Cathy Pharoah is correct in noting in her article “Charities can make a difference…” when she says that “…there are signs that the sector is increasingly rediscovering the power of advocacy”
Charities despite smaller budgets are realising they can get a better return on their investment to reach their aims and goals by turning to advocacy and campaigning tactics. The change has been happening for a few years – began slowly in the late 1990’s then really took off around 2005 – Make Poverty History played an important role in this.
We see new campaigns and charities investing in policy analysis and development then using it to make change by using campaigning, public affairs and parliamentary tactics. As a result, we’ve increased our staffing to cope with this by over 70% and moved into larger premises.
It is a real shame that at a time where this expansion in campaigning is occurring that the NCVO’s Campaigning Effectiveness team which supported the sectors work no longer exists. There is a gap that needs filling if anyone is up for taking on the challenge.
As a former local Councillor, I’m used to regularly delivering leaflets saying “It’s a Two Horse Race” with a cheesy pencil drawing of racehorses and claims that it’s between our party and the main other party. Making out it’s going to be close, even if the end result is a 20-30% difference in the votes. All with the aim of getting your vote out on the day and to stave off complacency.
Well no-one is going to be complacent about the result of the polling on May 7th. It’s looking like a 5 horse race – the usual 3 equines, plus UKIP and the SNP. Only the Tories or Labour can win it. But the other 3 parties will play a major role in who will get past the finishing line and actually into government.
Some relevant pieces to read on how to deal with this year from a campaigning perspective. Tom Baker, the self-styled “Thoughtful Campaigner” who The Right Ethos helped place last year at BOND as their Head of Campaigns and Engagement has written this piece: 7 things you need to know about election campaigning.
Also, worth reading: Three Predictions for Charity Campaigns in 2014 by Claremont Communications: Predications for charity campaigns in 2015.
And worth knowing about Oxfam wrap on the knuckles before Christmas for being – though I hope it won’t rein any campaigns in too much as a result Oxfam criticised by charity commission.
Pollsters are being cagey about the outcome, they remember 1992 too well, when most predicted a Labour majority. Sometimes it’s worth looking at what the bookies think as they can’t afford to be wrong.
The current odds of 25 to 1 on a Labour/SNP/Liberal Democrat coalition looks quite an attractive price to me.
Looking beyond the election, what if the Liberal Democrats got back into government with 6 times the number of seats of UKIP but only around half the votes. A massive campaign for a fairer voting system from the right wing?
2015 – It’s going to be very interesting.
Whilst Campaigns and Advocacy Manager at Crisis Action
Apart from your current organisation which other organisations that campaign do you admire and why?
I’ve recently been inspired by the entire campaigning sector following the collective work we’ve all been doing in response to the ‘Gagging Law’. As someone who has a lot of experience in coalition campaigning, it’s been wonderful to see so many different voices from the UK charity sector speaking as one in a targeted and effective way to push for change.
Generally are organisations getting better at campaigning since you began your career? If so, what’s changed?
Absolutely – it’s been very exciting to see this development over the years. Campaigning has become much more professionalised and, with that, we’re seeing a stronger focus on monitoring and evaluation. As a result, the sector is becoming much better at identifying and achieving impact. We’ve also become better at learning from our colleagues in fundraising – building campaigner journeys that ensure supporters around the country can be turned into activists. Finally, the eventual embrace of new technologies – particularly social media – is having a fascinating effect on the responsive capacity of organisations.
Which campaigner inspires you most?
I regularly work with Sudanese or Syrian activists who put themselves at serious risk by speaking out on abuses taking place in their country. I am awed by the dedication and bravery they show in doing so – it is a privilege to work with them.
What three attributes make a good campaigner?
First and foremost, any campaigner needs to be passionate about their work. This is what you need to influence others, to push on through the long hours and to keep going in the face of disappointment after disappointment. Second, you need to be strategic – able to work out the most effective, efficient route to influencing your target. And, finally, you need to be flexible in order to adapt your strategy to the myriad of unexpected changes that any campaign will encounter.
What’s the most rewarding or exciting campaign you’ve worked on and why?
In March 2012 I ran a social media campaign for the first anniversary of the Syrian conflict – Unite for Syria. We had no budget and no time but through sheer hard work were able to convince activists and celebrities the world over to support a multimedia campaign. On the day, we reached millions upon millions of people and the campaign itself became the story. It was wonderful to create something from literally nothing and to create a global community of activists all working together – from Brazil to Indonesia, India to South Africa, Egypt to the US.
How do you feel campaigns will change over the next five years?
I hope that campaigners will continue to be more and more driven by monitoring and evaluation. I also expect that the medium for our tactics will change as the sector catches up with all that the internet has to offer. That said, I still believe that the core components of campaigning will remain resolutely the same and that the strength of a constituent’s handwritten letter to an MP will always be one of the most powerful tactics we can deploy.
What advice would you give someone starting their career in campaigning today?
Immerse yourself in the campaigns of the whole sector – sign up to every newsletter and campaign bulletin! Get a feeling for how different organisations engage their supporters, the ambitions they set for themselves and the success they obtain. Make sure you have experience of local campaigning – volunteer in your community and experience the day to day of influencing local institutions and decision-makers. Finally, I would encourage anyone to work in Westminster for even just a short period of time in order to understand the ‘other side’ of campaigning, so that as a campaigner you appreciate the environment your targets will be working in.
If you weren’t a campaigner, what would you be?
A legal barrister – I’d still have to be arguing for a living!
Since 2011, the Turner Contemporary has been one of Kent’s, the south-east’s and Britain’s most exciting assets in the visual arts scene.
This role requires a driven person with passion and a commitment to contemporary arts. Also, the individual needs the skills and abilities to fully utilise the assets of the gallery – the spaces, the café, the shop – to maximise income in order to continue to provide free entry to anyone who wishes to enjoy the exhibitions.
The individual must be entrepreneurial in their approach, but politically aware to the environment and sector that they are working in. As well as the commercial side, this role is responsible for overseeing the operational side of the organisation – its finances, human resources, IT and administration.
The role:
Lead the long term strategic business planning, income generation and policy development for Turner Contemporary.
Ensure the effective, efficient and entrepreneurial operation of Turner Contemporary Enterprises and to review and improve our commercial strategy to maximise our ability to generate income.
Responsible for the management of the financial, commercial, HR, administrative, and legal functions required to operate Turner Contemporary (charity) and Turner Contemporary Enterprises.
Take strategic responsibility for the financial well-being of the organisation.
Manage change within the organisation and support the development of the staff and Board.
The candidate
Entrepreneurial business skills applicable to an ambitious not-for-profit organisation with significant commercial activities.
You will be a visionary, with strong creative ideas that translate into real achievable business plans.
Good political nous and the ability to build credibility within the organisation and with senior stakeholders and partners.
Will have significant relevant experience of strategic business planning and operational practices.
Significant experience of finance, financial control setting, monitoring and managing budgets.
Extensive experience of managing staff and associated employment issues.
Deadline: Friday 21st November 2014
To apply or for more information please contact Sonya Clampett at sonya@therightethos.co.uk
I’ve just read a study on MPs’ views on charities’ actions by nfpSynergy.
Given that it took 3 individuals to email 154 MPs how acceptable it was to for charities to undertake the 6 different activities listed below it left me a bit cold. Especially as the report was given such an ostentatious and grandiose title of “Charity Parliamentary Monitor” – phew, pretty impressive, eh?
The 6 charity activities in the report that MPs had to say were acceptable or not were:
“challenging government policy”
“holding a parliamentary reception”
“highlighting the effects of a policy on its beneficiaries”
“challenging the policies of political parties”
“a state-funded charity challenging government policy”
A bit of analysis by one of the 3 “box-tick counters” or someone else from nfpSynergy would have been useful.
I’m not sure what the point of the study is – what inference we’re supposed to take from these figures. Are charities supposed to turn around and say, “look only 42% of Tory MPs think its ok for us to challenge government policy -maybe we should think again about doing anything”
Or 90% of MPs think it’s acceptable to hold a parliamentary reception so that perhaps charities should be holding one every fortnight.
If someone is attacking you, your beneficiaries and what you believe is right and committed to campaigning about, shouldn’t you consider perhaps doing more of what they say they don’t like rather than trying to please them?
And is it that important what MPs say on what’s acceptable? Isn’t it much more important to assess how MPs respond to the campaigning actions of charities, learn from this and adapt your actions for the future to gain more campaigning success?
Just back from Lithuania where I ran an advocacy and policy influencing workshop for a children’s charity and their partners. They were all focussed on challenging the existing policy of residential care for children and promoting the need for community based alternatives.
Some were comfortable with advocacy, while for others it was something totally new. We started with seeking to define the external political environment by posing the question where does power lie in Lithuania?
We divided up into small groups, and as ever, I was surprised when they reported back with their different assessments. It does show, I think, the importance of making your assumptions on the external environment explicit in any advocacy work and being open to be challenged on these assumptions.
After some discussion, we got some degree of clarity that in seeking to promote policy or practice change we should look at three levels of power: the national, the municipal and families/ communities.
Having established these three levels, we then set out to construct three influence trees to show the different routes to seek influence on these three targets.
Having established our influence trees, we then began to debate how we might make progress in each of these three areas. To do so we used the theory of change approach. I have written about this many times in the past but the idea is so simple – you do something so that something else happens. We tried to set out our ‘so that’ chain for each area of focus.
I was energised by this training as we were able to both convey the basics of advocacy but also to begin to develop an advocacy strategy. People learnt some new skills but also began to apply their new learning on their issue of concern. At the end of the course, people took down their flip charts with all of their work on them – they now seemed ready to begin their advocacy work.
One of the drawbacks of having had a gap in my blogs is that I now find myself with a long list of things I have wanted to blog about – and this blog is one of them – maybe not too topical but just too interesting to ignore.
Cast your mind back to 2012 and the elections for the police and crime commissioners. This was an initiative by the government to inject more democratic accountability into the strategic direction of local police services.
What really got me going was the refusal by the government to allow a free delivery from the Royal Mail from each candidate to each address in the constituency. This was to be the first time that such posts had been elected, there was precious little media coverage, and all this made the refusal to grant a free delivery all the more hard to understand.
I remember as a Parliamentary candidate, on the two occasions that I stood, that the free delivery from the Royal Mail was so important to allow candidates to make contact with every household in the constituency. Especially if you were operating on a tight budget, as I always seemed to be, this was such an important element in ensuring that voters knew about all of the candidates.
But in this brand new election the government had refused to offer this to the candidates. How then were people going to make up their minds? Certainly in my local area, I received almost no information at all.
So I decided for the first time, since I was able to vote, that I was going to abstain – this was a hard decision – I have always voted and think it is so important to do so. So many people have suffered and fought for us all to have the right to vote. Not only was I going to abstain, I was still going to the polling station to spoil my paper to show my disdain for this process. And I started agitating my friends and family to do likewise.
Then on the eve of poll, I received an email from 38 Degrees. It was such a clever and well written email. Despite the late hour, it made me sit up and take notice.
They focused on one issue: the privatisation of back-office police services. It highlighted that this was an issue (and had been earlier voted for by 38 Degrees supporters as a topic for action) but didn’t lecture me or tell what to do other than invite me to look at what the three candidates had said on this issue. I clicked through on the three links, was intrigued by their different opinions, and as I cared about this issue, I suddenly found myself motivated to vote in this election.
Pretty impressive. Even now some 15 months on I am still impressed by this action. Despite my resolve to abstain, I was touched by this email, enthused by the need to vote and then I took action by voting. For me 38 Degrees were playing a vital part in re-energising democracy. They didn’t tell me how to vote but provided me with information that might encourage me to exercise my right to vote.
As we enter the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May and then the General Election the year after, I am hopeful that we will see similar imaginative actions to energise people into casting their vote.
At the end of last year I ran a day of campaign training for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation’s residential weekend. In addition to their campaign award winners, there were also campaigners, who had applied to join this weekend training.
What was remarkable about this group right from the outset, was their passion for change on their issue. They all had a story and were so clear on the change that they were seeking on their issue. And their hunger for learning was so strong. As a trainer it was superb to be in such an environment. As we covered each campaign tool, you could just sense them reviewing it, and seeing how they could use each tool to strengthen their campaign.
I have written before about the danger, as campaigning becomes ever more professional, that the spark and passion for change is lost. There is a danger that campaigning just becomes another professional discipline.
I have been reading the new book by Liam Barrington-Bush, Anarchists in the Boardroom – how social media and social movements can help your organisation to be more like people. See http://www.morelikepeople.org/the-book/
Very early on in his book, I was very taken by a compelling point he makes: he expresses his surprise on joining a NGO, which was set up to campaign, but by the time that he joined it, the passion and spark had been lost and it had become just another large bureaucratic organisation. How does this happen? Is it inevitable?
I know when I have been recruiting campaigners, looking for professional competence and experience is really important. I look for a track record of making things happen. But I also look for that spark and passion on the issue.
In the past I have been rung by head hunters promoting a senior and often very well paid campaigning post, but I have had to deflect their approach as it was just on the wrong issue for me.
I do think that we should place importance on passion and enthusiasm in our campaigning. Don’t just take it as read. Let’s see commitment and passion for the cause valued highly when we recruit campaigners and then let’s nurture and encourage that passion – it’s a very special thing.
Director of Policy and Public Affairs at Fairtrade Foundation
Apart from your current organisation which other organisations that campaign do you admire and why?
So many! Greenpeace continues to be both brave and innovative – not least the Russian illegal detention of the Arctic Sunrise 30, but also their ability to drive serious issues with a sense of fun – I loved their Star Wars campaign to turn Volkswagen from the ‘dark side’ and the Chainsaw Barbie campaign to Mattel. I’m impressed how38 Degrees has woken everyone up to the power of online in driving nimbleness and democratisation of mass-scale campaigning that every organisation can learn from, and springboarding from online to focussed local organisation and direct action. Traidcraft did an awesome job as part of the successful campaign to win the establishment of a Grocery Code Adjudicator – a supermarket watchdog with teeth – and continues to plug away solidly on trade justice issues where many other NGOs have flagged!
Generally are organisations getting better at campaigning since you began your career? If so, what’s changed?
I think campaigns have got smarter in terms of pushing for specific policy or public goals, and in being creative in how they seek to reach the public and their targets. I do think we’ve lost ground a little on local and grassroots organisation – traditional NGO campaigning has become much more individual action oriented, but at Fairtrade, we have great experience of the power of local mobilisation. Fairtrade towns campaigns have been the backbone of building public awareness and applying change and pressure on companies and public authorities, and we’re proud of that!
Which campaigner inspires you most?
It’s probably clichéd right now to say it, but Malala is pretty awesome – such bravery and such maturity at such a young age. She never asked to be in a global spotlight, and I have occasionally worried about Western media or political manipulation. But you only have to listen to one interview with her to know that she has all the great qualities of a legendary social justice campaigner. Loved her response to the Nobel Peace Prize outcome – that winning peace is more important than winning prizes!
What three attributes make a good campaigner?
Firstly vision – a clear sense of the change you seek – vision requires you also to understand the world and power dynamics you’re dealing with. Second, dogged perseverance – very few campaigns are won overnight and most get knockbacks, so refusing to give up, and looking for new ways around obstacles is critical. Thirdly, creative flexibility – being able to react and adjust plans if they’re not working, or find a new creative way of bringing the campaign alive again if it’s flagging, or seizing quickly on a new opportunity you hadn’t seen at the outset.
What’s the most rewarding or exciting campaign you’ve worked on and why?
The massive mobilisation for Jubilee 2000/Drop the Debt Campaign from 1997-2002 was a pretty exciting time for international development and economic justice campaigning. With hindsight, we didn’t always get it right, and of course it’s still not been won, but it was an amazing global effort, especially in the global South, and delivered some good progress in writing down some of the excessive debt burdens and challenging the nature of conditions being imposed. Our campaign for Fairtrade bananas since 2000 has been pretty successful – around 1 in 3 bananas sold today are Fairtrade – and we’ve had great fun with it, but more to the point, I’ve had the privilege of seeing its positive impact for banana farmers and workers. Again we’ve not yet reached our goal and need to turn the tables now – campaign for there to be no unfair bananas left in the UK, until the industry as a whole is delivering living wages and sustainable livelihoods for banana workers and farmers. If we can do that on bananas, it could be an iconic victory that could spill over to other global supply chains and business practices.
How do you feel campaigns will change over the next five years?
There’s going to be a push for even greater transparency of information and decision making, at local, national and international level – whether it’s campaigning health or child welfare, or private sector responsibility and corporate accountability or local and national government policy. People will take more matters into their own hands as we go further into an open access era of campaigning – technology is putting more power to campaign in the hands of many more people, by making information more accessible, creating new networks that transcend local or national boundaries, but also potentially to find their own solutions through peer-to-peer or shared economy, as we’re seeing in lending, community energy generation, car sharing etc. In Fairtrade we’re calling it ‘Unlocking the Power of the Many’!
What advice would you give someone starting their career in campaigning today?
Get stuck in with both your heart and your head – focus on something you really believe in and care about, but also make sure you do the hard graft study of the politics and the gritty details, so you know your stuff and can apply political intelligence alongside your passion for change. If you’re just setting out and seeking a first step on the ladder, consider volunteering or an internship with a campaigning organisation or team – I know many people who gave their time in the first instance, built up their skills, knowledge and experience, started at the bottom but went on to paid campaigning roles in organisations they have really wanted to work for.
If you weren’t a campaigner, what would you be?
Dead?
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