10 Years of Campaign Training Lessons #1: Your campaign is only as good as its least-trained staffer

Published: February 19th, 2026

Table of contents

1. Lesson #1: Your Campaign Is Only As Good as Its Least-Trained Staffer

2. The Cost of Under-Trained Staff

3. 3 Rules For Good Campaign Staff Training

4. The Ripple Effect of Campaign Staff Training

You may have heard that NDTC is marking its 10th year providing political candidate and campaign staff training. Over the last decade, we’ve trained over 125,000 Democrats to win elections, watched our alumni flip seats across the country, and built the infrastructure that generates massive Democratic talent. Now, we’re sharing all those insights with you.

This is the first installment of “10 Lessons in 10 Years,” a series where we’ll break down one insight we’ve seen proven true time and again, across thousands of campaigns.

Ten years is a long time in politics. We've seen the landscape shift dramatically — new technologies, new voter priorities, new ways to organize and mobilize communities. But through every cycle, every surprise result, and every hard-fought victory, certain truths have remained constant. The fundamentals still win races. Authentic storytelling still moves voters. And a well-trained team still makes the difference between a campaign that falls short and one that makes history. These are the lessons that no political science textbook will teach you — they come from the field, from the candidates who took risks, and from the staff who worked impossible hours to deliver results. We've distilled a decade's worth of experience so that you can walk into your next campaign better prepared than ever.

Some of these lessons we’ve had to learn the hard way. Now you don’t have to. Notebooks out, pencils ready.

Lesson #1: Your Campaign Is Only As Good as Its Least-Trained Staffer

Our first lesson is on something that quietly determines more races than people realize: campaign staff training. 

As you may already know if you have a race under your belt or one underway, campaigns are planes that you build while you’re actively flying them. You’re resource-strapped, time-constrained, and everything feels urgent… because it is. Investing in campaign staff training can feel like a luxury. Your field director is a recent college graduate whose only experience is knocking on doors as an intern. Your finance director is your accountant friend who has never dealt with campaign finance compliance. You assume you’ll figure it out as you go.

But your campaign is only as strong as your weakest link. And as we’ve learned, preparation and campaign staff training isn’t the luxury you think it is. It’s a necessity. The good news? You don't have to navigate this alone. Whoever is on your team, we can equip them with the professional-grade resources to excel at their job and help you win.

The Cost of Under-Trained Staff

Let’s talk about one of the biggest flubs in campaign staff training history. 

Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

In the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 loss, it’s assumed that his event planning team tried to secure the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia for a press conference with Rudy Giuliani — but mistakenly booked the parking lot of a landscaping business by the same name. Cue nationwide ridicule and humiliation for Trump — a moment so botched and notorious it garnered its own Wikipedia page. 

That’s the cost of not investing in good campaign staff training on a large scale. 

Your campaign team is most likely full of smart, passionate, and hard-working people — that’s why you hired them. But they’ll need specific skills to execute a winning campaign.

Does your fundraising director know how to manage call time? Does your field director know how to run a persuasion field program?

If the answer is no, get them trained. Send them to NDTC. Because trial and error on the job costs you money, time, and votes, but getting your campaign staff training early helps you avoid mistakes and is free when you do it with us.

3 Rules For Good Campaign Staff Training

Sending your new hire a 40-page campaign manual and hoping they read it isn’t training. Good campaign staff training should be:

Skills-based. Your field director needs to know how to cut turf, build a volunteer schedule, and track voter contact. If at least two of those terms are new to you, that’s the whole point. You can't assume they – or you – know how to do it all, but your staff can learn it all with us.

Ongoing. Campaigns operate in mini-seasons and change as they move from primary to general, from summer to fall, from persuasion to GOTV. Your campaign staff training must adapt to keep up with where your team is at.

Doable. Campaign staff training can’t be effective if it’s not reasonable to access and accomplish. Exhibit A: the aforementioned 40-page manual that turns into homework that will most likely get brushed under the rug. Our online courses and live trainings? They’re focused and digestible, led by experts who take questions in real time, and most trainings take less than an hour.

The Ripple Effect of Campaign Staff Training

We’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth repeating: when both candidates and staff are trained, there’s a ripple effect that boosts Democrats for years to come. 

Your finance director? They're going to help you manage your budget when you win. That field director you trained? They're going to run the field for three more campaigns. 

Training now pays off later. That's how you build a bench with long-term power.

We often hear people say, "We can't afford campaign staff training,” and we answered that call at NDTC with free resources — because if our movement wants to win, we can't afford not to train. Ten years in, this is one of the lessons we’re most certain about: use our free resources to invest in your team, or lose to someone who did.

At NDTC, we've trained thousands of campaign staff over the past ten years. The candidates who bring their teams to our training just operate differently. They make fewer mistakes. They execute better. They win more.

We will train you to run for office. And we’ll train your campaign staff to execute your race, from communications, to digital, to fundraising and beyond. So if you’re ready to join our team of thousands of trained candidates and staff, join us.