ABOUT THE CFC

Good Candidates Shouldn’t Need Deep Pockets.

We build shared campaign capacity so working-class candidates can compete without personal wealth, insider networks, or a ready-made political machine.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE GAP

We all want big money out of politics. The problem is that campaigns still need the things money buys.

That money buys a lot more than ads. It buys staff time, technology, fundraising systems, communications support, design, printing, voter outreach, and access to people who know how to keep a campaign moving. Those are the things that help turn a good candidate into a viable one.

When wealth and insider access determine who gets the tools to run, working people are pushed out before many campaigns even begin. To put it dryly: Government then reflects a smaller slice of the public it is supposed to represent.

Share the Capacity Candidates Usually Have to Buy.

CFC builds the campaign systems, tools, relationships, and support working-class candidates usually have to buy for themselves, then shares that capacity across races for free or at deeply reduced cost. Ya know, like a coalition.

Tools & Technology

The basic systems a campaign needs to function, already set up and supported. Websites, CRM and email, forms, donation tools, shared files, calendars, project management, social publishing, analytics, hosting, and other campaign software.

Campaign Operations

The ongoing work that keeps all those moving pieces moving. Onboarding, campaign calendars, deadlines, task coordination, Candidate Desk support, check-ins, vendor coordination, requests, approvals, and campaign closeout.

Strategy & Guidance

Practical help figuring out what to do next and how to do it well. Campaign planning, field and fundraising strategy, training, coaching, office hours, candidate preparation, troubleshooting, and access to people with useful experience.

Organizing & Field

The people and systems needed to reach voters and turn support into action. Volunteer recruitment and coordination, canvassing, voter contact, scripts, events, tabling, field planning, and GOTV support.

Fundraising

The infrastructure and support behind raising campaign money. Donation systems, fundraising plans, email and materials, donor workflows, event support, and practical help building a sustainable fundraising operation.

Communications & Creative

The work that helps a campaign explain itself and reach people clearly. Messaging, writing, design, literature, signs, mail, email, social content, press, photography, printing, and production support.

Shared Systems Make Campaigns Go Further

Food banks often prefer cash because they already have purchasing systems, supplier relationships, storage, and staff that can stretch those dollars further than a one-off grocery donation. Campaign support can work the same way. If several candidates use the same software, vendors, calendars, templates, and support systems, CFC can manage those resources once instead of rebuilding them for every race.

That might mean one shared filing calendar and a reminder to every campaign with a report due, a group call for common questions, one Discord with shared training and private campaign channels, bulk printing, shared software access where vendor rules allow it, and templates that get better each time they are used.

The more campaigns use the same infrastructure, the less time and money each one has to spend recreating it. More of the campaign’s limited resources can go toward actually reaching voters.

Who We Are

CFC brings together people who have run for office, worked on campaigns, organized in their communities, served in public roles, and contributed professional skills to political work.

Many of us met through campaigns and saw the same problem from different sides: useful knowledge, relationships, tools, and experience are often scattered after an election. We formed CFC to keep those people connected and put what they have learned to work for the next person.

Candidates and Public Servants

People who have run, served, or governed and bring firsthand knowledge of what public leadership actually asks of people.

Campaign Workers and Volunteers

People who know campaign work, from voter contact and fundraising to operations, communications, and follow-through.

Organizers and Advocates

People who organize around shared concerns through labor, issue work, local groups, mutual aid, and community organizing.

Community Members

People rooted in their communities who bring local knowledge, lived experience, practical judgment, and perspective.

The Community First Model

Communities are better served when the people making decisions know the people affected by them and understand what daily life there actually looks like.

But the path into public office favors people with money, connections, flexible time, and access to professional political support. Those advantages do not make someone a bad representative, but they can mean the people most able to run are less likely to share the financial pressures and everyday realities of the people they hope to represent. That narrows representation before voters ever cast a ballot.

CFC helps Community First Candidates overcome those barriers by pooling the people, tools, knowledge, money, and professional support it takes to run. We share those resources across campaigns so they can support more people and get better over time. The goal is simple: make it easier for people rooted in their communities to represent them.

What Makes a

Community First Candidate?

COMMUNITY

Puts the people affected first, respects local knowledge, and stays answerable to the community.

INTEGRITY

Uses public office to serve, not enrich themselves, and refuses money or influence that compromises that responsibility.

What Makes a

Community First Candidate?

SOLIDARITY

Treats people as neighbors and refuses to gain power through scapegoating, exclusion, dehumanization, or hate.

DEMOCRACY

Believes people deserve a real say, supports open participation, and keeps power accountable to the people affected.

A Different Kind of PAC

New Hampshire law lets political committees make unlimited contributions to candidates in state elections. A well-funded PAC can use that rule to put an enormous amount of resources behind one campaign, deepening the advantage money already provides.

CFC is an independent PAC, unaffiliated with either major party. New Hampshire also counts services and other things of value as contributions. For us, that means we can pool staff time, websites, software, design, printing, discounted services, and other campaign support and provide them as in-kind contributions.

We didn’t write the rule. We’re just using it to make it easier for working people to run for office.

A LITTLE THEORY, AS A TREAT

For A More Cooperative ‘Left’

Cooperative capacity is the ability of independent people and organizations to turn shared interests into collective action. It is built through relationships, complementary strengths, shared infrastructure, and the practical systems that make repeated cooperation possible.

It’s safe to say that no current, single organization or strategy can build community power on its own. Labor and tenant organizing, NGOs, mutual aid, issue campaigns, community institutions, electoral work, and public leadership each create different forms of power. Their paths may be different, but they cross often.

Mutual aid and open source show how independent efforts can add up to something larger. People pursue their own work, contribute different strengths, and build on what others have shared. In the process, they create a common capacity that none of them could produce alone, and that makes more possible for everyone. Ultimately, cooperative capacity can turn separate efforts into a more unified political ecosystem.

Interdependence Changes the Equation

When different groups hold capacities others need, their success stops being separate from our own. Cooperation creates positive-sum relationships where strengthening another part of the ecosystem can expand what everyone is able to accomplish.

Shared Foundations Reduce Gatekeeping

Different strategies often depend on the same knowledge, tools, systems, relationships, and skills. Making more of that capacity common reduces artificial scarcity and makes access less dependent on who controls the resource.

get along Without going along

Groups can cooperate where their interests overlap without sharing one organization, strategy, or political identity. Independence makes disagreement easier to contain, instead of letting one conflict determine every other relationship.

the boring work makes an impact

Coalitions need more than shared goals. Research, introductions, documentation, coordination, follow-through, shared systems, and institutional memory are the quiet back-office work that keeps cooperation from disappearing between one project and the next.

Unity Through Practice

A movement is not unified because everyone agrees. It is unified when the power built in one place can strengthen work happening somewhere else.

Without cooperative capacity, every campaign, organizing drive, and community effort risks standing alone. Knowledge stays siloed. Relationships reset. Hard-won capacity disappears when the immediate work ends.

With it, each effort can leave behind people, knowledge, tools, relationships, and trust that strengthen the next.
Separate struggles begin to accumulate into shared power. That is how cooperation becomes unity.

Why the goose?

Geese are community creatures. They stick together, take turns leading, and both males and females take responsibility for the flock. Nobody gets to be Supreme Goose forever.

Despite their reputation for aggression, geese are affectionate, curious, smart, and caring. They like their people. But cause trouble for them or theirs, and you can expect yelling, wing-slapping, aggressive use of their nightmarish goosey-teeth, and a very direct community response. The goose suffers no fools.

how are we organized?

CFC is a membership organization. Members can bring forward proposals, nominate candidates for endorsement, participate in working circles, and receive regular organizational and financial reports. Active members also ratify candidate endorsements and other major member decisions.

CFC uses a sociocratic, circle-based governance structure that distributes authority instead of putting every decision in the hands of one person or a small executive team. Decisions within circles are made by consent, and authority is delegated to the smallest group capable of handling the work.

MORE frequently asked questions

CFC is built to support working-class, community-rooted candidates who meet our Community First standards and are prepared to remain accountable to the people they want to represent.

No. CFC is independent of both major parties. We can support aligned candidates in major-party primaries, nonpartisan races, independent campaigns, and other lawful ballot contexts.

Our current focus is New Hampshire state, county, and municipal elections. That includes races from State House and county offices to school boards, select boards, city councils, and other local positions.

We focus on the places where working people can have a direct role in the decisions affecting their communities and where shared campaign infrastructure can make it more realistic for them to run.

We look at more than someone’s issue positions. We consider their connection to their community, the Community First tenets, funding and conflicts, public conduct, campaign readiness, and willingness to remain accountable. Endorsements are ultimately ratified by CFC’s active members.

Support can include campaign planning, websites, communications, design, fundraising systems, volunteer tools, field support, software, printing, training, and other shared campaign infrastructure. What we can provide depends on the campaign and CFC’s available capacity.

No. Endorsement means CFC is willing to put its name behind a candidate. Candidate-specific services, spending, and staff time depend on capacity, legal requirements, and an approved support plan.

Because electoral support is part of the work itself. New Hampshire’s political-committee rules let CFC provide substantial, properly reported cash and in-kind support to state candidates, including services and other things of value. That legal structure makes our shared-support model possible.

A 501(c)(4) is a social-welfare organization. It can lobby and participate in some elections, but supporting or opposing candidates cannot be its primary activity.

CFC was built specifically to support candidates and elections. That is why we operate as a political committee: electoral work is the work, rather than something we have to keep secondary.

You do not have to run for office to be part of CFC. Membership is open to people who meet our eligibility requirements and affirm our mission and standards, and there are also ways to volunteer, contribute skills, support candidates, or take part in CFC’s work.

No. We want as many useful campaign tools, guides, templates, trainings, and other resources as possible to be available publicly. Endorsement is required for CFC to put its name behind a candidate and may be required for candidate-specific staff time, spending, or managed support.

No. There really is no single Election Day for this work. New Hampshire has local elections outside the fall state election cycle, and serious campaigns can take months to prepare.

While one campaign is finishing, other people may already be deciding whether to run, building a team, learning the office, raising money, or preparing for the next filing period. CFC keeps the tools, knowledge, relationships, and infrastructure built during each campaign so the next candidate does not have to start from scratch.

Yes. Candidates can come to CFC directly, but community members can also recommend people they think would make good public leaders. You do not need to wait for someone to decide on their own that they are a “political person.”

You do not have to run for office to be part of CFC. People can join, volunteer, contribute skills, help build shared resources, support candidates, recommend future public leaders, or take part in other CFC work.

join the flock

Working-class candidates should not have to carry a campaign alone. Community First needs people who will help shape the coalition and resources to carry out the work. Joining and donating are the two most direct ways to help.

donate JOIN US