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What election offices learned from our goal-setting tool

Setting goals is one of the most important things an election office can do to keep improving. Last year, we launched the nonpartisan Setting Goals in Election Operations toolkit to help offices do exactly that. The toolkit guides offices through turning post-election insights into concrete, actionable plans.

Since then, we’ve had a front-row seat to how election offices are putting it to use. As subject-matter experts in the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, we’ve facilitated and advised 50 “Pathfinder” election offices to use structured goal-setting to make real progress on their standards work. Here’s what that looks like and how you can use the Setting Goals in Elections toolkit to run a successful election this year.

For many of the offices we worked with, it was one of the first times they’d applied design-thinking methods to this kind of planning work, breaking down problems, centering voter needs, generating options, and evaluating feasibility to move from generic observations to well-scoped, voter-focused goals. Here’s what we saw and how you can apply the same approach to set goals for a successful election this year.

What happened when offices used the goal-setting framework

When we asked what was most helping the offices reach their goals, the answers kept coming back to the goal setting process itself: offices that had written down clear, specific goals had something to return to. They used quieter periods to build momentum, revisited their goals regularly to stay aligned, and arrived at check-ins with a clearer sense of what they’d accomplished and what came next.

When we looked at what offices were working toward, a few themes came up across nearly every subcohort. Updating and creating materials was the most common goal type, showing up in 10 of 11 subcohorts. Strengthening external partnerships and improving staff training were close behind. Offices were focused on building new documentation, testing communications with voters, developing multilingual materials, and improving how they train poll workers.

Having a structured goal wasn’t just useful at the start; it was useful throughout. It gave offices a way to measure their own progress and stay motivated throughout the year. One office described how the formal check-in made them “stop to process just how much progress they had been making.” Another said that regular reminders of their SMART goals kept the work top of mind and helped them stay excited about moving forward.

We also saw something the data didn’t fully capture: offices that went through the goal-setting process together as a team and in conversation and with peers tended to get more out of it. The shared framework gave offices a common language, and the cohort gave them people to use it with. Goal setting, it turns out, works better when you’re not doing it alone.

But the process also revealed where goal-setting breaks down. The most common reason offices fell behind was time. Timelines that looked reasonable in the fall didn’t account for special elections, staff turnover, or the reality that winter isn’t always a slow season. Several offices had to scale back or shift their goals mid-cohort. The ones who recovered fastest tended to pivot to smaller, more focused versions of their original goals rather than abandoning them entirely, a reminder that specificity in goal-writing pays off when plans need to change.

How your office can use it

You don’t need to be in a cohort to apply this approach. Our Setting Goals in Election Operations toolkit is designed for any office, at any stage, and it walks you through the full process in three steps.

Step 1: Prioritize

After a post-election debrief (we have a toolkit for this process, too), you’ll likely have more ideas than you can act on. The toolkit helps you sort through them using visual frameworks to figure out which improvements are most urgent, most feasible, and most aligned with your office’s values.

Step 2: Define

Once you have your priorities, the toolkit guides you through writing SMART goals — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound — with guidance on how to keep scope realistic and set yourself up to follow through.

Step 3: Plan

The toolkit helps you build preliminary plans for each goal, identifying who will lead the work, what approvals are needed, and how to share plans with your team in a way that creates accountability and buy-in.

It includes a step-by-step guide, a goal-setting worksheet, and an optional Miro template for teams who want to work through it collaboratively. The whole process takes about a day and is designed to be done right after an election cycle, though you can use it any time you’re trying to move from big ideas to concrete plans. With a federal election on the horizon, now is a good time to start.

Start using our nonpartisan Setting Goals in Election Operations toolkit