Take stock and get organized.

Here's the number one reason why congressional challengers lose:

They are utterly, hopelessly (some would say cluelessly) unprepared for the magnitude of the task.

Take stock of yourself

Write down your one-sentence answers to the following questions:

Why would a person want to vote for you?

Why would a person want to help you?

Why would a person want to contribute to your campaign?

Be thoughtful and take some time in being succinct. You'll be repeating each sentence thousands of times in the coming months.

Get Organized

Stop Spending Money!

If your campaign checking account hovers at or near zero, you're in trouble already. Later on, when you're struggling to come up with postage cash, you'll wonder exactly what you were thinking when you decided to plop down several hundred dollars for some kid's hog at the county fair. If you follow our plan, you'll spend the next few months planning and recruiting, neither of which requires much in the way of funds. So start thinking of ways to reduce costs. If you have a campaign HQ that's mostly empty, think about moving, if not to your basement, to a smaller place with plenty of parking and lighting. (You want your HQ to be a place that encourages people to stop by.) If you have an equipment lease, evaluate the cost of getting out of it. Just about anything you're leasing can be purchased second-hand for less than your current monthly payment. Do not put yourself in the position of wondering, after a close election loss, what you might have been able to do with an extra $5,000.

Pick the low-hanging fruit.

If you've received early commitments from friends, colleagues or PACs, now’s the time to call; their help is more valuable now than later. Use their donations for your office account, which is defined as everything for which you'd be spending money even if you raised nothing for mail and media. Examples would be office rent, snacks, travel and utilities. (and did we mention the Filpac software?) By setting this money aside, you can assure future prospects that their dollars will be used entirely for direct voter contact.

Lists, lists, lists.

Pull together all the lists you have collected and get them into a central database. Potential helpers. Sign locations. Donor lists. Constituent contacts. Community organizations. Professional associations. This helps you establish the “360-degree” view of voters in your district. Data-entry is a daunting job but manageable. Most electronic lists, such as Excel spreadsheets, can be imported directly into your Filpac database. To manage the data entry you can install remote Filpac databases on volunteers' home computers from where they can upload their work, or you can take advantage of the several web options enabling them to access your system directly.

Get a GOP Data Center user name and password.

If you're running for the state legislature, you should be able to get a user name and password from your Republican caucus committee. Otherwise call your Republican county chairman.

Build your contributor prospect list

In 33 states you can get the names and addresses of donors to past campaigns and use that information to raise more money. Those lists, available from either the county or state election authorities, can be imported directly into your Filpac system, where the candidates and amounts will appear next to each person's name, along with the detail of that persons' donations to your campaign. That way you'll know what they've given to others before making your approach.

The FEC and some states prohibit the practice of using contribution disclosure reports for fund-raising. We did some checking and found that in the following states there are no restrictions on the use of this information: