Big Movements Don't Happen Overnight

10 Lessons in 10 Years: Episode #3

TL;DR

• NDTC didn’t train 128,000 Democrats in year one. It took a decade of showing up consistently, even in “off-years” and unglamorous moments.

• Real power comes from playing the long game: training people before you need them, building systems that outlast election cycles, and trusting that small, consistent actions compound over time.

• We celebrated our 10th anniversary in DC this week with a community of donors and supporters who’ve backed us since the beginning. We’re going to need you to join us to reach new heights by our 20th year.

You may have heard that NDTC is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Over the last decade, we’ve trained over 128,000 Democrats to win elections, watched our alumni flip seats across the country, and built the infrastructure that churns out massive Democratic talent.

But it hasn’t always been easy, and we’ve learned our fair share of lessons along the way. Now, we’re sharing all those insights with you.

This is the third installment of “10 Lessons in 10 Years,” a monthly(-ish) series where we’re reflecting on and reporting out our most important lessons from a decade of Democratic training. In each one, we’ll break down one insight we’ve seen proven true time and again, across thousands of campaigns.

Some of these lessons we’ve had to learn the hard way. Now you don’t have to. Notebooks out, pencils ready.

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Last night, we threw a party.

Not just any party, but our 10th anniversary celebration! The room was full of people who’ve been part of this journey: candidates we trained who went on to win, donors who believed in this work before it was proven, and partners who’ve been in the trenches with us.

There’s only one way the faces around us culminated in that event, and it was through years of committed work. None of it happened overnight.

And that’s the lesson we’re bringing to you today.

The First Year Nobody Remembers

In 2016, we had a CEO who realized that if Democrats were going to run and win everywhere, someone had to train them to do it. He decided to take matters into his own hands.

He was our first trainer. Before we had powerhouse trainers Jordan Berg-Powers or Salim Shariff on board, we had Kelly Dietrich posting videos online of campaign strategies for Democrats.

And he kept showing up. From his dining table in Chicago to hotel conference rooms in small towns in red states. And slowly, something started to build.

The Work Nobody Sees

Building a movement looks like showing up in “off-years” when nobody’s paying attention to politics. It looks like hosting a school board training in February when everyone else is waiting for the presidential race to heat up. It looks like teaching people how to file for office who have never run in a race before.

Most of the time, it looks like unglamorous, unsexy, invisible work that rarely makes headlines.

Most of the work NDTC has done over the past decade falls into this category. We’ve trained thousands of candidates who you’ve never heard of. We’ve run hundreds of trainings that didn’t result in immediate wins. We’ve built systems and tools and curriculum that nobody outside of campaign work will ever see.

But that infrastructure is only invisible until you need it.

Those trainings in “off-years” built the bench of candidates who flipped seats in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024, and every odd-year local election in between. The very first candidates and staffers we trained (including some who lost their first races) went on to run campaigns again and win.

Each of these small steps was building the future and the hope we see today. Democrats outpacing Republicans in 2026 electoral wins didn’t happen overnight. It started with our partners and us a decade ago. That’s how you build power through sustained commitment that compounds over time.

What Ten Years Actually Build

When people ask us for proof of concept, we point to the names everyone knows now but didn’t ten years ago.

Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, came through NDTC training before his historic win. Lauren Underwood trained with us before flipping a House seat that had been red for 32 years. Jasmine Crockett went through our programs before becoming one of the most recognized voices in Congress today.

They’re what happens when you invest in training people before they’re household names, before they’re “ready,” before anyone thinks they can win.

But what matters even more to us is that for every Maxwell Frost, there are hundreds of NDTC alumni working behind the scenes. They’re managing campaigns. They’re running field operations. They’re serving on school boards and city councils.

That’s what ten years of sustained commitment build. Individual wins in small towns across America, compounded by an entire ecosystem of talented and trained people who know how to organize, how to win, and how to spread their know-how to others.

Our 10th anniversary party was full of people who’ve been part of this long game. Donors who’ve been backing us since year one, even when we were small and unproven. Staff who’ve dedicated years of their lives to this work. Learners and alumni who stayed in the fight.

These are the people who understand that big movements don’t happen overnight. They happen because people show up, year after year, even when it’s not glamorous. Especially when it’s not glamorous.

The Lesson for Your Campaign

If you’re running for office, or thinking about it, or working on someone else’s campaign, here’s what we want you to take from this:

Don’t wait for the perfect moment. We could have waited until we had more funding, more staff, more proof of concept. We didn’t. Kelly Dietrich started as a team of one, and now we have over 30 people on board to power this work. We started with what we had, and your campaign should too.

Play the long game. You might lose your first race. But that doesn’t mean you failed if you’re still building toward something bigger. Stay involved. Run again. Chip away at change.

Invest in infrastructure before you need it. Don’t wait until October to build your volunteer program. Don’t wait until you’re losing to think about training. Set the systems in place early, when you have time to do it right.

Show up in the off-years. The work that matters most happens when nobody’s watching. The school board races, the party organizing in non-presidential years, and the training sessions in February. That’s where power gets built.

Trust the compound effect. Every volunteer you train, every door you knock, every small action you take all add up. You won’t see it immediately. But over months and years, it compounds into something substantial.

Ten More Years

10 years in, we’re so grateful. Not just for what we’ve built, but for everyone who believed in the long game with us.

Because we truly believe that NDTC at year ten is still just the beginning. The infrastructure we’ve built, the people we’ve trained, and the learning ecosystems we’ve created are going to keep compounding. The movement keeps building if we keep showing up.

That’s been true for NDTC’s first ten years, it’ll be true for the next ten, and it’s true for your campaign too.

So start now, show up consistently, and play the long game.

That’s how we’ll build something that lasts.

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Kelly Dietrich is the founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), which has trained more than 128,000 Democrats to run for office and work on campaigns since 2016.

Want to be part of the next ten years? Check out our upcoming trainings at traindems.org.

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