Few people work on their first political campaign at 40. I did. From March through June, I had the chance to work for Robert White’s mayoral campaign. The opportunity arrived unexpectedly. While looking for some help in their fundraising efforts, I heard the following conversation occurred:

Person 1: We need someone who can articulate a vision, galvanize people around that vision, and encourage people to give.
Person 2: You’re describing a nonprofit executive director.
Person 1: Do you know any good executive directors looking for work?

So, I got a call. And, after taking that call, I learned a lot.

If I thought that politics was the way to create maximum impact, then I would have been involved much earlier. I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to politics. But, I came away from this engagement with two significant learnings.

First, there are good people in politics. I said yes to this engagement, because I think our current mayor does really poorly on the issues I care about most - education and justice. But, I came to learn that it wasn’t just that Bowser was bad. Robert was good. I was excited to learn that there are actually people that enter politics to solve problems. Some do it because they care. Robert is one of those people. I saw it in so many interactions, including when he spoke to my own nieces.

Second, especially when it comes to publicly-financed campaigns, the work of revenue generation is about building good systems and procedures. And, I would argue, it’s actually about four specific processes: sign delivery, donation completion, surrogate activation, and event planning. These are all actually processes that can be articulated and monitored. We need to get signs hung and delivered, get interested people to donate, get enthusiastic supporters to recruit new ones, and get our strongest advocates to gather others to hear from the candidate.

That, it seems to me, is the work. And, because we did these things well, we forced the incumbent to work really hard to win the race - making it much closer than many expected.

I don’t actually imagine working in politics again (though I would volunteer for Robert in the future), but the experience encouraged me to look at the key processes to be optimized in any mission-driven environment. That is something I will carry into all future engagements. 

I’m thankful I got the opportunity to learn.

And, if given the chance, I would gladly vote for Robert again.