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Campaign Plan Template

The team’s operating plan for a 3-12 month campaign arc. One document that the team reads at every weekly meeting to know: what the campaign is for, what the next 90 days look like, who owns what, and what we do if a key assumption turns out wrong.

This is the artefact — for the method (what makes a campaign plan good, the canonical arc), see campaign-planning.

Frontmatter (copy verbatim)

---
title: Campaign Plan — <NAME>
status: stub
languages: [EN]
categories: [strategy, organizing]
license: link-only
updated: 2026-MM-DD
campaign_length: <3m | 6m | 12m>
target_audience: <one-line>
---

1. Vision and demand

  • The problem we are working on:
  • The world we want:
  • The specific demand (what we’re asking who to do what by when):
  • Why now (the window — what changed in the last 6 months that makes this winnable):
  • The campaign’s theory of change (link to theory-of-change one-pager):

2. Power analysis

(Full grid in power-analysis-template; one-line summary here.)

  • Base:
  • Primary target:
  • Secondary targets: <3-5 names + their pressure points>
  • Allies:
  • Opposition: <active opposition, neutral-tilted, neutral, sympathetic>
  • Where our organisation sits (the leverage / vulnerability summary):

3. Audience and message

  • Audience 1 (the most reachable base, with their core message and the messenger they trust):
  • Audience 2 (the persuadable middle):
  • Audience 3 (the silent majority we want to move by proxy):
  • Anti-audience (whose narrative we must not strengthen — see framing-and-narrative):
  • The story we tell (one paragraph; the public narrative — see public-narrative):

4. Strategy and arc

  • Strategic approach (e.g. inside-out / outside-in / both; escalation pattern; phases):
  • Phase 1 — Preparation (months 0-3): <what, who, success criteria>
  • Phase 2 — Escalation (months 3-9): <what, who, success criteria>
  • Phase 3 — Consolidation (months 9-12+): <what, who, success criteria>
  • Decision rules (the “if X, then Y” branches — what we do when a key assumption proves wrong):

5. Tactics and timing

  • Tactic 1 (use the the-tactic-star (planned) menu) — owner, when, success criteria
  • Tactic 2 — owner, when, success criteria
  • Tactic 3 — owner, when, success criteria
  • Back-pocket tactics (the tactics we’d like to avoid but may need):

6. Resources and budget

  • Volunteer headcount needed (per phase):
  • Money needed: <total + by quarter>
  • Runway:
  • Funding plan: <what we’re asking, from whom, by when>

7. Coalition and partnerships

  • Coalition partners (organisations, named):
  • Coalition decision-making (who decides what):
  • Coalition maintenance (the AAR-on-the-coalition cadence — see coalition-building):

8. Measurement and learning

  • The three numbers we will not stop watching (the campaign-math dashboard — see campaign-math):
  • The leading indicators (early signals that the strategy is working):
  • The lagging indicators (the political outcomes we want to move):
  • AAR cadence:

9. Risk register

  • <risk 1> — probability — impact — mitigation:
  • <risk 2> — probability — impact — mitigation:
  • <risk 3> — probability — impact — mitigation:

10. Decision rules — the single most useful section

State in advance what the campaign will do if a key assumption proves wrong (the opposition launches early, the funder pulls out, the coalition splits, the target publicly concedes but actually pivots). For each:

  • Assumption:
  • Signal that it’s false: <what we’d see>
  • Then we: <the change we’d make>