When the news cycle hits, the websites are the one thing nobody has to think about

A national organization, and everything that points at its websites

Club for Growth is a national political advocacy organization. Its websites are where supporters sign up, where donors give, and where its own staff send people every day. There is a main site, a foundation site, and a changing set of campaign and issue sites that come and go with the political calendar.

The person responsible for all of it is the organization's digital lead. What makes the job hard is the way attention arrives: without warning. A story breaks, an ad airs, an email goes to a very large list, and traffic multiplies within minutes. That is the moment the sites matter most. It is also the moment nobody on the digital team has a minute to think about servers.

What there is no time for in an election cycle

In a cycle, the digital team's week is already full. A slow page during a national news moment is seen by supporters, by reporters, and by the people the organization is trying to persuade. A new campaign site may be needed in days. An old one has to come down cleanly once its moment has passed.

The main site is also where supporters hold accounts and where online giving happens, so a bad hour there costs real support, on the very day support is easiest to win.

None of the housekeeping pauses for the calendar. Updates, certificates, and backups still come due, on every site at once. And because the work is political, these sites draw more attention, welcome and unwelcome, than most organizations ever see.

A small digital team cannot also be a hosting department. What the digital lead needed was to know that the sites would hold, and to have one place to ask when something new was needed.

How we look after it

One team for every site. The main platform, the foundation's site, and each campaign site sit on the same managed hosting, with the same protections and the same routines. The digital lead has one place to ask, whichever site the question is about, and a team on the other end that already knows how each one is put together.

Built for the busiest hour. Every site sits behind an enterprise firewall and content network, so a surge is absorbed at the edge before it reaches the server. When a story breaks, a supporter's page loads the way it did the day before.

A place to rehearse. Changes to the donation system or the scorecards are tried on staging sites that no donor can see. During a cycle, nothing is tested for the first time in public.

Sites that follow the calendar. When the organization needs a site for a campaign or an issue, we stand it up on the same footing as the rest. When its moment has passed, we take it down, so the organization is never paying attention to a site that has finished its job.

Ahead of the cycle. The best work happens in the quiet months. When their team sees something coming, they raise it early, and we build it before the height of the season, so it is simply there when it is needed.

What their team does not think about

Today the digital lead plans campaigns without planning for infrastructure. A campaign site is a request, and it is answered. A change to something sensitive is rehearsed before it is seen. The housekeeping happens every week, on every site, without a reminder from anyone. When their team wants something for next season, the conversation starts months ahead, while there is still time to build it properly.

We are not the story on a big news day, and we should not be. The digital team's attention belongs on the campaign. Ours belongs on keeping everything underneath it uneventful.