General:

•  Led a successful Earned Income Ballot Initiative campaign to place a .75% earned income tax on Westerville City School District Residents, leading to its successful passage with 60.85% of the total votes. 

• 2011 Income tax levy was defeated 61%-38%

• 2024 Property Tax Levy defeated 52%-47%

• Created a database of over 800 emails and contacts, engaging those contacts throughout the campaign to build and leverage community support 

Fundraising:

• We were advised to focus on “big donor” and “corporate donor” lists provided by district leadership and consultants. 

• As those efforts bore very few donations, Emma and John shifted strategies and focused on mobilizing small $ Donors Through I Heart Westerville Schools shirts as a reward for $30 Donations.

• Began the campaign with ~$18,000 from the 2024 campaign

• Raised $88,000 from nearly 1,000 total donors

• Campaign end balance ~$36,000

• Total donated through website: $29,717.29

• Average donation size: $50.54

• T-shirt sales (tracked):  $8962.4 

*Sold nearly 250 before tracking (but sometimes for less money), and t-shirts sold at events were donated as general fund—total raised from t-shirt sales is around $13,000 (minus production costs)

Strategic:

• Disregarded the hired levy consultant's advice on yard signs and pushed for early orders, despite erroneous claims that Westerville banned them until 45 days before election day.

• Created unprecedented demand for yard signs and distributed 2500 yard signs

• As Early fundraising lagged devised a hybrid outreach system layering OEA resources (texting & printing), volunteer efforts (senior targeted early lit drops), with campaign funds to effectively reach voters despite a lack of funds throughout September. 

• Rebranded social media and organization branding from Our Community Our Schools to Yes For Westerville Schools while increasing followers. 

Community Outreach/Volunteers

• Engaged at least 582 volunteers and collected contact information for future outreach

• Created an email contact list through the yesforwestervilleschools.com site that pushed campaign information for nearly 900 individuals

Social Media: 

• A great deal of our social media success, in terms of organic and paid performance, is listed below. However, perhaps our most effective efforts came in actively pushing back against misinformation despite advice and popular wisdom to not engage the opposition. 

• We were able to mobilize and train volunteers to respond in a disciplined manner to refute misinformation and point out the issues with arguments against the levy. 

• These efforts led to the opposition PAC banning our members for sharing facts, which discredited their arguments.

• We registered the opposition domain and created a countersite to dispute opposition claims.

• That website received 20,000 views, far more than the campaign site throughout the cycle.