How a Nonprofit is Tackling the Campaign World’s Unemployment Problem

For Lorenza Ramirez, a longtime Democratic campaign hand, each election cycle ended in a similar way. 

Whether her party’s candidates won or lost, she would watch many of her fellow staffers lose their jobs and have to grapple with a difficult question: Should they stay in the world of political campaigns and bear with the financial and professional uncertainty inherent to the industry? Or should they seek more permanent work elsewhere and leave campaigning behind?

“I saw so many of my peers dip out after each cycle. The talent attrition, especially after the last presidential election, was so much worse than ever before,” Ramirez told C&E. “The question became: How do we solve for the cyclical unemployment in the years between elections?”

Last fall, with the support of a group of donors and advisers, Ramirez launched Blueline, a nonprofit that seeks to retain campaign talent between election cycles by placing staffers who want to remain in the campaign world in new jobs until their next race. 

Ramirez said that there’s an abundance of companies and organizations that are eager to hire former campaign staffers, even if it’s just for a shorter period of time. And many campaign staffers – especially early- and mid-career staffers – can’t afford to go months without work.

“We want to target the people who want to stay in campaigns; who we can’t afford to lose. The people we desperately need to retain,” she said.

Early Interest

Blueline’s fellowship program was met with a wave of interest when it opened up its application process in November. Ramirez said the group received more than 1,200 applications from people who had worked on campaigns during the 2024 election cycle. After an in-depth screening and vetting process, Ramirez and her team whittled that list down to 100 finalists. Blueline’s first fellow was placed in a role with the SEIU in January.

Since then, four other Blueline fellows have found work through the program. Ramirez said she’s in the process of placing another 15 fellows with employers.

For employers, Ramirez said, Blueline’s program offers transparency; the companies and organizations that hire Blueline’s fellows know that the arrangements are most likely temporary, because the 2026 midterm elections are just around the corner. Employers pay Blueline a placement fee, which is intended to help the budding nonprofit on its path to financial sustainability.

Blueline’s fellows, meanwhile, are able to stay working in the off year, and have access to resources like a mentorship program, career development sessions and financial planning help. Ramirez said the group is working to expand the resources it offers its fellows.

“Our focus now is on building out a whole curriculum to provide training for campaign roles, for people who want to become campaign managers or organizing directors,” she said. “That doesn’t really exist right now.”

A Long-Running Challenge

Other groups have taken similar steps toward talent retention in 2025. The Fairness Project, a progressive nonprofit, rolled out a program earlier this month to keep state ballot initiative campaigners working and engaged ahead of the 2026 midterms.  

Amanda Coulombe, the former president of the Democratic voter data clearinghouse NGP VAN, is among the seasoned political professionals advising Blueline and its fellows. She said that the group’s work is tackling the persistent problem of campaign staff turnover and attrition.

“All of the people that work on campaigns every cycle, who are actually doing the vital work of getting people elected – once any of those candidates get elected, there’s an incredibly finite number of jobs they have to place the people who worked on the campaign,” said Coulombe, who was one of Bluelin’s founding donors.

“We lose a lot of people every cycle, and I think all of that really ends up impacting the perspective that we have of the people who are actually doing the organizing and doing the work,” she added.

Coulombe said that same kind of professional uncertainty was part of the reason she took a job at one of NGP VAN’s predecessors – Voter Action Network – in 2008. With Blueline, she said, she has the opportunity to mentor and nurture budding talent that might otherwise leave the campaign world behind.

“I’m just excited that there’s more effort and attention going to this particular problem,” Coulombe said. “How do we help people build sustainable careers that are also beneficial for them in the long term?”