Thoughtful Campaigner

Four exciting things happening in campaigning

I spent some time with some colleagues last week talking about future trends in campaigning. As part of it, I was asked to share the four things most exciting things happening in campaigning at the moment.
Here’s my list, what would you include?
Change.org – Combining e-activism and crowd sourcing, change.org seems to have hit upon a great campaigning tool.
Although it’s not had a big launch in the UK yet, it did manage to generate two significant actions to Home Office in the last 12 months. Change combines a platform to allow individuals to come up with their own campaign actions and a mechanism to push those out to a wider audience, including media and organising support.
I really like the way that they’re putting the campaigning tools in the hands of individuals who are interested in running campaigns and the creativity of some of the actions that are being generated. Lots of campaigning organisations could learn from the approach that change.org is taking.
Gates Foundation – I’m not only excited by the recognition from the Gates Foundation that they need to be engaging in advocacy, and the clear theory of change they have which is to invest in research and analysis in the south, initiate a debate in the media and support public mobilisation.
I’m excited at the potential of other Foundation following them and providing a much-needed funding stream for advocacy. I also think we should be thankful for the work that these Foundations have been doing to help us measure to monitor and evaluate the impact of advocacy.
Finding Frames – Because it’s helped to spark a conversation about the language that we need to be using to win our campaigns and helping the sector to engage in the literature about frames and values. It’s sister report, Common Cause was the most recommended item of summer reading, it’s a great introduction to lots of fascinating and vital literature.
Citizens UK – Community organising seems to be making a (much-needed) comeback and this has been spearheaded by the work of London Citizens. It’s engaging a new set of activists, empowering communities that haven’t been engaged in campaigning before and having real success in changing policy. They’re reminding others that campaigning is about community, identity and empowerment.
What would you include in your top 4 and why?

Should we get excited about the e-petition site?

Thursday will see the first petitions go live on the Governments new e-petition website (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/index.html) which is designed to replace the No10 Petition site that was closed after the last election. On the new site any petition that gets over 100,000 names on it ‘could’ be debated in Parliament. I’ve written a separate post here about how to set up a petition.
Undoubtedly it’ll get some coverage in the coming days as the first few petitions go live and reach the target, blogger Guido Fawkes has already launched a campaign for a vote on reintroducing capital punishment and I’m sure he’ll be the first to get over 100,000 names.
Overall the 100,000 target seems appropriate, although only 8 petition on the old No10 site achieved this. My work on campaign totals suggest that no campaigns in the last 12 months managed to achieve that target, but the numbers that campaign groups like 38 Degrees have been mobilising recently shows that its possible for any organisation that put effort into achieving it.
After over a year of waiting for the new e-petition it appears that we’ve lost a certain amount of transparency.
The old system allowed you to view a list of those who’d signed up and also saw that most petitions that generated a significant number of actions got a response from the relevant department, something that at present it doesn’t look like this will happen with the new site.
The main gain is the opportunity to have the issue debated in Parliament if you reach the 100,000 target, but for me that seems to be about it.
Time will tell how it’ll work out. I’ve written before about why I was pleased to see the closure of the old site, but here are a few early thoughts on the approach that’s being taken;
1. Too Long – Campaigning is increasingly about agility so indicating that petitions will take 7 days to be approved by government departments is going to slow things down and make it hard for organisations to capitalise on public concern about an issue that is in the media.
2. Engaging citizens – It’s a shame that the overhaul of the system hasn’t allowed for more thought to be put in about different ways that individuals could sign the petition. The European Union announced a similar (albeit more bureaucratic) process earlier this year, which allowed citizens to submit their names in a number of different formats rather than requiring everyone to get to a computer (and have an email address).
3. Preventing abuse – The eDemocracy blog suggests that it’s not been possible to provide a system to verify that those signing are from the UK or avoid people add multiple signatures. I accept that this would add another layer of complexity (and cost) but if this is a serious attempt to open up the political debate should more thought been put into this?
4. Control – I’m concerned about the fact that you can opt-in to get a response to the government, but not provision is being made to those who set up the petition to contact those who have signed. I’m not clear what most campaigning organisations have to gain from using a system like this.
5. Scale – While 100,000 is probably the right number for a nationwide petition, it seems a shame an option hasn’t been made for petitions on local issues or concern where getting the current target might be impossible. For example, it’d be nice to have seen the option for 25,000 signatures from a county/constituency on a local issue to lead to debate.
6. Outcome – Say you’ve done all the hard work and got 100,000 people to sign the petition, what do you get from it? A debate in Parliament, it’s not clear if the debate will lead to a vote, or simply a debate similar to the format of a Westminster Hall debate, where a minister is required to respond.
If it’s the latter then is a strategy of engaging interested MPs more effective, while those organisations looking to introduce new legislation would do as well to engage MPs who do well in the Private Members Bill ballot.
As one backbench Conservative MP noted; “This scheme is a gimmick. It is vacuous and meaningless. The Government already ignores debates and motions in Parliament that are inspired by backbench MPs. So what notice are they going to take of debates forced by petitions? “
Will you be making use of the e-petition site? Is it a helpful contribution to campaigning?

How the e-petition site works

The process for setting up an e-petition on the new website is simple. Here is a step by step guide adapted from the Governments website.

1. Submit – The title can be up to 150 characters (although if you want to tweet it you’ll want it be shorter) with the petition itself up to 1000 characters. When you write it consider the criteria that it’ll be judged against, including the need for a request for action.
You also need to specify the department responsible for the issue your petition is on and the length of time you’d like the petition to run for (3, 6, 9 or 12 months).
On the next page you’ll need to submit your details (name, address, email) which appear to require an individual rather than an organisation to create it.
2. Petition Checked – It’ll then take up to 7 days for your petition to be approved. During this process, the petition will be considered by the relevant government department to ensure:

there’s isn’t already an e-petition on the same issue
it contains confidential, libellous, false or defamatory statements
it contains offensive, joke or nonsense content
the issue is not the responsibility of the government
it’s about honours or appointments
it does not include a request for action

3. Get signatures – You’ll need to get 100,000 signatures for the petition to be ‘considered’ for debate in Parliament. The petition will be hosted on the e-petition site and submissions can only be made through the site (although a URL will be provided to promote it on social networking sites).
Anyone who signs will need to provide their name, address and email but these won’t be visible to anyone else. Signatories can also ‘choose to receive email updates from the government about the e-petition’. You petition can be open for up to 12 months.
4. Debate (potentially!) – If you reach the 100,000 target, your petition will be sent to The Office of the Leader of the House of Commons will check it against the terms and conditions for e-petition and the rules of the House of Commons.
Petition that pass this criteria will be passed to the Backbench Business Committee who will decide if your issue will be debated in the House of Commons. The FAQ suggest that reasons for the petition not being debated include;

if the subject of the e-petition is currently going through legal proceedings, it may be inappropriate for a debate to be held;
if there has just been, or is about to be, a debate in the House of Commons on the same topic as your e-petition

But Leader of the House, Sir George Young suggested in the media on Friday that ‘parliamentary time is not unlimited and we want the best e-petitions to be given airtime’ which indicates another way of stopping petitions being debated.

Five for Friday…..29th July

Slowing down for the summer? Here is a round of up of interesting articles on campaigning to read this Friday.
1. Hands Up Digital with some excellent advice about how charities can get more out of Facebook.
2. Stephen Pound MP has a few issues with 38 Degrees and the curse of the automated e-mail, while in Washington campaigners managed to overload the Congress system with calls and emails.
3. The Guardian invites some experts to ponder on how we can measure social impact.
4. ConservativeHome asks MPs and journalists which media platforms have the most impact.
5. The Right Ethos is tweeting recommendations of different guides covering campaigning, policy and advocacy for the next month.
Finally, some good advice….(h/t @gavinthomson)

In Praise of…..Avaaz

You’ve certainly made it as a campaign movement when you get a feature in the Guardian….so congratulations should go to Avaaz who featured in the paper last week. Launched in 2007, in the last months alone they’ve had some notable successes on pressuring the government over BSkyB and Murdoch in the UK, corruption in India, stopping the Grand Prix in Bahrain and blocking a mega-dam in Brazil.
So here, to steal another idea from my paper of choice, is my ‘In Praise of….Avaaz’.
It’s a truly global movement – Over 9 millions members in 193 countries around the world. Together having taken tens of millions of actions and it’s a movement that’s rapidly growing in India, Brazil and South Africa. Plus they’re solely funded by their members.
It’s all about the metrics – The Guardian describes how Avaaz rigorously tests its campaign before launching them to most of their members.
“Campaign ideas are submitted by Avaaz’s members in the first instance. But once an idea is settled on, it still has to pass a rigorous selection procedure. First, a tester email is sent to a random selection of 10,000 members in a particular country. Any “tester” that doesn’t encourage at least 10% to open it is generally discarded.
Test emails that pass this threshold then need to ensure around a 40% conversion rate. Here, they’re testing the email’s contents. If the email’s going to fly, at least two in five of those who opened it need to go the extra mile: to click through to Avaaz’s website.
A campaign with promise will encourage more than 80% of those people to sign the petition. Emails that achieve this ratio – around 6% of the original audience – will then be rolled out to Avaaz’s entire membership in the relevant country.”
They’re not afraid to say it was ‘them that won it’ – I’ve observed that some campaigns exhibit a certain amount of modesty when they win a campaign.
Messages to supports are prefaced with ‘you helped to’ or ‘had an impact on’ as campaigns are careful not to ignore the other factors that can lead to campaign success. That’s not the case with Avaaz take for example from the April Reportback on two recent campaign successes.
“Just days ago, two things were different – questioning the global “war on drugs” was a huge taboo in government circles, and Formula 1 was set to hold their Grand Prix in Bahrain despite a brutal government crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters. Then our community got involved. Within 72 hours, more than 1 million of us joined these two campaigns, and we won!
Formula 1 has, under intense pressure, reversed its decision to race in Bahrain and the UN Secretary-General has agreed to establish a new task force on drugs, with world leaders beginning an historic new debate on regulation and decrimalisation. People power works, and we are seeing it more and more all over the world. Here are two stories of how …“
They know what they do well – It’s easy to criticise Avaaz for simply focusing on e-actions and not looking at building a grassroots movement, but that’s in party because they’re clear of the role they play explaining on their website.
“We focus on tipping-point moments of crisis and opportunity.
In the life of an issue or a cause, a moment sometimes arises when a decision must be made, and a massive, public outcry can suddenly make all the difference. Getting to that point can take years of painstaking work, usually behind the scenes, by dedicated people focusing on nothing else.
But when the moment does come, and the sunlight of public attention floods in, the most crucial decisions go one way or another depending on leaders’ perceptions of the political consequences of each option. It is in these brief windows of tremendous crisis and opportunity that the Avaaz community often makes its mark”
They’re supporting those on the front-line– By raising the money from 300,000 members of the Avaaz community to help work with those leading democracy movements in Syria, Yemen, Libya and more to get them equipment, connections to the world’s media and communications advice to help tell another story of what was happening when governments tried to clam down on internet access.
For more on Avaaz check out this profile of its founder Ricken Patel in the Times or a video of Ricken talking about the movement at a recent Guardian conference.
What would you add to the list? Does the Avaaz model have any drawbacks? What’s its greatest strength (and weakness)?

Campaign Totals – FCO

Total number of actions received between May 1st 2010 and May 1st 2011: 32,731
Unfortunately the FCO was unable to break this down into the format in which they received campaign correspondence.
Biggest campaign: Gaza Flotilla – 17,496
Breakdown by topic and organisation:
[googleapps domain=”spreadsheets” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdERGUEpjX1ZNUHh2VW84ajBUMlQxSHc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” width=”300″ height=”200″ /]
If anyone is able to suggest the organisations behind these actions please leave a comment below.
To view the breakdown spreadsheet in google docs click here. Information taken from Freedom of Information request returned on 27 May 2011 and is taken from a list of information provided by Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
More about the ‘Campaigns Total’ project here. Be first to get the information from other departments by subscribing to the site using the box on the right, adding http://thoughtfulcampaigner.org/ to your RSS feed or following me on twitter (@mrtombaker)

Summer Reading….

Summer is here and I’m hopeful of a few ‘quieter’ weeks which will allow me to leave the office at 5 and spend some time reading in the evening (it won’t happen but I can dream).
But what should campaigners be reading this summer?
I asked friends on twitter for some recommendations and here is my crowd-sourced list of what they suggested.
1. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s been around for a few years but it’s still one of the best books about how to make your communications more effective. I’ve read it twice and I was delighted that it was suggested by @JessDay.
2. Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine. Clearly good as it was suggested by both @JessDay and @rossb82.
3. Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg. Suggested by @CasperTK the book explore the power of groups to motivate positive changes.
4. The Common Cause Handbook by PIRC. A really helpful look at the role that values and frames, which is something that every campaigner should be considering. Suggested by @martinhall81 and @GlenTarman.
If you enjoy Common Cause, you might also find Finding Frames: New ways to engage the UK public in global poverty by Andrew Darnton & Martin Kirk (suggested by@sullyserena) which looks at frames and values from the perspective of international development sector of interest.
5. Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett. For an insight into what caused the financial crisis that is still impacting the political and economic landscape many of our campaigns operate in. Suggested by @timsowula.
6. The Social Animal by David Brooks. A really interesting look at the wealth of scientific research about the mind and the impact it has on the decisions we make. One to read while considering the implications for our activism. Suggested by me.
Updated on 23/7 with a few more recommendations….
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit which charts the rise of a non violent movement united around campaign struggles in the 1980s and 90s. Recommended by @lucypearceox who also had some other excellent suggestions.
How to Win Campaigns by Chris Rose which has just had a new edition published and is possibly the best ‘how to’ guide on campaigning in the UK. Recommended by @hughmouser
In the Tiger’s Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action by Katrina Sheils by Katrina Shields which is described by a reviewer on amazon as ‘Filled with useful, helpful ideas and activities on planning, envisioning, sustainability, avoiding burnout, and more’. Recommend by @NCVOForesight
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Recommended by @emmataggart who says ‘provokes thought about how to use online tools (there’s more to it than sending an email!)’.
Saved: How an English Village Fought for Its Future… and Won by David Hewson. A case study in how an English village fought for survival and won. Recommended by @LABatSMK
Waging Nonviolent Struggle by Gene Sharp. A classic and part inspiration for the Arab Spring, useful for all campaigners. Recommended by @paulhilder who also suggested his own excellent ‘Contentious citizens: Civil society’s role in campaigning for social change’ which is a really good overview of progressive campaigns in recent times and some useful reflections for the future.
MP Keith Simpson also has a list of recommendations for politicians for the summer. Some that might be of interest include Everyday Life in British Government by R. A. W. Rhodes and The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity edited by Simon Lee.
What would you recommend?

Evaluating Advocacy – Craft or Science?

“Advocacy requires an approach and a way of thinking about success, failure, progress, and best practices that is very different from the way we approach traditional philanthropic projects such as delivering services or modeling social innovations. It is more subtle and uncertain, less linear, and because it is fundamentally about politics, depends on the outcomes of fights in which good ideas and sound evidence don’t always prevail”
This is the central premise of a brilliant paper, The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy, by two academics from the US, Steven Teles and Mark Schmitt.
Although the primary audience of the document is grant giving foundations, the paper has some interesting reflections on the way that we look to evaluate our advocacy built around the concept that evaluating advocacy is perhaps more of a craft than a science.
The paper introduces 9 words or concepts that we might want to bring into our campaigning vocabulary when considering crafting our advocacy evaluations.
1. ‘abeyance’ – The value of keeping the fires burning on an issue even when little visible progress is being made. Critical given situations can often change quickly and without warning.
2. ‘strategic capacity’ – The idea that we should be less interested in evaluating a linear logic model, but instead look at the capacity of an organisation to read the external environment, understand the opposition and implementing the appropriate adaption.
Later in the paper, the authors suggest that ‘What really distinguishes one group from another, however, is what cannot be captured in a logic model—the nimbleness and creativity an organization will display when faced with unexpected moves by its rivals or the decaying effectiveness of its key tools’.
3. ‘spillover’ – a sense that campaigns can often operate devoid of consideration of other unrelated issues, but success elsewhere can often change the political opportunities for our campaigns if they fit a broader narrative set by a government.
4. ‘declining effacy’ – Over time some tactics grow old or ineffective, so organisations need to respond to this decline. The recognition that the ‘no campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy‘ means that campaigns need to continue to reassess and change their tactics.
5. ‘disruptive innovators’ – A strategy or organisational form that does not follow known strategies and the importance of not immediately dismissing new tactics that don’t work, but instead recognising that it can take time for innovators to find the most effective application.
6. ‘spread betting’ – In the paper this is the notion that funders should invest in a portfolio of opportunities, and that funders should have an organisational culture that can accept some failure, as long as they are balanced with notable successes. I’m sure the same principles should apply to organisations.
7. ‘policy durability’ – The need to see if a policy change actually sticks or creates a platform for further change. Build on the sense that advocacy requires long time horizons and doesn’t end when a piece of legislation is passed.
8 – ‘unit of analysis’ – A suggestion that rather than evaluating advocacy (that is the activities) the focus should be on a different unit of analysis, evaluating advocates, and their long-term adaptability, strategic capacity and influence.
9. ‘movement public goods’ – we should asses the value that organisations add to others, do they contribute to broader movement building efforts.

Campaign Totals – DCMS

Despite a number of requests, the Department of Culture, Media and Support (DCMS) was unable to provide a breakdown of the campaigns actions it received between May 1st 2010 and May 1st 2011.
They said;
The list of cases you received was drawn from a category of correspondence logged in as ‘fast-track’ cases on our correspondence tracking database. ‘Fast-track’ cases are those where a standardised response can be sent by the DCMS correspondence officer. A large number of these cases form part of public campaigns (which is why it is possible to reply with similar responses once standard lines are available). In order to draw up the list below, officials took a judgement on which fast-track cases could be said to form part of an organised campaign, and this would generally be clear from similar or identical incoming items of correspondence.
I’ve gone back to DCMS for more information, but below is a list of the campaign
Breakdown by topic:
[googleapps domain=”spreadsheets” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdEhWd0tpZGJqMTh3bFVEQW5Velh1ZWc&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”300″ /]
To view the breakdown spreadsheet in google docs click here. Information taken from Freedom of Information request returned on 4 July 2011 and is taken from a list of information provided by Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
The response went onto explain that ‘we do not notify our minister each time a new campaign is received; instead we give them weekly summaries of the main topics in recent public correspondence and Parliamentary questions (PQs)’.
A copy of this for the week of 19 November 2010 is below.
[scribd id=60279993 key=key-1hwnkiyhusmkmwvd7kqz mode=list]
More about the ‘Campaigns Total’ project here. Be first to get the information from other departments by subscribing to the site using the box on the right, adding http://thoughtfulcampaigner.org/ to your RSS feed or following me on twitter (@mrtombaker)