National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC) — Online Academy
Summary
The NDTC Online Academy is the US Democratic-aligned campaign-training academy, offering 100+ free on-demand courses covering field, digital, fundraising, communications, and candidate skills. Includes downloadable worksheets and templates; widely adopted in US Democratic-training workflows.
Body
The National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC) is the training arm of the US Democratic Party ecosystem, best known for its free online academy at traindems.org (the academy was previously hosted at ndtc.org, which is now a parked domain) [source: ndtc-online-academy]. The NDTC online academy publishes free, on-demand courses across the full range of campaign roles - candidate, campaign manager, field organiser, digital organiser, comms director, finance director, volunteer coordinator, and polling analyst - and the catalogue is developed by practitioners with years of experience in US Democratic campaigns [source: ndtc-online-academy]. The site’s own positioning is direct: “Every course is developed by campaign experts with years of experience. You’re not getting theory, you’re getting the playbook.” [source: ndtc-online-academy]
Coverage: the academy catalogue spans candidate-led, staff-led, and volunteer-led training tracks and is structured so a candidate or campaign staff member can take courses on their own schedule at their own pace [source: ndtc-online-academy]. The courses have become one of the standard on-ramps for first-time candidates, campaign managers, and field organisers in US Democratic politics, and the curriculums are updated annually around the national campaign cycle [source: ndtc-online-academy]. The free-tier offering competes with paid academies (the Campaign Workshop, Wellstone, etc.) and is the reason the NDTC academy is often the first stop for new entrants to US Democratic campaigning [source: ndtc-online-academy].
A campaigner reaches for NDTC when training new US Democratic campaign staff, when designing a campaign-role onboarding curriculum, or when sourcing an up-to-date US Democratic campaign playbook [source: ndtc-online-academy]. Treat as link-only; the courses are free to take but the academy reserves redistribution rights. [source: ndtc-online-academy]
Use it for
Onboarding new US Democratic campaign staff and volunteers; standardising practice across a state party; refreshing skills mid-cycle.
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