Party Planks and Platforms: Why National Conventions Matter to Nonprofits

In a typical general election cycle, by June national party platforms would be in their final drafting stages. Instead, COVID-19 and protests of longstanding racial inequities, altered this process and threw that playbook in the air.

Given this new reality, our fourth workshop in this series explored how nonprofit advocates were reframing their issues and retooling their tactics.

Our panel of experts discussed the issues they thought could dominate between June and November and ways nonprofit leaders could access candidates and aggressively look for opportunities to highlight and insert their priorities into campaign agendas.
 

Moderators:
Sue Santa, Election Series Co-Developer & Part-time Lecturer, M.S. Nonprofit Management, School of Professional Studies, Columbia University | Vice President Public Policy & Advocacy at Girl Scouts of the USA


Sandra Swirski, Election Series Co-Developer, M.S. Nonprofit Management, School of Professional Studies, Columbia University | Partner & Co-founder, Urban Swirski & Associates
 

Guest Speakers:

Dan Cardinali, President and CEO, Independent Sector

Gloria Johnson-Cusack, Adjunct Lecturer, M.S. Nonprofit Management, School of Professional Studies, Columbia University | Chairman, Board of Trustees, Firelight Foundation

Susan Milligan, Senior Politics Writer, U.S. News & World Report
Party Planks Play

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