Planning a Small Digital Campaign

Small campaigns rarely lose online for lack of money. They lose when the money arrives in pieces, goes to whatever looks urgent that week, and runs out before ballots go out. A plan fixes that. This lesson is the digital plan: the goal, the audience, the channels, the budget, the calendar and the people. The whole-campaign plan, with win numbers, turnout history and print budgets, is in The Campaign Plan and the Budget, and a twelve-month advocacy plan for a page network is in Operations and the Plan. This lesson assumes you have read neither and repeats neither.

This module is general education about Idaho and federal rules, not legal advice. For official answers, the Secretary of State's elections division (sunshine@sos.idaho.gov, 208-334-2852, per its Disclosure Manual), your county clerk, the FEC, the FCC and the FTC are the offices that decide.

One goal you can count

Nobody can tell in October whether a campaign is ahead of "raise awareness." A goal is a number with a date: 2,400 votes on November 2, 2027; 1,200 valid signatures by the petition deadline; $6,000 raised by August 31; 80 people at the county budget hearing. Digital work then has a job: produce the sign-ups, donations, volunteers and reminders that the number needs.

Goal type	What it counts	Digital numbers that feed it	What usually limits it
Votes (candidate or measure)	Your win number	Email and text list size inside the district, persuasion video views by local viewers, absentee requests chased	Reaching the right voters, not the most people
Signatures (initiative, referendum, recall)	Valid signatures of registered voters by the deadline	Event sign-ups, volunteer circulators recruited, signing locations shared	Signatures must be gathered in person on official sheets; digital only drives people to them
Donations	Dollars by a date	List size, gift rate per email, average gift, fees	List size and contribution limits
Turnout (get out the vote)	Supporters who actually vote	Reminders before each deadline, ballot chase, polling place and drop-off information	Having consent to text, and knowing who already voted
Attendance (hearing, forum, rally)	People in the room on one day	RSVPs, reminder open and click rates, rides offered	Short notice and weekday timing

Petition drives are the trap here. People sign official petitions in person, on paper, in front of a circulator; a post cannot collect a valid signature. The digital job is to recruit circulators and tell signers where to go. Circulating Petitions has the rules for the sheets themselves.

Once the goal is set, translate it into a few working numbers. A donation goal of $6,000 with a typical online gift of $50 needs 120 gifts. If one in twenty people on your list gives in a given push, you need 2,400 people on the list, or several pushes to a smaller one. Those ratios are yours to measure, not benchmarks to trust; Measurement and Experiments shows how, and lesson 10 builds the dashboard.

How big is the audience, really

Start with the map. Idaho has 35 legislative districts, each electing one senator and two representatives. After the 2020 census the redistricting commission set an ideal population of 52,546 people per district, the Idaho Capital Sun reported, by dividing the state's population into 35 equal parts. That is everyone, children included. Registered voters are fewer, likely voters fewer again, and in a primary the voters of one party fewer than that.

A county commission race covers the county or a commissioner district inside it. A city council seat may be citywide or a ward. A school trustee zone or highway district can be a few thousand voters. The smaller the race, the more a platform's targeting becomes the problem: most ad tools cannot draw a ward boundary, and some will not take Idaho state or local election ads at all. Lesson 05 covers which platforms accept them and what targeting they allow as of October 2026.

Get the real numbers from public records, not guesses. The county clerk can tell you how many registered voters are in the district or precinct, and the voter list itself is available under Idaho Code 34-437 and 34-437A (lesson 02 covers the rules for using it). Past canvass results tell you turnout.

The channel mix, by cost

Rank channels by what they cost per person you actually need, not per impression. Owned channels cost little and compound; paid channels cost per use and stop when the money stops.

Channel	What it costs (as of October 2026, where a price is shown)	What it does best	Lesson
Email list	Mailchimp's free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day); its Essentials plan starts at $13 a month, per its pricing page	Donations, volunteers, reminders	02
One-page website	Carrd Pro Standard is $19 a year for up to 10 sites with a custom domain and forms, per Carrd; plus the domain itself	The place every post, sign and mailer points	03
Donation page	Percentage plus a per-gift fee; see the fee table below	Collecting gifts and the required donor information	03
Organic social	Time, not money	Reaching people who already follow you or your volunteers	04
Paid social and search	Per thousand impressions or per click; minimums and political ad authorization vary by platform	Reaching voters who do not follow you, within each platform's rules	05
Texting	Per message plus registration fees for application-to-person texting	Turnout reminders to people who consented	07
Video	A phone, a microphone and free editing tools	Persuasion and introduction	08

Online donation fees are the cost most first-time campaigns forget. As of October 2026, ActBlue's help center says it and its processor charge "a total fee of 3.7% + $0.23" (ActBlue). Anedot lists 4.0 percent plus $0.30 for card gifts to political campaigns (Anedot). Stripe's standard rate for domestic cards is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents (Stripe), though a general processor leaves the political compliance work to you. Lesson 03 compares them.

Three sample budgets

The figures below are planning allocations, not market prices, except where a platform price is cited above. They show proportions that work for a small race. Change them to fit your district and your quotes, and keep the arithmetic visible so a treasurer can follow it.

Line	$2,000 effort (city or small district)	$10,000 effort (county or legislative primary)	$25,000 effort (contested legislative general)
Website: Carrd Pro Standard ($19) plus domain allowance	$50	$50	$150 (a fuller site builder)
Email platform	$0 (free plan while under 250 contacts)	$240 (about $20 a month for 12 months)	$480
Donation fees (about 4.5 percent of online gifts)	$90 (on $2,000 raised online)	$270 (on $6,000)	$675 (on $15,000)
Paid social and search ads	$1,000	$5,000	$13,000
Texting (platform, registration, messages)	$200	$1,200	$3,500
Video (microphone, light, captions)	$150	$600	$2,000
Design and photo	$100	$800	$2,000
Security (password manager, hardware keys)	$60	$150	$300
Reserve for the last two weeks	$350	$1,690	$2,895
Total	$2,000	$10,000	$25,000

Check the columns. $2,000: 50 + 0 + 90 + 1,000 + 200 + 150 + 100 + 60 + 350 = 2,000. $10,000: 50 + 240 + 270 + 5,000 + 1,200 + 600 + 800 + 150 + 1,690 = 10,000. $25,000: 150 + 480 + 675 + 13,000 + 3,500 + 2,000 + 2,000 + 300 + 2,895 = 25,000.

Paid ads take half or more in each column, and that is a choice you can change. A city candidate whose voters are mostly over 60 might move most of the ad line to mail. A measure campaign that cannot run ads on a given platform moves that money to texting or video. The reserve exists because the last two weeks always cost more than planned: a rebuttal video, an extra text round, a boost of the post that worked.

Every line becomes an expenditure on a Sunshine report. Under Idaho Code 67-6607, each expenditure of $25 or more is itemized with the payee's name and address, the amount, the date and the purpose, and backed by an invoice, receipt or canceled check kept for a year after the report. A monthly ad charge from a platform is an expenditure to that platform. Lesson 10 covers how digital spending appears on reports.

A calendar that works backward from election day

Idaho's dates are set by statute years ahead. Under Idaho Code 34-106, elections fall on the third Tuesday in May and the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and city initiative and referendum elections go only on the odd-year November date. The voting dates that matter for digital timing are in Title 34, Chapter 10.

Date (days before election day, E)	What happens	Statute	Nov. 2, 2027 city election	Nov. 7, 2028 general
E minus 45	Absentee ballots for elections with federal offices must go to voters whose requests arrived by then	34-1003(3)	Not applicable (no federal race)	Sat., Sept. 23, 2028
On or after the fourth Monday before	Counties that offer early voting may open it	34-1012(1)	Mon., Oct. 11, 2027 at the earliest	Mon., Oct. 16, 2028 at the earliest
E minus 11, 5:00 p.m.	Mail-in absentee applications must reach the clerk; pre-registration at the clerk's office closes	34-1002(7), 34-408(1)	Fri., Oct. 22, 2027	Fri., Oct. 27, 2028
Friday before, 5:00 p.m.	In-person absentee applications and early voting end	34-1002(7), 34-1012(1)	Fri., Oct. 29, 2027	Fri., Nov. 3, 2028
Election day, 8:00 p.m.	Absentee ballots must be received by the clerk to count	34-1005(1)	Tue., Nov. 2, 2027	Tue., Nov. 7, 2028

The 45-day table row misleads small races if read alone. The 45-day mailing rule in 34-1003 covers only elections with federal candidates on the ballot; when ballots go out for a city or district election is up to the county, so call the clerk and write the date down. And a voter who misses the eleven-day cutoff can still register in person with proof of identity and residence: at the in-person absentee polling place or an early voting station under 34-408(3), or at the precinct polling place on election day under 34-408A. A reminder that says "too late to register" is wrong.

Sunshine reporting has its own calendar. In an election year, 67-6607 requires a monthly report by the tenth of the following month, and a 48-hour notice for any contribution of $1,000 or more. Local and judicial candidates are exempt from those reports until they receive or spend $500, and then must file a cumulative report within seven days (67-6608). Put both on the same calendar as the posts.

Free tools that do real work

A small campaign can do most of its digital production free. Public research tools first: the Secretary of State's Sunshine portal shows what opponents and allies raised and spent; the Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center show who is advertising; Filing and Research Tools in course 46 walks through each.

Jeff A. Pierson's free tools cover production:

• ImageStudio makes AI images at 1024x1024, 1080x1920 and 1920x1080, the square, vertical and wide shapes most platforms use. If an image could be mistaken for a real scene, read lesson 09 first.
• VideoStudio is a browser video editor, and StudioConverter compresses to a target size, converts formats and sets loudness. AVPrep converts files and strips metadata. Lesson 08 uses them.
• Voice Studio does text to speech, useful for a draft narration track. A synthetic voice in a call or ad has its own rules (lessons 07 and 09).
• PresentationStudio builds slides for a forum or a house party, and Writing Studio is a writing workspace for drafting emails and posts.

Roles for volunteers

The jobs below cover a small digital campaign. One person can hold two, but each needs a name next to it.

Role	Does	Needs access to	Watch for
Digital lead	Owns the plan and calendar, approves every paid item	Admin on all accounts	Must not be the only admin (lesson 10)
List manager	Imports sign-ups, sends email, handles unsubscribes	Email platform, form exports	Consent records and voter list rules (lesson 02)
Content maker	Writes posts, shoots and edits video, makes graphics	Editor role on social accounts	"Paid for by" line on anything paid, music rights (lesson 08)
Ads buyer	Runs paid campaigns inside the budget	Ad accounts with spending limits set	Platform authorization and disclaimers (lessons 05 and 06)
Treasurer liaison	Sends every receipt and platform invoice to the treasurer weekly	Billing pages, donation platform exports	Limits, fees and 48-hour notices (lesson 03)

Idaho Code 67-6602(3) leaves out of "contribution" the "part-time" personal services "of the sort commonly performed by volunteer campaign workers or advisors," and up to $25 of a volunteer's own incidental expenses. The statute defines part-time as services on top of regular full-time employment, or unpaid services by someone not employed full time. A volunteer's door knocking or posting after work is not reportable. A professional who gives professional services free or below normal price is different: that is an in-kind contribution at fair market value, counted against the giver's limit. Who Can Give, and How Much has the valuation rules. A volunteer who is a paid video editor by trade, and who cuts your ads on the firm's software during work hours, is the case to ask the elections division about before it happens.