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Leadership Institute — Grassroots Activist School Checklist

Summary

The Leadership Institute (LI), founded 1979 by Morton Blackwell, is a US conservative training organisation whose tagline is “Leaders aren’t born. They’re made” — it’s the world’s most successful conservative training organization, framing itself as “the first and best organization focused on creating conservative leaders who make a difference today and for years to come”. The grassroots-school curriculum family (Youth Leadership School, Campaign Leadership College, School Board Leaders Program, Future Candidate School, the Latinx-targeted La Familia track) is the practitioner track registered under this slug. [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]

Body

LI’s site framing on the homepage: “Become a leader for America. The Leadership Institute will give you the training, resources, and mentorship to shape the future of our country. The Leadership Institute turns conservatives into leaders – empowered to defend and advance the founding principles of our country. Through training and mentorship, the Leadership Institute is the first and best organization focused on creating conservative leaders who make a difference today and for years to come” [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist].

Its self-description explicitly contrasts LI with the existing “leftist-activist” training infrastructure: “Although many organizations exist to increase the number of leftist activists, few similar organizations exist to serve conservatives. Because conservatism tends to focus on the power of ideas, most conservative organizations are think tanks that focus on policy or legislation. But those policies won’t get enacted without conservatives in positions of leadership to drive them forward” [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist].

The training-family catalogue surfaced on the homepage: the Youth Leadership School (“the ‘boot camp of politics’” — “has launched more successful political careers than any other Leadership Institute training program”) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]; the School Board Leaders Program (“Conservative leaders & activists must engage in school boards from coast to coast to ensure schools focus on their educational mission for our children’s future success”) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]; the Campaign Leadership College (“the world’s most successful conservative training organization, and the Campaign Leadership College is the most extensive and intensive program ever offered by Leadership Institute. The Campaign Leadership College develops people to be capable of leading the most challenging campaigns for public office”) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]; the One-on-One Television Workshop (custom training for television interviews); the Television Workshop on Camera (in-front-of-camera training in LI’s Norma Zimdahl Master Studio); and an Introduction to Television Techniques track [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]. The La Familia track is the Latinx-focused training, framing Hispanic-Americans as “the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, and they are increasingly shaping the political landscape” [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist].

The site walks a “Leadership at Every Level” frame with three tracks: Student Leaders (build/grow a campus group, write for CampusReform.org, hold a high-profile speaker/activism event) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]; Political Leaders (run for elected office, manage a top-tier election campaign, rally grassroots volunteers, communicate your message effectively) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist]; Movement Leaders (find your dream career, build a network of conservative partners and mentors, acquire skills to drive conservative policy, inspire your organisation’s donors) [source: li-grassroots-activist-checklist].

Note on framing for non-conservative readers: LI is explicitly a conservative-pipeline training organisation; quoting it as a “grassroots organising handbook” without flagging its political orientation would mis-grind. Its curriculum has been a long-standing US-right training pipeline since 1979.

Use it for

Citing the conservative US counter-weight to left-progressive organiser-training infrastructure (LI’s self-claim — useful for either-side framing analysis); referencing the LI Youth Leadership School / Campaign Leadership College as the canonical conservative candidate-development pipeline when mapping the US right’s training infrastructure; pointing to the Leadership-Institute Three-Path model (Student / Political / Movement Leaders) as one US organising taxonomy.

Sources & verification

  • sources/li-grassroots-activist-checklist — grounding: primary — RAW (6,531 chars; leadershipinstitute.org homepage scraping; specific Grassroots Activist Checklist deep URL not captured — the slug’s checklist content is implicit across the LI training catalogue)

Open Questions

  • Locate the specific Grassroots Activist Checklist URL on leadershipinstitute.org (likely a leadershipinstitute.org/checklist* or /training-series* deep link) to ground the wiki’s literal checklist steps rather than the homepage-level training catalogue.

Learn more

Last verified: 2026-07-03