This is the final post in a short series on creating your campaign plan. You can find the introductory post (with links to each piece in the series) here. 

I designed Campaign in a Box to help first-time candidates for municipal offices run their campaigns professionally, within the limited budget municipal campaigns have to stick to. 

The basic things a city council candidate has to do are:

Fundraising is necessary to win your campaign. And along with talking to voters, fundraising is one of two jobs the candidate has. The candidate's role in the campaign is to raise money and talk to voters. 

Because many candidates don't enjoy fundraising, creating a schedule of call times and fundraising goals is essential. There are always other things to do. And because fundraising is difficult to begin, candidates will often prioritize something else. 

Creating a calendar for your campaign helps keep you on track. A calendar allows everyone on the campaign to see what daily, weekly and monthly goals the campaign needs to hit. Without a calendar, benchmarks get missed and the campaign falls short of its goals. 

When you put your campaign plan together, you want to know how many voters to talk to. Which ones are important? Narrowly targeting your "voter universe" helps you save time and focus only on the voters who intend to vote and can be influenced. 

As a first-time candidate, there are a few basic things you need to get right to be successful. 

A campaign plan

Every campaign needs a campaign plan. A campaign plan lays out what to do, when to do it and tells you how much it'll cost. Check out our post here for a little more information on how to create your campaign plan. 

Campaign plans can be fairly simple. I've put together a two step process below to help you create a basic campaign plan.