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John --
An
organization is only as strong as its frontline leaders. As a founding
co-Chair of the Forward Party and the Chair of our State Party
Committee, I get to see firsthand just how strong our Party
is.
In 2024,
the Forward Party put in the hard work of growing our movement with
particular investments into local leaders. Building state parties is a
challenging undertaking and the rules that govern forming a new party
are different in every state, but all states do seem to have one thing
in common, no matter which party is in power: The rules are set up to
keep more competition out.
This sad
truth is why the accomplishments of our state parties are so
impressive. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been meeting with each
of our state leadership teams to hear their successes, challenges, and
plans for the future.
What Went Well
Much of
our work with state parties in 2024 centered on growing connective
tissue between the states and arming state leaders with the resources
and tools they will need to continue forging ahead. Forward Party
state leaders now regularly join convenings with other state leads
around the country almost every week. We launched an expanded
curriculum for state leads that we call our “modules” program,
covering a range of topics from compliance to communications (and
topics that don’t start with “c”).
We spent
much of the second-half of the year working hand-in-hand with states
to build out our candidate endorsement and support programs. As a
former candidate, I know how valuable volunteers are, and Forward
Party had people on the ground supporting our candidates at a tangible
level. It’s a key part of how we had 30 affiliated candidates win
office, from local seats to the US Senate.
Lessons Learned
2024 was
not without its challenges. We are a small team and it can be hard to
give the time and attention needed to our deserving state-parties,
especially because the process for forming new state parties is
different in every state. Additionally, we still don’t have sufficient
“gathering places” for Forwardists in states that don’t yet have a
critical mass of people to form a state party but want to roll up
their sleeves to help get there. I look forward to finding a way to
engage these individuals personally in 2025.
These are our thoughts from 2024, but we
want to hear from you! Please head to this link and fill out your
thoughts on lessons learned, the direction the party should head in,
and projects we should tackle! We will read them all, and we will
highlight our top 10, along with the people who submitted them, in
early January as our New Years Resolutions.
2025 Projects
Based on the discussions with the state parties, we have a lot
of exciting things in store for 2025, turning challenges into
opportunities. In Q1 of next year, we will roll out even more ways for
state leads to collaborate with each other, including “working groups”
for state leaders who are specializing in functional areas (e.g.,
comms, fundraising, field). We’ll be introducing better tracking
systems to manage our shared work, as well as a “banding” system so
that state parties can track their progress against goals, which will
help us deploy resources to them more efficiently and responsively.
Finally, we’ll keep cranking on building better “containers” for
Forwardists who are eager to seed the ground in their states so that
they can eventually turn a group of volunteers into a full-fledged
party.
Bring on
2025!
If you're still feeling the season of
giving, consider donating to Forward this season!
Happy Holidays,
Governor Whitman
https://home.forwardparty.com/
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