Campaign Skills Handbook (NDI)
https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/Campaign%20Skills%20Handbook_EN.pdf
Body
The NDI Campaign Skills Handbook is the National Democratic Institute’s open curriculum on running competitive electoral campaigns internationally, particularly in transitional and consolidating democracies [source: ndi-campaign-skills]. The handbook’s introduction frames it as a resource for individual activists, prospective candidates, campaign staff, and political-party leaders - and devotes early pages to the case for women’s and young people’s participation in politics [source: ndi-campaign-skills]. The publisher (NDI) is a Washington-based, non-partisan NGO funded by the US Congress to support democratic pluralism abroad, and the handbook is downloadable as a free PDF from the NDI publications site [source: ndi-campaign-skills].
Coverage runs across 11 thematic modules: Political Parties and Elections; Leadership Styles and Skills; Research, Strategy and Targeting; Voter Contact; Issue Identification and Policy Development; Message Development; Becoming a Powerful Communicator; Building a Communications Strategy; Campaign Planning; Mobilizing Resources; Getting on a List [source: ndi-campaign-skills]. Each module mixes explanatory prose with structured exercises the user can run in a workshop; the modules are designed to be consumed sequentially, building the reader from foundational concepts to operational tasks [source: ndi-campaign-skills]. The handbook is the most-cited international practitioner reference for competitive electoral campaigns in non-US contexts and is widely used as a training textbook by civic-campaign organisations worldwide [source: ndi-campaign-skills].
A campaigner reaches for it when they need a teaching text for an electoral-cycle workshop or a manual for a first-time candidate - the modules on Research/Strategy/Targeting and Voter Contact are dense enough to function as a self-study program, while the Communications modules double as a press-training curriculum [source: ndi-campaign-skills]. Treat as link-only; the handbook’s license is not explicitly permissive (the site distributes it free but restricts redistribution), so paraphrase rather than quote. [source: ndi-campaign-skills]
Use it for
Drawing on international electioneering practice; training civic campaigners.
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- framing-and-narrative
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- leadership-development
- one-to-ones
- pillars-of-support
- power-mapping
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- the-campaign-cycle
- the-tactic-star
- theory-of-change
- three-and-a-half-percent-rule
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