COVID-19, volunteering and learning for campaigners
What campaigners can learn from the different approaches to coordinating volunteering during the coronavirus lockdown.
in tools
How could the pandemic change our future approach to campaigning
The coronavirus pandemic is changing our lives, but what scenarios might we want to consider about how the pandemic will change our approach to campaigning? Using the 2×2 Scenarios approaches from Save the Children’s Strategic Foresight Toolkit: Making better decisions, I’ve had a go at creating four contrasting scenarios to help to debate how we might …
in coalitions, learning
Jubilee 2000 – five enduring lessons for campaigners
For the last few weeks, I’ve been spending some of my time as a debt campaigner. It’s been important work on a professional level, working with colleagues from across Save the Children and many beyond to push the World Bank and IMF to provide debt relief to the world’s poorest countries so they can spend …
Campaigning tactics in a time of social distancing
Lockdown and Social Distancing have meant that some campaign tactics and approaches aren’t now possible – but as campaigners our craft is always about looking at what else is in our tactics toolkit. Thinking about this challenge, I took to looking at legendary campaign strategist, Gene Sharp’s list of the 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action …
COVID-19 and Campaigning – a summary
Like everyone else, the last couple of weeks have been very different to what I expected or imagined, and blogging hasn’t been a priority. But one of the things that I’ve found myself continually grateful for is how so many individuals and organisations have been so generous in sharing their thoughts, ideas, advice, and help …
Do 50,000 signatures still make a big petition in the UK?
A new Parliament Petitions Committee has just been appointed, and the petition site will resume service again, so as it does that I’ve taken a revisit the analysis I did in the summer of 2018 on what makes a big petition (see original post here). Back then, I used the data from the 170 or …
in learning
New Year, New Job
I started a new job last week – still at Save the Children UK, still campaigning on issues that I’m passionate about, but now as Director of Campaigns and Organising. It’s a new role for Save the Children, that’s the outcome of a larger re-organisation we’ve gone through over the last few months to look …
Learning from successful movements – some recommended reads for campaigners
Between the election, a busy period at work, and family life, blogging has slowed down towards the end of 2019 – that’s something I’ll be aiming to fix in 2020. To be honest, I didn’t find 2019 to be a classic for books for changemakers, and many of the books I’ve most enjoyed have been …
How to use the law for social change
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation, with support from the Baring Foundation, put together a brilliant conference on using the law for social change last Thursday – it was a fantastic day, in a room full of campaigners and advocates buzzing with ideas and questions. Before attending, I’ll be honest in saying that I’d not spent a …
Another Election = another opportunity to spot campaign trends, tactics, and approaches
So another General Election campaign has started, and to be honest I’ve not got anything more to add to previous blogs about how campaigners can use them most effectively (you can read them here, here and here). But I do think that elections are great opportunities to be looking out for trends, tactics and approaches …
mrtombaker
Director of Campaigns and Organising at Save the Children, previously worked for Bond, Tearfund and Christian Aid, co-founder Campaign Bootcamp, blog about campaigning because I'm passionate about seeing more campaigns win, election geek (and recovering Labour Party activist), interested in monitoring and evaluation, this blog is all my own views. Prone to bad spelling!