We Learn: Practices for Campaign Success

A few months ago, I wrote about my complicated relationship with Taylor Swift. In that post, I reflected on how a knawing resentment toward the mega-star helped to unveil a yearning to write music myself and ultimately led me to confront my fears and learn about songwriting (to be clear: WAY easier said than done!). I then paralleled this experience with P.A.C.E’s commitment to our core value, We Learn and detailed a six-step approach we use to grow our skills as adult trainers and facilitators. 

Here’s what I’ve learned since posting that last blog: what helps me to be brave, get out of my comfort zone, and try new things is being part of a team that celebrates reflection, making and learning from mistakes, and growth. At P.A.C.E., learning isn’t just a core value—it’s a strategy. In advocacy, communications, engagement, and electoral campaigns, evaluating data, adapting, and refining is critical to impact. For the past year, we’ve focused on learning by improving our adult facilitation skills and deepening our expertise in campaign strategy. Here are some of the ways we’ve been doing that:

1. Learning within communities of other experts – We’re lucky to have smart and committed colleagues and partners. Over the last year, P.A.C.E. team members attended and presented at conferences hosted by the PIE Network, Texas Public Charter School Association, Charter School Growth Fund, City Fund, Murmuration and Bloomberg Philanthropies. We’ve shared best practices and gathered transferable information about our sector’s latest trends and developments through these gatherings.
2. Learning from and alongside partners in the field – In our work with The Memphis Lift, we saw firsthand how powerful digital lead organizing can be. By designing a campaign that prioritized value-driven digital engagement—emphasizing leads rather than just click-throughs—we helped generate hundreds of new, highly engaged organizing and advocacy leads. These weren’t just names on a list; they were future advocates primed for outreach and cultivation from the Memphis Lift team. Since then, we’ve applied this lead generation approach across multiple campaigns as an entry point for organizing and a strategic list-building tool for our partners.
3. Redesigning trainings – We’ve shifted from simply presenting information to guiding partners through interactive, applied learning experiences. One partner told us, “This was the first training where I left with something I could use the next day.”
4. Creating a culture of regular feedback – We’ve built internal spaces for honest reflection and iterative improvement to help us refine what resonates, improve future campaigns, and share actionable insights with our partners. Twice a year, we host internal creative review sessions to analyze the assets from our voter participation campaigns, comparing them to turnout data and electoral wins. We look closely at which styles, images, and messages moved the needle. The feedback we seek from and give to one another is specific and actionable. These are some ways we’re trying to evaluate our efforts more consistently. 

We have important goals this year, and learning will be key to our success. At P.A.C.E., learning sharpens our strategies and enhances our capacity-building ability. Continuous refinement of our approaches leads to stronger outcomes for the communities we serve, and our investment in learning allows us to train partners better and build sustainable advocacy infrastructures.

By Sara Bobak