Day: 14 May 2011

Total number of actions received between May 1st 2010 and May 1st 2011: 201,805
Number of postcards/letters: 92,310
Number of emails: 109,495
Biggest campaign: RSPB – Don’t cut the life from our countryside – 53,147
Breakdown by campaign:
[googleapps domain=”spreadsheets” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en&hl=en&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdE5QR3dxNjA1TVRWTHZJY0E3NE5GaVE&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”600″ /]
View the spreadsheet in google docs here. Information from Freedom of Information requested received on 10 May 2011, and is presented as received from DEFRA with one amendment (which was to link SustainWeb to the Jim’ll Fix It For Fish? campaign, the original information had this down as None). 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)

For the last few years I’ve been using Freedom of Information to find out how many campaign actions different government departments receive each year.
I’ve found that its an excellent way of benchmarking the campaigns that I’ve been involved in against others and getting an indication of the volume of actions and issues different government departments are having to respond to.
This year, I’ve requested the information from all Whitehall departments covering the period 1st May 2010 to 1st May 2011. I’ll be publishing the responses as I get them starting with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
I’ve asked each department to provide the following;

1. The total number of campaign letters, postcards and emails that appeared to be part of a coordinated campaign you received from 1st May 2010 to 1st May 2011
2. The breakdown of these numbers by delivery method (letter, postcard and email).
3. A breakdown by topic and/or organisation(s) where you received more than 500 items of correspondence (through any delivery method) that appeared to be part of a coordinated campaign in the period defined above.

When I’ve got responses from all 20+ departments I plan to do some analysis which I hope will give a fascinating picture of campaigning to the UK government in the last 12 months. It’ll provide a league table of which campaigns have generated the most actions, what issues have captured the publics support and which are the most targeted departments.