Author Archives: Jonathan Dearth

1. Definitions

   29th January 2011 11:34 am Leave a Comment

   When I have run advocacy campaign training in the past, an early obstacle can be the issue of definitions.

   So when I was at a conference recently in Manchester, I was very taken by the definitions offered by Justin Nsengiyumva from Refugee Action who runs their TRIO project.

   Firstly he suggested that a policy is a plan, course of action or set of regulations adopted by government, business or an institution designed to influence and determine decisions or procedures. He argued that a policy is what a government or institution decides to do or not to do.

   He then suggested that advocacy is the deliberative process of influencing those who make policy decisions.

   Within this definition, he suggested that there were several key ideas:

   Advocacy is about influencing those who make policy decisions by making full use of all the advocacy tools available. It is not always just about being confrontational.

   Advocacy is a deliberative process involving intentional actions and therefore you must be clear who you are trying to influence and which policy you wish to see changed.

   The policy makers encompass many types of decision makers and we should never forget in our advocacy strategies that policy makers are human beings too.

   Finally Justin highlighted three concepts that underpin the need for advocacy campaigns:

   1.      To create policies where they are needed or none exist

   2.      To reform harmful or ineffective policies

   3.      To ensure that good policies are implemented and enforced

   What do you make of this approach? Is it helpful to your planning?

2. The need for campaigning focus

   1st November 2010 11:35 am Leave a Comment

   Last month I had the opportunity to go over to Warsaw to run a two day training course over a weekend for Polish NGOs.

   The brief for the workshop was fairly clear: to run an introductory session on campaigning to inspire and motivate the NGOs. As ever with these international workshops, and as I have blogged about before, I was slightly apprehensive – would my campaigning rhetoric resonate in a Polish context?

   Yet as ever I found that the language of campaigning is truly global; it really is an international language. I found people who had a burning desire to achieve change, were focussed on the problem and the solution, knew who their targets were and were keen to think about relevant campaign messages. And when I talked about planning for that moment of campaign success, they were with me again and were keen to think about how they could build in such planning to their overall campaign planning.

   But on the second day, one of the delegates came up to me and said that I had changed her thinking about campaigning. I was surprised as the group had seemed to be with me, but I asked her what she meant by that phrase. She said that she had been challenged by my insistence that campaigners needed to focus – to pick an issue and then stick with it to achieve change.

   She said that she was now going to have to go away and re-think: what was their focus going to be? But she also knew that this concept of focus would be hard to promote in her NGO.

   I was keen to respond that it is good to have your menu of things you want to see changed – never lose that policy shopping list. And always be on the look-out for opportunities to raise any of these issues. But focus is so important for effective campaigning. By all means use opportunities but do not lose sight of your primary focus and keep chipping away. There is always such a temptation to run with a variety of issues – but remember to focus.

   And focus was also the key theme when I was in Manchester recently running a campaigning workshop for a dynamic group of refugee campaigners. We listed all of the injustices facing asylum seekers at the moment and came up with a long list of issues. In the refugee sector we are not short of things to campaign on – the challenge that they were left with was: what would be their campaigning focus?

   So what is your campaigning focus at the moment? Do you have a focus for your campaigning or are you trying to run with a basket full of campaigns?

3. Ray Mitchell

   5th October 2010 9:44 pm Leave a Comment

   

   Whilst Senior Campaigns Manager at Age UK (Formerly Age Concern England)

   Apart from your current organisation which other organisations that campaign do you admire?
   It’s difficult to single out individual organisations as there are excellent examples of campaigning everywhere, but I regularly visit MoveOn.org and admire their creativity and how quickly they respond to events.

   Who is the campaigner you most admire?
   Again, it’s hard to pick out one in particular. At the recent NCVO campaigners conference, I was very impressed by Jackie Schneider who organised Merton Parents for Better Food in Schools. For someone who
   described herself as ‘not a real campaigner like you lot’ she described
   passionately the development and impact of a text book campaign.

   Is there a campaigning organisation that you would like to see the back of?
   Not really. Even those we disagree with can teach us something about how an issue can be seen from different perspectives and how campaign messages can influence how people think and act in entirely different ways on the same issue.

   What advice would you give someone starting their career in campaigning today?
   Don’t be afraid to copy (and improve on) other campaigners’ ideas, but also challenge yourself to come up with an idea that everyone else wishes they had.

   What three things make a good campaigner?
   Passion, persistence and a steady stream of good ideas

   Which of these three do you have most of?
   They may not all be good, but I’m never short of ideas

   Which of these three do you think is missing most out of people who campaign or want to?
   I think sometimes persistence can be lacking: it’s easy to get disheartened when achieving campaign objectives can seem impossible or a very long way off.

   Generally are organisations getting better at campaigning since you began your career? If so, what’s changed?
   There’s certainly a lot more campaigners than twenty years ago when I started. On the whole I think there is much more professionalism – I’m in the camp that sees this as a good thing – and high quality work.

   If you weren’t a campaigner, what would you be?
   Hopefully another job that combines opportunities for creativity with helping to improve things – I’m not sure what that would be so I’m glad I’m a campaigner.

4. 6 pathways

   9th September 2010 11:36 am Leave a Comment

   In my last blog, I wrote about my new interest in London Citizens and their approach to organising taken from Chicago and the work of Saul Alinsky.

   But as I finished last time, despite my enthusiasm I was left wondering where this approach fitted with other forms of campaigning the like of which I was more familiar.

   Then I had the good fortune to attend a presentation by Chris Stalker on the work that he has been doing on advocacy capacity building. In his thought provoking session (and his forthcoming paper on advocacy capacity building written for INTRAC will be well worth reading), he referred to a report that has come out of the States: Pathways for Change: 6 theories about how policy change happens by Organizational Research Services.

   The report sets out, you will not be too surprised to hear, six theories for how policy change happens – one of which includes organising. I have been sending this report out to loads of people since I heard Chris speak; what I like about it is that it shows campaigning as a spectrum with an array of approaches but different situations and issues will call on different approaches. It is good to see these different approaches laid out so clearly and with academic references and the relevant academic discipline – there is no one right approach.

   So what are these pathways?

   1. ‘Large Leap’ – where large scale policy change is the goal. How about the campaign against apartheid?
   2. ‘Coalition theory’ – co-ordinated activity among a range of individuals with the same core belief. How about the campaign for a smoking ban in public places?
   3. Policy windows – advocates using a window of opportunity to push a policy solution. How about the current initiatives to use the government review of child detention to push for an end to all asylum detention?
   4. ‘Messaging and frameworks’ – the key issue for influence is how issues are framed and presented. How about campaigners at the moment trying to re-frame their issue in the language of the Big Society?
   5. ‘Power Politics’ – where policy change is achieved by working directly with those with power. This made me think about my own campaigning with the last government on tackling empty homes.
   6. Community organising theory – where policy change happens through the collective action of the members of a community who work on changing problems affecting their lives. How about the London Citizens Living Wage campaign?

   But don’t take my interpretation of this paper – take a look yourself! If you read one thing over the next few months as part of your own professional development how about you take a look at this article and see how you respond to these six pathways?

5. Charities must increase their investment in campaigning

   1st September 2010 3:17 pm Leave a Comment

   Mike Hobday who leads on campaigns at MacMillan Cancer Support is right to say that “the role of campaigning will increase as spending cuts take effect”.

   The most progressive organisations, and I’d count MacMillan Cancer Support firmly within this group, are realising that they need to get a better “bang for their buck” – a better return on their spending. And at this time of threatened cuts it brings to the fore that successful campaigning gives the better return than any other activity for an organisation which is concerned about the long term goals.

   The less progressive organisations which perhaps don’t take campaigning for real change seriously, but see if as an add-on because other charities are doing it, may look to reduce their emphasis in this area. They will be doing their campaign and the beneficiaries of their campaign a severe disservice in the long term.
   Mike referred to campaigning being important in order “to leverage the system to their advantage”. This is very true and it will be a measure of the charities and campaigns over the coming months to see how genuine they are about long term change, by increasing their investment in campaigning.

6. Citizens – real activism

   13th August 2010 11:37 am Leave a Comment

   In the run-up to the General Election, it was hard not to hear about them. James Purnell resigned from the Cabinet to become one and they organised one of the most dynamic leadership hustings during the campaign.

   I am of course referring to London Citizens. I was intrigued as to what they were all about, and they generously allowed me to participate in one of their organiser training sessions recently even though my employer is not yet a member of London Citizens.

   I went on the training session slightly sceptical but became more and more interested as we worked through the concept of organising. Yet by lunchtime on the second day, I was yet to be totally convinced by it all.

   And then one thing changed my mind – we did an activity. There must have been over 70 people on this training course and most of us stayed on for the Saturday afternoon for the promised activity.

   It was all linked to their Living Wage campaign.

   What I love about this campaign is that they have focussed on the core problems of their members – one of which was the difficulty of living in London on the national minimum wage – but developed a local solution: the living wage. This figure currently stands at £7.60 some £1.87 higher than the minimum wage.

   And then instead of waiting for a national campaign to unfold, they targeted local employers, initially in the banking sector, to pay all their staff including contract staff the Living Wage.

   And since its launch in 2001 an estimated £24m has been put back in the pockets of low wage workers. Remarkable – what impact!

   On that Saturday afternoon, in the rain, they got us all to visit three shops on Oxford Street and ask to see the shop manager. With my three shops, I was amazed how easy it was to see the manager, to make my case about the Living Wage and to hand over a letter to their Chairman. And all of us did three shops and we covered the length of Oxford Street from Oxford Circus to Bond Street.

   I just loved this idea of using activists on a training course to do some real activism. It is a lesson to all of us involved in running campaign training – are we missing a trick by not getting the participants involved in some real action?

   I just could not ignore the power and energy behind this training and this action – Citizens are clearly offering a very powerful methodology to civil society in this country. If you don’t know about them and you are interested in campaigning, you really do need to get to know them.

   But despite my increasing personal enthusiasm for London Citizens, I was left wondering where they fit in with other approaches to campaigning.

   Next time I will try to address that question ….

7. Which campaigner inspires you?

   16th May 2010 11:38 am Leave a Comment

   Who inspires you in your campaigning? Who do you look up to? Who motivates your campaigning?

   I may have struggled to answer that question until recently when I attended the Sheila McKechnie Foundation campaigners’ conference and heard Kumi Naidoo speak about campaigning. Kumi was recently appointed the executive director of Greenpeace International and has an awesome campaigning background

   He gave the key note speech at the SMK event and I could have listened to him all day. If you do one thing this year as part of your development I urge you either to hear him speak or read his writing.

   There was so much to take from his speech. I was taken by him saying that the core principles of campaigning are still valid. He appealed to a sense of history for our current campaigning. History tells us that decent people must stand up and put their life on the line. In saying that, he added that he felt that campaigners put too much emphasis on the insider track. Food for thought.

   He spoke of two tribes in campaigning – one internally focussed and one externally focussed – but his key message that struck a chord with me was that these two tribes need to work together. He pointed to the success of the landmine campaign that led to the Ottowa treaty, where the insider and outside campaign strategies had worked together.

   He also said that the struggle was a marathon, not a sprint, and that we need to offer a lifetime of commitment. Maybe this is a message that we could take to our funders?

   But above all his passion and his commitment shone through for me from his words. In all of our talk about professionalising campaigning, we must never lose sight of why we campaign. We must never lose sight of the injustice and the change we seek in our world. Yes, we should be professional – but professional with passion and spark – without that we will never achieve our goals in our lifetimes of struggle.

   For more information about Kumi Naidoo:

   http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/how-is-greenpeace-structured/management/executive-director

8. Campaigning is all about failure?

   24th April 2010 11:38 am Leave a Comment

   Last month I did a session on INTRAC’s advocacy and policy influencing training course. I do enjoy getting involved with these sessions as they attract NGO delegates from across the world and you get a real sense that campaigning is a truly international language.

   I had been asked to say a few words about running a campaign in terms of both success and failure, and I am always interested in how different groups will pick up and explore different elements from my presentation.

   This time the group was keen to explore and discuss the issue of failure in campaigning. Maybe in an environment of tight finances and funders ever more focussed on impact,  there isn’t any room for failure and we just have to, as campaigners, get it right first time? Or is there still room to try things and fail?

   I was struck by an email that I received from one of the delegates once he had returned to his home continent. He quoted me as saying:

   ‘Campaigning is all about failure, learning from the failure and building on the learning from the failure’.

   Now I am not entirely sure that I used those words because campaigning is not all about failure – as success is also important, but campaigning is certainly about learning from that failure. As campaigners we need to have both the courage and space to try things, assess how they go, learn from this activity and try again.

   For me campaigning has always been an art and not a science. Yes, you can attend training sessions and read books and case studies, but campaigning for me is all about an instinctive desire for change rooted in a curiosity, leading to an understanding, about the external environment.

   Despite the internal and external pressures at the moment, do not be wary of trying new things. The advent of a new Parliament in the UK with a large number of new MPs after 6th May gives us as campaigners a great opportunity to try new things, reflect from that activity and keep moving forwards.

   So do cherish failure in campaigning. When I have done research on campaigning in the past, I have found that people were very happy to talk about their successes but less so their failures. But we have all made mistakes, I certainly have, and I think that we should cherish this failure (unless we keep on making the same mistakes!). But do you cherish your failure in campaigning?

9. Using Opposition (part 3)

   27th January 2010 11:39 am Leave a Comment

   In my last blog I described a technique to utilise the opposition arguments against your campaign.

   Let’s take an example of this method being used in practice. I used to campaign against the scandal of empty homes at the Empty Homes Agency. And a few years ago we were campaigning for new powers to tackle empty homes.

   The key arguments against such new powers on empty homes were that owners should be free to do what-ever they wanted with their property, that these powers would undermine this freedom and that there was not a problem with homes being empty.

   Historically our key campaign message had been around tackling empty homes as a solution to tackling homelessness. That was the campaign message that motivated me. But it didn’t resonate with the owners of empty homes who we were trying to get on board.

   So we used the opposition matrix technique described in my last blog. And we began to change our campaign message having reflected on the opposition to our campaign. We began to address the concerns by talking about the impact that empty homes can have on neighbouring occupied property. A survey from Hometrack (June 2003) found that empty homes can devalue neighbouring property by as much as 18%.

   We also talked about empty homes attracting crime and vandalism in an area; the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) had referred to empty homes as being ‘honey pots for crime’. These were reasons to support our campaign on empty homes and specifically to address the concerns against our campaign. We found that these new messages resonated much more with our target audience and helped to us to attract new media coverage.

   This method was useful for us to think about our opponents’ concerns and use public messages that would address those concerns, as opposed to using our normal messages about the need to bring these homes back into use to help homeless people.

   I had learned a useful campaign lesson – it is often more important to use the campaign messages that resonate with your target audience than the messages that motivate you. This was hard for my ego but good for the campaign.

10. Using Opposition (part 2)

    19th January 2010 11:40 am Leave a Comment

    In my last blog I wrote about the importance of taking time to collect the arguments that are used against your campaign, and I suggested in your campaign planning team to list all of the arguments that you have heard used against your campaign.

    So you list, on the left hand side of a page, all of the possible concerns that may be expressed about your campaign. What might be said by others about your campaign? And then list, on the other side of the page, the key reasons in support of your campaign. (See chart below)

    The next step is to see whether at least one of the reasons for supporting your campaign provides an answer to each of the concerns – is there a reason to address each concern. Or are there outstanding concerns that your reasons do not address?

     

    Concern about the campaign	Reason to support the campaign

     

    As your campaign develops you should be able to identify which of the concerns feature highest with your target or your wider target audience. With that knowledge, you then need to ensure that your campaign message addresses that concern. In many respects this is a statement of the blindingly obvious, but as campaigners we are often guilty of just running with the messages that motivate us. I know that this is true for me!

    We are already motivated by our campaign as are, hopefully, our supporters. This technique is all about building wider support.

    In my next blog I will explain how I sought to use this technique in one of my campaigns ….