The internal factors that should be noted here include but are not limited to:
 resources that can be brought to the campaign by the state team’s staff and boards, such as availability
for campaign staffing, expertise on relevant issues, experience in key areas of campaigning (e.g., media
outreach), and organizing and mobilizing capacity (online and offline);
 staff and other resources that are likely to be brought to the campaign by allies and partners that have
already been mobilized (please be specific and realistic about the amount of time in FTEs each staff
person will be able to dedicate to this campaign);
 immediate prospects for additional funding;
 direct access to and influence with key decision makers; and
 direct access to those with important relationships with key decision makers.
2) Goals and Objectives
Primary Policy Goal and Strategic Vehicle
The central policy goal for this campaign should specifically deal with a substantive funding solution for transit
expansion and operations in the region and state. The funding solution should go beyond a singular project and
provide for a comprehensive and ideally long term funding stream for transit infrastructure. Choosing the right
solution to pursue will require honest assessment of the current political climate and public demand. Economic
conditions are tough everywhere, but where is there a realistic potential for establishing a dedicated funding
stream? The solution should be a specific, winnable goal (with numbers and time lines). The campaign plan
should then be designed specifically to achieve this primary goal.
In addition to identifying this goal, you should also identify the strategic vehicle to ‘carry’ this goal. The strategic
vehicle could be a bill, a referendum or ballot measure, an executive order, or a budget resolution for example.
Once you know the vehicle, you can determine the decision maker or makers you must convince to achieve your
goal (see below for more info). The campaign should move forward with discipline while keeping the primary
policy goal, strategic vehicle and the targets in mind at all times.
Secondary Goals
It would sensible to identify secondary goals for this multi-year campaign. If a substantive campaign is to be
launched, what other related, smaller wins along the way should be pursued? These could be policy and
organizational objectives. For example, you may want to increase your group’s membership by XX%; pass a
statewide complete streets law by X date; educate and cultivate X new allies in the state legislature, etc. The
secondary objectives should not detract from the primary policy goal, but reinforce it. The number of secondary
objectives should be limited to three to five and identified as either short-term, intermediate-term, or longterm.
Listing, describing and prioritizing each of the primary and secondary campaign goals and objectives
This section should be more than simply a set of bullets that list the goals and objectives. They should begin to
tell the story of the campaign. You should describe each of the policy objectives and characterize them in a way
that connects them back to the “External and Internal Settings” section, particularly with respect to their relative
feasibility or win-ability. The policy objectives in your multiple-objective platform may not be equally win-able.
The full list of goals and objectives needs to be prioritized clearly (i.e., what are you willing to drop if resources
aren’t available?). A clear, honest priority setting process will help both lead partners and funders (and other
potential audiences) better understand how resources are going to be allocated among sub-issues.
3) Targets
Primary decision makers
It is critical to know who your main target is throughout the whole campaign. The primary decision maker is the
person or people who have a direct vote or authority to make the policy goal a reality. If the strategic vehicle is
a ballot measure or referendum, the decision maker is the voting public. If it is a bill, then it is the supportive
and swing votes in the legislative body. If it is an administrative policy change, the decision maker may be the
governor, agency head, the members of a commission, or perhaps the MPO. Where possible, list the names of
the actual decision makers within the plan.
Secondary targets
Who can influence the primary decision makers? These are the people and organizations who can help sway the
primary target. Secondary targets may include political leaders, organizations with special clout such as a
chamber of commerce or a citizen group, or it could be an advisor to your target. Not everyone who has
influence should be listed here, but identifying five to eight strong secondary targets will help you channel the
campaign resources in the right direction.
Main public audiences
In any grassroots campaign, the public audience is a critical component. In this section you should prioritize
which critical audiences your campaign must engage to be successful (note: the ‘general public’ is not an
audience – you need to get as specific as possible). Consider geographic and demographic factors as well as
specific constituent groups. For example, perhaps you might choose to focus on reaching metropolitan
commuters or the suburban soccer moms. Prioritizing the key public audiences will help inform the
communications and messaging strategy of the campaign.
4) Strategies, Tactics, Activities & Time Line
In this section, provide an outline of the major strategies, tactics and activities that will be used in the campaign.
It should not include all details, but offer the framework of anticipated activity over the period of the campaign.
You should include strategies you will employ to influence both the primary and secondary targets, the tactics
you will need to use to make those strategies a reality and any activities to execute the tactic (for instance, if
your strategy to win a legislative fight includes influencing swing legislators, a tactic might be to get constituents
to write letter and make calls to those swing legislators and an activity would be to go over your coalition’s lists
of supporters to identity constituents).
To maintain continuity with the goals-objectives format used above, it is helpful to define your tactics and
activities in terms of each of the core strategies and goals they will serve. In other words, list and describe each
of the tactics you will use to help implement each of your strategies. This approach will ensure continuity and
consistency in the campaign planning process. It will also improve the value of campaign performance
evaluation by ensuring that the activities are assessed in terms of their effectiveness in implementing strategies
(and ultimately their impact on achieving campaign objectives). For example, media ‘hits’ from the release of a
report will be judged not simply on the basis of their numbers, but primarily on whether they were a useful
tactic for carrying out a core campaign strategy, and so on.
It’s also helpful to identify and describe each of your tactics and activities in terms of campaign components like
coalition building, communications, and grassroots organizing. The advantage in adding this format is that you
will be able to easily identify these components as a group even though they will be sorted by strategy
(assuming you use the model above).
Finally, to maximize the value of the list of strategies, tactics and activities to the campaign, we highly
recommend that you generate a spreadsheet that adds a timeline to, and assigns staff and partner
responsibilities for, all campaign activities. Important dates of which are you aware, such as legislative deadlines
and government report releases, should be inserted into the timeline to help planners ensure that they are
capitalizing on every feasible opportunity.
5) Campaign Structure and Operations
The elements and processes that should be described in this section include, but are not limited to, the
following:
 clear lines of authority and responsibilities for each staff person and campaign partners;
 how (and by whom) decisions will be made that ensure efficient use of scarce resources and campaign
assets;
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how (and by whom) strategic and tactical advocacy decisions will be made, including how the campaign
will respond to quick changes and sudden attacks;
how multiple campaign components will be managed to be coordinated parts of an integrated whole;
the face(s) and voice(s) of the campaign;
the campaign leader;
how campaign players and other stakeholders will be kept informed of campaign developments and
needs;
any advisory structure that will be needed and its role in the campaign;
the relationships and expectations among campaign partners and between SGA and campaign leaders;
how campaign participants will be held accountable;
evaluation of campaign progress and performance; and
the process for using evaluation results to make strategic and tactical adjustments.
Campaign budget and additional funding needs
Having developed the main elements of the campaign, in this section, you will lay out the proposed budget.
Describe what resources already exist such as staff, coalition capacity, membership/volunteer base, funding, etc.
Next, indicate the additional resources needed to successfully implement the campaign plan. Be as
comprehensive as you can and break out expenditures into discrete categories such as
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Staff – campaign director, field staff, communications/media director, lobbyist(s), administrative staff,
volunteer coordinator, online campaign manager, fundraising director
Consultants including general strategic campaign consultants, media/communications/message
development experts, etc.
Office overhead – rent, utilities, phone, internet, basic office supplies, computers, etc.
Legal counsel – on retainer
Printing – direct mail, etc.
Media buys – TV, radio, blog/web ads, newspaper and magazines, etc.
Travel
Polling and/or focusing grouping
Signature gathering (if applicable) – may have to pay a firm to gather signatures to get a measure on the
ballot; if you don’t choose to hire, then you need to budget the staff and opportunity costs for recruiting
many volunteers to help with this.
Note: There may be an understandable tendency to minimize real resource gaps for fear of creating an
impression that the campaign does not have the horsepower needed for a winning effort. In view of the interest
already expressed by funders in these state-based transit campaigns, such an orientation would likely be
counter-productive. A refusal to document real resource gaps and funding needs could well give funders an
impression that lead groups don’t understand the demands of successful campaigning or ultimately lead to an
under-staffed, under-funded and ultimately unsuccessful campaign.