Run for Something’s 2025 Strategic Plan
When we launched Run for Something on January 20, 2017, we had a vision, a plan, and a website — we set out to recruit and support young diverse leaders for state and local office in order to build sustainable power.
Eight years later, Run for Something is the premiere candidate recruitment organization in the country — and one of the few that stays with candidates from pre-campaign through Election Day.
When everything feels so bad, we’re staying focused on what feels good: Our hope for the future and our commitment to bringing new leaders into the fold.
Our 2025 strategic plan lays out our vision for rebuilding our democracy from the ground up and empowering the next generation of leaders to step forward and step up.
(YOU CAN READ: YEAR ONE, YEAR TWO, YEAR THREE, YEAR FOUR, YEAR FIVE, YEAR SIX, YEAR SEVEN and YEAR EIGHT)
**Note: The programs described in this plan cut across three entities — Run for Something Civics (501c3), Run for Something Action Fund (501c4), and Run for Something (a non-federal 527.) All activities under Civics are nonpartisan and educational in nature.**
Taking a step back, and a refresher for those who may be new to Run for Something:
More than 200,000 people have told Run for Something that they want to run for office since we first launched. Our candidate pipeline is, as far as we know, the largest of its kind. If you are looking to run for office, you come to RFS first.
That number has climbed since Election Day — more people have signed up since Trump won in November 2024 than in all of 2017 and 2018 combined.
We are inspiring new leaders to step up, then moving people with intentional programming and outreach from “maybe I want to run” to “on the ballot.”
After folks have officially filed, our endorsement program screens for the best of the best and
then digs in with candidates to help them win through a suite of resources, including one-on-one help from our regional staff.
In total, we’ve endorsed over 3,700 candidates from all 50 states. 53% of our endorsed candidates identify as women or non-binary leaders, 55.4% identify as people of color, and 30% identify as LGBTQIA+ folks. All are 40 years old or younger.
Of those endorsed leaders, we’ve now elected nearly 1,500 millennials and Gen Z leaders everywhere except Idaho (we’re coming for you, Idaho!).
We’ve flipped seats red to blue in places as varied as New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Iowa, and more. Our candidates are often the first Democrat to run in their race in many cycles (or ever); they regularly make history as the first of their community to win.
Even in 2024, a rough year for the party, more than half our candidates won in November.
A few of the bright spots:
- Alyshia Dyer became the first-ever woman elected to Washtenaw County Sheriff — she has already announced she will not allow her department to assist with ICE deportations.
- Adam Moore in KY flipped his seat red to blue — in his first session he’s introduced legislation offering a tax credit to Kentuckians who enroll in a firearm safety course
- Dante Pittman flipped a seat in the North Carolina state house, helping Democrats break the GOP’s veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly.
- Emma Curtis won a seat on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council in Kentucky, becoming only the second trans person ever elected in the state.
As part of our larger Clerk Work program (which has now recruited 522 pro-democracy candidates since 2022!), 37 of our candidates have now beat election deniers — helping build a foundation of pro-voter leaders in key election administration roles.
Win or lose, we continue our relationships with RFS alumni by staying in regular contact, inviting them to speak at our events, connecting them as mentors for future endorsed candidates, keeping them abreast of upcoming partner trainings, and encouraging them to run again.
We’ve built this program over the last eight years — we’ve tested out tactics, learned from our mistakes and improved upon our successes, grown and (sadly) contracted, and reorganized ourselves to be ready, nimble, and quickly able to meet the demands and challenges of this year.
Looking to this year and into the next, we have two big priorities:
- Run and win in 2025 to fight back and build the muscle of winning
- Prepare to win big in 2026 (and lay the groundwork for winning well beyond that)
As we do those two things, the leaders we cultivate will be instrumental to rebuilding the party from the ground up.
Keep reading for more on how, why, and what you can do to help.
Run and win in 2025 to fight back & build the muscle of winning
There are 100,000 state and local elections up this year and every single one is both a chance to prove that the GOP’s overreach has electoral consequences and an opportunity to put real fighters into office who can protect their communities.
These local elections are imperative to advancing progressive policy where possible and to mitigating the harm Trump has done. Our alumni endorsed by Run for Something PAC are already showing how it’s done, refusing to cooperate with ICE, stopping book bans, and transforming housing policy to make it all more affordable. The folks we elect in 2025 will join them in that fight.
As our candidates win, they’ll inspire us all to step up to the plate — winning begets winning, builds momentum, and reminds people that progress is possible.
WHAT WE’RE DOING: RFS plans to endorse at least 300 candidates, nearly all of which will be local elections, including in the Virginia and New Jersey state legislative races.
Our regional directors are digging in with campaigns to ensure they have what they need to knock doors, make calls, and bring voters out to the polls.
We’ll be prioritizing candidates from under-represented communities — aiming for 50% of our candidates to identify as women, 50% to identify as people of color, and 20% to identify as LGBTQIA+.
We’ve already endorsed 73 folks from over 20 states, including Virginia, Texas, California, New Jersey, and everywhere in between.
Recruit widely and prepare to win big in 2026, and lay the groundwork for beyond
A significant portion of our work in 2025 is around recruitment.
Trump may have won the popular vote but what he’s doing is NOT popular.
In just the few elections we’ve had in 2025 so far, we’ve seen wild Democratic overperformance — in the first three months of 2025 alone, Democrats flipped a state legislative seat in Iowa that Trump won by 21 points, a state legislative seat in Pennsylvania that Trump won by 16 points, and ousted two conservative mayors in Oklahoma. We’ve pushed the margins in Florida special elections by 15–20 points, and of course, we won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in spite of Elon Musk spending $26 million of his own money in the election.
Much like 2018, 2026 could be huge for Democrats. Accordingly, we need to expand the playing field and prepare to compete everywhere.
Running everywhere has downstream effects: Our 2026 candidates can gin up reverse coattails for House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates.
Just as important: They themselves can also win state legislative and local races that will be instrumental to ensuring fair election administration in 2028, effective Census administration in 2030, and prepping for a possible up-ended Electoral College map after redistricting in 2032.
Consider how RFS electeds who immediately tackle housing affordability at the local level can help slow the out-migration from blue states into red ones.
Our wins today lay the foundation for playing the long game, building power and a bench of talent to be ready for an always dynamic set of battlegrounds.
Winning in 2026 starts now. People spend an average of 310 days in the RFS pipeline which means 2026 recruitment is already ongoing.
We plan to add another 50,000 people to the RFS pipelines in 2025 — our candidates will lay the groundwork for winning back power at every level. (Just three months into the year and we’re already halfway there — so I expect we’ll raise this goal!)
In 2025, our efforts will significantly expand through the launch of “The Next 100 Days,” a major media campaign to get people into the pipeline and kick-start their engagement journey, along with other major partnerships.
Our recruitment & partnerships team will lead the charge, creating a robust, multi-channel national recruitment infrastructure that taps into digital platforms, strategic national partners, and local community networks.
Through a coordinated effort, the team is building impactful partnerships with national and local organizations like MoveOn, HBCUs, renters’ advocacy groups, and progressive civic institutions.
These strategic alliances will magnify recruitment efforts, broaden reach, and ensure Run for Something’s candidate pipeline remains both diverse and mission-aligned. We always seek to complement the work of existing state and local partners — without duplicating efforts — to ensure we’re filling gaps.
Through Run for Something Civics, our 501c3 affiliate, we’re especially prioritizing recruiting gen Z leaders. In addition, RFSC will be kicking off an effort to recruit more renters to step into leadership roles, making sure we’re bringing in folks who can fully tackle the housing crisis with the same perspective as so many young people have. (More to come on that!)
Across our political entities, once all those folks sign up, we’re doubling down on our programming for the stage between “maybe I want to run” and “yes I’m running now” — a months- or possibly years-long time where people are waiting for their moment, making up their mind, and figuring out how to get started.
Our engagement team is creating a self-paced training program that anyone can access. Leaders will be able to go through structured civics education, leadership development, and tailored campaign resources — supported by robust mentoring and volunteer engagement.
By offering comprehensive, accessible resources, we ensure that prospective leaders feel confident, prepared, and fully supported from initial interest to active campaign execution.
The curriculum will live alongside a community space so candidates, volunteers, and RFS alumni can also connect and support one another, ensuring our program is exponentially scalable.
All of this is supported by our internal tech and data team, which is spending 2025 expanding on our centralized data warehouse, improving our data integration across teams, and reducing our time spent on repetitive tasks so that people can focus on what only people can do. We’re building innovative new technology to allow our recruitment efforts to be more omnipresent across the internet and for all our coordination across candidates to be more cohesive and efficient.
Filing deadlines for 2026 races begin as early as October — there are at least a dozen states with filing deadlines before mid-March 2026. We have no time to waste.
IF WE DO THIS RIGHT: We’ll be rebuilding our party and our democracy from the ground up
Fixing our party’s brand is not sexy work, but it is relatively straightforward: We need even more ordinary people who will do the extraordinary thing of running for office — while still being able to talk and show up online in ways that don’t alienate the voters we need. We need to make space for the next generation of leaders who are invested in the issues facing their communities.
Run for Something PAC’s efforts are instrumental to this task. The way to get more people to like the Democratic Party is to get better people to run as Democrats. RFS leaders both govern effectively on the issues that people care about and communicate about them in a way that actually reaches people.
We’ve seen this in real time. The five RFS alumni in Congress — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX),
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (VA), Rep. Sarah McBride (DE), Rep. Yassamin Ansari (AZ) and Rep. Emily Randall (WA) — have been on the forefront of the fights against Trump and Elon Musk.
Alumni at the state and local level, like Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (PA), Rep. Anna Eskamani (FL), NYC Councilmember Chi Ossé, and Sen. Mallory McMorrow (MI) are leading in their communities’ efforts to push back against the cruelty of the Trump administration.
The more we can bring leaders like them into the fold, the more we can transform people’s definition of “Democrat” from old, boring, and spineless into bold, brave, and interesting. It is hard work but it isn’t complicated.
It’s also popular: Per recent Data for Progress polling, 83% of Democrats believe it’s very or somewhat important for Democrats to run younger candidates that represent a new generation, and 69% think the party should encourage older leaders to retire and pass the torch to the next generation of leaders.
We’re making all that possible.
The next leaders of our party and our country are out there — they need to be welcomed in with open arms and walked through the gates, not kept out because of some preconceived notions of what a “good” candidate is or who deserves to lead.
What you can do to help
First, run for office, or ask someone to run for office. It’s not too early and rarely too late to get started thinking about a campaign.
Next, sign up to volunteer. We’ll be expanding our volunteer opportunities later this year — be the first to know how else you can help support the next generation of leaders.
Finally, chip in! To get this done, we’re looking to raise $7.1 million to get this work: $3 million in 501(c)(4), $2.6 million in non-federal PAC, and $1.5 million in 501(c)(3) resources. Every dollar helps.
If you want to give, you can chip in to the PAC here:
To learn more about Run for Something Civics and how to give, go here:
Make sure you’re staying up to date on all things across the RFS network by getting weekly feel-good updates from our team:
None of this would be possible without this incredible community. Thanks. Let’s keep it up.
