Founded in 1999 to “help build the capacity of the progressive movement,” Progressive Strategies, LLC (PS) is a consulting firm that offers a comprehensive array of professional services to issue-advocacy groups, political action committees, individual donors, new-media pioneers, bloggers, and “socially responsible businesses” in the “progressive community.” These services include help with utilizing, to maximum effect, such tools and strategies as web videos, podcasts, paid advertising, earned media, public-opinion research, Internet organizing, netroots outreach, and fieldwork. PS also advises major funders and donors on how they can target their giving to have the greatest impact.

PS leadership personnel has extensive experience in grassroots organizing and politics on every level, from local to national. The organization’s co-founder and CEO, Mike Lux, has worked on five U.S. presidential campaigns and served as Bill Clinton‘s Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison from 1993-95. Since that time, Lux has:

• served as a board member of the Clinton–Gore Alumni Association, Democracy Radio, the People For the American Way Voters Alliance, the Proteus Fund, 21st Century Democrats, Americans United for Change, the Arca Foundation, Netroots Nation, and USAction;
• been a co-founder and board member of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, the Center for Progressive Leadership, Progressive Majority, and Women’s Voices/Women Vote (now known as the Voter Participation Center);
• helped launch Air America Radio, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, and the People For the American Way PAC; and
• been an advisory board member for Democratic GAIN and the Democratic Strategist.

A frequent blogger on such websites as Crooks and Liars, the Daily Kos, and the Huffington Post, Lux authored the 2009 book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.

The president of PS is Carla Ohringer, who has worked in Democratic politics since the mid-1990s. Her specialties include coalition building, fundraising, communications strategy, and jump-starting new organizations and campaigns. Throughout the Nineties, Ohringer held leadership positions in a number of Democratic campaigns for U.S. House and Senate seats. She also has served as executive director of American Family Voices, and as director of the Progressive Donor Network.

PS’s online strategy director, Alex Palombo, previously worked for American Bridge 21st century.

Among the clients that have used PS’s services over the years are such organizations as ActBlue, the AFL-CIO, the AFSCME, American Family Voices, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, the Democracy Alliance, Demos, MoveOn.org, the NAACP National Voter Fund, the National Education Association, the Ohio Democratic Party, People For the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Progressive Majority, the Service Employees International Union, USAction, Voices For Progress, Winning Connections, Women’s Voices/Women Vote (now known as the Voter Participation Center), and Working Assets. For a comprehensive list of PS clients, click here.