The next series of PPC selections are now underway. Amidst a cost of living crisis where 2 million adults cannot afford to eat every day, finding the finances to fund the solution seems nearly impossible. Those most at risk include women, people of colour, and people with disabilities. When these groups are already so underrepresented by our political system, I am committed to supporting a diverse range of candidates; not only to apply, but also to campaign competitively.
Following on from my own recent selection campaign for Gedling, here are some suggestions as to ways in which you can reduce your campaign expenditure. For my website, email, and leaflets, I paid around £100. However, the additional costs of travel, putting the cat in the cattery, and emergency postage is likely to have brought the total cost to around £600. If you’d like more information, especially on technical processes, please let me know.
- Create a specific candidate Facebook page instead of a website. After speaking to different people about their perceptions of a candidate using a tumbr or blogspot page, I would recommend simply creating a Facebook page. Unfortunately, you are expected to appear to be a professional candidate without receiving any money, so using a less professional site is likely to detract from the image you are trying to create. Many candidates already use Facebook pages to share their content so this is less likely to be seen as amateur.
- Use paint.net instead of Photoshop. All of my campaign’s design work was created from paint.net which is a free provider. There is no way that I can afford photoshop.
- Use WhatsApp instead of text messaging. As an additional contact point with members, send bulk WhatsApp messages. You can send a maximum of 50 per day without a business upgrade. I recommend uploading a CSV file of contact names which have all been edited to include the name of the CLP as this means identifying which of your contacts need a message.
- Bulk email sending is free. I sent emails to members using Outlook and Microsoft Word. There is a cap of sending out 500 emails per day, but this wasn’t too onerous to run each morning.
- Modern smartphones are sufficient. Phones are just incredible. Whether using them as a teleprompter, camera, or microphone, they are just fantastic all-rounders now. The only pieces of additional kit that I’ve invested in from experience are a microphone (this is for managing wind, traffic, and other environmental noises), ring light, and a tripod (holding a phone perfectly still for a long time can be difficult) but these are by no means essential.
- A strong local volunteer base. Volunteers are just life-savers. Unless you are prepared to use up a lot of your annual leave, being able to leaflet/ knock on every door is impossible without help. Unfortunately, we had a Covid outbreak and had to resort on Royal Mail to finish off deliveries.
- Consider WhatsApp calls instead for phone banking. If you’re messaging people through WhatsApp, using the call function instead of dialling out on your mobile is likely to save you money, especially given the volume of calls you’ll get through.
- Consider the travel expenses for rural areas. This may not be something that you have any control over, the constituency is the constituency. However, with steep petrol prices, leafletting around urban areas is more fuel efficient and necessitates less public transport. I am currently based in Surrey but chose to run in my hometown in Nottinghamshire. I had to travel to Gedling last minute on two occasions which means the rail fares were horrendous. It was an unexpected cost that we hadn’t budgeted for.
- Have your leaflets ready to go. Last minute leaflet turnaround increases costs. On the other hand, paying for leaflets before you know you’ve been longlisted or shortlisted is an inevitable risk, so I would recommend just being able to print them as soon as you do know. The cost of home printer ink is incredibly expensive so sending them out to printers may even be cheaper.
- Investigate childcare options. I’ve not worked with MotheRED before but they may be able to help with childcare costs to enable you to campaign.