Comprehensive Manual

for

State Federations of the

College Democrats of America

Table of Contents

  1. What are the purpose and goals of a good state federation?
  2. Getting started with a new state federation
  3. Building membership and working with chapters
  4. Building a communications network
  5. Raising and spending money
  6. Working with the State Party and Creating Campaign Plans
  7. Coordinating with CDA
  8. Recruiting an Honorary Chair
  9. Hosting a good annual convention

Appendix:

  1. Template state federation constitution
  2. Campaign Plan Tips

I. What are the purpose and goals of a good state federation?

State federations are the national building blocks of CDA. They have a number of important purposes:

  1. To build College Democrats membership by reaching out to unorganized colleges and universities;
  1. To mobilize and organize existing chapters to support student issues and the Democratic Party in your state;
  1. To provide a reliable point of contact for CDA and the national Democratic Party; and
  1. To create a network through which campus chapters can work and share ideas with neighboring chapters.

Strong state federations set a number of goals for themselves. These include:

  1. To organize a College Democrats chapter on as many campuses in the state as possible;
  1. To develop a Campaign Plan and work with the State Party to maximize the impact of College Democrats in electing Democrats in your state;
  1. To provide chapter leaders with guidance and resources that will allow them to better organize their campuses;
  1. To communicate with CDA regularly, participate in National Council activities, and help coordinate CDA national initiatives on the ground;
  1. To develop a communications network that will allow chapters to share ideas and receive news and information about events and activities across the state; and
  1. To sponsor statewide activities, such as an annual convention, that will bring chapters together and strengthen the coordination among chapters.

II. Getting started with a new state federation

If you would like to create an official CDA state federation in your state, there are two main areas you need to focus on. First, becoming an official entity of the CDA national network. Second, transform your new state federation into a successful grassroots organization that achieves the goals discussed in the previous section.

Becoming an Official Entity

In building your new state federation, your first task should be to reach out to chapters in your state, build relationships, and encourage them to affiliate with CDA nationally. By affiliating, chapters provide CDA with complete contact information so they can be integrated within our national network. For CDA to certify a state federation, that federation must have at least three member chapters that are chartered with CDA. If there are not yet three chapters in your state, the first task must be to recruit a new chapter.

Once you have three member chapters that are interested in participating in the state federation and have chartered with CDA, the next step is to locate leaders for the state federation from these chapters. With the new “core” leadership of the state federation, you should work to ratify a constitution or bylaws for the organization and determine its founding Executive Board through elections or other procedures as seen fit by the member chapters or in accordance to the new constitution. CDA has no rules regarding these processes – CDA is a bottom-up, grassroots network, and it is up to the member chapters how to achieve these tasks.

Once you have completed these steps, contact CDA to officially join our network!

Becoming a Successful Grassroots Network

Good state federations build good relationships with the state party and member chapters. They have a strong communications infrastructure allowing members to communicate and coordinate activities statewide. They sometimes develop fundraising plans so they can fund any efforts to increase their impact in state politics – and they develop comprehensive campaign plans each election year with the state party. Finally, good state federations host meaningful annual conventions and serve as reliable contacts for CDA and the Democratic Party nationally. All of these aspects of a good state federation are explored in this manual. Make sure to also check out CDA’s Comprehensive Chapter Manual on the website – it has a huge amount of information that will be useful in your efforts.

III. Building membership and working with chapters

State federations serve no more important function than building membership and working with chapters. Member chapters are the lifeblood of any good state federation, and the Democratic Party benefits from nothing more than the expansion of membership.

Building Membership

Each year, good state federations set realistic goals for membership development and create effective plans for achieving them. In some states, federations might aim to build 5 or 10 new chapters. In other states, federations might aim to build two or three. Good federations do whatever possible to meet these goals. Executive Board members can: contact the student government and allied organizations, and send letters or e-mails of inquiry to potentially interested students; make personal visits to the campus; take out ads in the student newspaper; or seek to promote College Democrats in any number of innovative ways. The trick is to find a student or several students interested in creating a new chapter, and then following up to give them the advice and tools to succeed. New chapters will in turn bring new members and new energy to the state federation – and will help the Democratic Party recruit students and organize on those campuses.

Working with Chapters

Good state federations work regularly with their member chapters and do research to keep up-to-date on all active chapters in the state. If a campus in the state has a chapter of the College Democrats, good state federations will know about it. State federations should also urge chapters to charter with CDA nationally through the website so that contact information remains centralized. State federations can’t achieve much without the support of chapters, so good state federations build relationships with chapter leaders and develop plans that will benefit chapters. Also, good state federations keep up-to-date with the successes and failures of each chapter so they can provide the appropriate resources to ensure that each chapter stays active and effective. While good state federations never order chapters what to do, they help ensure good transitions from year to year so that chapters stay active and coordinate chapters to increase the impact of College Democrats.

IV. Building a communications network

Good state federations provide chapters with an easy ability to communicate throughout the year. Fortunately, this does not require financial strength, so even the newest chapters can succeed in building a solid communications network. Good state federations allow members to share ideas and coordinate events by:

Using CDA’s online system as an email list. While e-mail is not a perfect form of communication, college students use it more than anyone – and any student political organization would be mistaken in not taking advantage of it.

Building a state federation website. If your federation has the funding, take out a domain name ( If not, try using Yahoo’s Geocities, a free service. A good Internet presence will keep your members updated on workings of the state federation and provide information to any interested student, campaign or party official about your organization. Make sure to include good contact information for the Executive Board.

Keeping track of contact information for Executive Board members and chapter leaders. While e-mail and the Internet are very useful, they cannot entirely substitute for the telephone. Make sure that leaders have access to phone numbers for chapters and other officers and that everyone keeps up to date information in CDA’s online system – otherwise an important element of communication will be missing.

Good state federations also know how to attract media coverage and get their message out. Check out CDA’s Press Kit, as well as the Appendix in CDA’s Comprehensive Chapter Manual, for tips on media and message (both are available on CDA’s website).

V. Raising and Spending Money

Good state federations know how to raise money and, more importantly, why they raise it and how to use it. For information on fundraising, check out the Appendix in CDA’s Comprehensive Chapter Manual, available on CDA’s website. Contact big Democratic contributors in your state, the state party, labor unions, and elected officials if you are serious about raising money. Good state federations work closely with chapters in fundraising, and they know that donors are results-oriented and won’t contribute unless your organization has credibility and a record of success.

Good state federations spend money on membership development, campaign invasions, resources for chapters, trainings, annual conventions, lobbying efforts, and generally on oil for the College Democrats machine in your state to help it run more smoothly. While money is not a crucial component of state federations – good ones know how to achieve results without spending it – it can certainly help your efforts.

Check out this very informative fundraising piece from former Florida College Democrats Chair Mark McCullough:

There are many elements for running a successful CDA state federation, but there are three that stand out from the others as the most important. They are time, money and people. The more or less of one, the more or less you need of the others. Time is finite, but the other two are not. You should always be trying to bring in more people – be it through new chartered chapters or strengthened old chapters – and you should always look for ways to do more with your money and do more to get money.

Take a minute and think about all the things that a state federation can and should be doing. Registering voters, starting new chapters, having events across your state, electing Democratic candidates to office, getting office space and mailing addresses for chapters, national conventions, helping to get passed important legislation in your state capitol. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and yes, in some way or another, they all call for spending some money.

An important starting question is, “how can I assist my chapters in raising cash?” CDA is as a grassroots organization – we register Democratic voters, we turn them out to vote and we elect Democrats. We do that on a chapter level and chapters are the groups that are going to need to spend this money. A quick note, this does not mean you should not raise some money for the Federation as a whole because you should and there will be times for this, but most of the money raised should be done by and for the chapters. You can raise state federation money from state donors, the state party, state unions, but it is very important to make sure chapters are doing it as well.

To begin this process, first establish where each of your chapters are in terms of funds. Some may have a lot, and some may have none. Next, with your Federation treasurer, map out different ways to get individual chapters to do more.

One powerful tool is to encourage chapters to host dual events. An example here would be to think of the big football or basketball rivalry, and how every year candidates and elected officials go. The chapters involved should have an event around the same time, say before or after the game, to host these officials and turn it into a fundraiser. Do it consistently, make it nice, make it something not to be missed, make sure the candidates know that this money is needed to turn out volunteers. Soon enough, it will be an event that people will be calling you to attend. Make sure to involve as many chapters as you can. Maybe there are a couple of schools nearby with chapters, but they can still co-sponsor such a group event.

Once you have started some feel-good events, make your presence known to those in or seeking office, make your presence felt with your state party. Members, or even yourself, are interning with the state party all the time, make sure you and your treasurer get to know the people there and make them know your needs. You should have a presence in the capital lobbying to pass your CDA legislation, so this will be to extend that presence to the money aspect. They should be providing you with funding, in some way, for specific events, say traveling to the national convention, or money for a couple of new banners right before a huge voter registration event. They benefit from what you do, so should your Federation.

Work with your unions and local parties. This is something every chapter MUST do in order to be effective and something you should try doing on a statewide level as well. When visiting your chapters, try to meet some local party people. Make contacts with your statewide union officials. We have some advantages now that we will never have again, we are young, we are idealistic, we have few enemies. People love us because we are the future of the Democratic Party, the leaders of tomorrow and we spend our time, our blood, sweat and tears to further the party. We are not jaded by too many losses or numb to the enthusiasm of celebrating victories so we often treat every election as the most important of our lives and of this our elder compatriots are jealous. They want us to keep working hard, not to lose the drive, to reward us for the hard work. Hard work is noticed and rewarded, so make sure you have done the work to get the reward.

This brings us to a small side note, measurable results. When going to a union, local party, state party, solicitation letter whatever, with a need for money, they will want to know why they should help. This job is easier if you show them real results from past work, especially past events they may have funded in part in the past. How many voters did you register? How many of these were Democrats? How many people went to the last convention? What did you do? What did you learn? Why are you better for going? How many voters did you turn out at the last election? What did you do on the campaign? How are you going to do even better? These are a lot of questions, but you should know the answer to every one of them before even going to ask for money because before you get the cash, you’ll need to give them answers.

Don’t forget your classic solicitation letter. Make it look nice and send it for a reason. You are raising money for a specific reason, much like we discussed above, and they should give because you have done so much to further the cause, like we discussed above. How do you get lists to send it to? Ask your candidates, they raise money, if you helped to elect them, they will have a reason to point you to some people who could help you out. Check the public records, contributions are public information so use them. Look for people who give to local candidates and parties, your chapters should be targeting them. Look for those who gave to the state and national party, you should target them.

VI. Working with the State Party and Creating Campaign Plans

CDA regularly coordinates with the DNC, and good state federations regularly coordinate with the State Party. Once your state federation is off the ground, you should work immediately to build relationships with the State Party.

State Parties can be very useful for state federations by providing information about how to maximize impact in elections, connecting College Democrats with state and local campaigns, and providing resources. Good state federations build relationships with the State Party and, most importantly, build trust. When a State Party knows it can count on a state federation, it is much more likely to provide support to the College Democrats network. While state federations should always be in contact with the State Party, sometimes you have to get the ball rolling and prove you are serious before you can expect too much from it. Build up your membership and coordinate with campaigns, and make sure the State Party is in the loop on everything College Democrats are accomplishing in your state. Once the State Party knows you are reliable and care about advancing the Democratic Party, they will be reliable for you and care about advancing the College Democrats.

One very important way to build credibility with the State Party and, in many cases, take advantage of its resources is to build a comprehensive Campaign Plan on the year of an election. A Campaign Plan should be realistic but ambitious, and it should clearly demonstrate the capabilities and specific goals of your organization. It should not focus on membership development but rather on how the state federation will take advantage of the network that already exists. Set voter registration goals. Set GOTV goals. If you have a serious plan and show that you know how to make it into a reality, the State Party and others will be more likely to help. (See tips in the appendix for more information.)