Author: mrtombaker

What's been changed by campaigning?

Over the last few months some have suggested that charities in the UK shouldn’t be involved in campaigning and influencing.
Charities have a proud role in mobilising public pressure for a good society and a safe planet.
Charities have successfully campaigned to protect public health from smoking; to protect the UK’s finest wildlife; to maintain liberties and freedoms; to achieving greater equality for women, and for lesbian and gay people; to enabling the UK to show global leadership on issues such as climate change or tackling disease, and so much more.
Many charities have a long histories of campaigning for change, but while the stories and examples of successful change brought about campaigning are passed down within organisations they aren’t collated together in one place.
Changed by Campaigning aims to change that. 
Working with campaigning colleagues from across the environment and development sector I’m trying to collect together in one places a list of issues that have been Changed by Campaigning over the last 100 years.
Can you help by adding any examples from your organisation or work of issues that have been Changed by Campaigning here?
It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete the form – and we’ll use the examples to help make the case for why charities should continue to have the freedom and space to campaign.
We’re aiming to get a first list of what’s been Change by Campaigning in the UK together by early June, and I’ll try to make the material available to those who read the blog.

More than a run – lessons from parkrun for building campaign groups

Since the new year my Saturday morning routine has changed – it’s no longer reading the paper over a cup of coffee.
Instead you’ll find me standing outside in the cold at 8.55 with at least another 100 people ready to run 5km. I’ve officially become obsessed with parkrun. In fact I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say I’ve fallen for the concept.
parkrun for those who haven’t come across it is a free, weekly, 5km timed runs around a local park. They are open to everyone, free, and run by a team of volunteers.
Around the world there are over 700 parkrun’s – all of which have started in the last 10 years – with almost 1,000,000 having taken part in a parkrun in the UK alone. As a result the founders are getting lots of interest from government about how they’ve been so effective at increasing participation.
Now part of the reason I’ve fallen into parkrun is the result of campaigning. For over the last 18 months we’ve been campaigning to get our local council to allow us to run around Tooting Common, but that’s a story for another time.
But I think Park Run has already taught me a few lessons for campaigner about how to successfully engage people and build community.
1. Make the barriers to entry really low – getting involved in parkrun is easy, really easy. All the information you need is on the website and the only thing you need to do is register and print off your bar code which you use to get your time. All the information you need is on the website and there isn’t any pressure about having to to turn up in the right gear or in the latest trainers. The message is come and join us at 9am.
2. Encourage participation not performance – The motto of parkrun is that it’s just that a run not a race. Many people who might not see themselves as runners come along and get involved. The emphasis is not on how fast you run and the first and last runner get exactly the same experience. Although your encouraged to improve your personal best it’s always about participation – not expectation to become the next Mo Farah or Paula Radcliffe.
3. Provide incentives and quick feedback – Within an hour or so you get your run time emailed to you, it’s quick feedback on how you did. In the same vain, the weekly run report is a key volunteer task to help people feel that they’re part of a community. And built on the emphasis on participation not performance each run you do gets you one step closer to joining different ‘clubs’ which celebrate different milestones. It really helps to increase participation.
4. Build leadership – Each parkrun relies on a volunteer team to make it happen. From marshalling to report writing there are a whole number of roles that need to be filled. This isn’t about being elected onto a leadership team but about an ethos that encourages people to get involved. Somehow I’ve gone from being a ParkRun to making my debut as the Race Director in a few weeks’ time – I think my experience of running campaign events probably helps here – but the principle still stands, Park Run actively builds leadership – and encourages people to get involved in helping to lead there parkrun.
5. Encourage community – Parkrun might start out as standing in a park but it always finishes in a cafe. Community is very much encouraged and actively built. Even though I’ve only been involved for a few months I’ve started to see it in action. Last week, we had NAME join us to celebrate doing 250 run – but that wasn’t a solitary achievement, friends that NAME had met across the parkrun community joined her to run.
6. Make it easy to replicate – Parkrun hasn’t grown as the result of a central team of paid staff setting up them up one run at a time, instead the small parkrun core team make a whole host of resources available to local groups of volunteers looking to set up a run. They play an enabling role – recognising again the need to build leadership, and as a result new runs are starting all the time.
While many of the principles above aren’t new to those who’ve been experienced at building activists groups – watching how parkrun has grown so quickly, especially drawing in so many new people should provide new insight for building activist communities.
Finally, If you want to understand what all the fuss is about, watch this little film about why so many people #loveparkrun.

 

Are you all ears? 5 podcasts for campaigners

This year I set myself a challenge to listen to more podcasts.
I love talk radio, but there are only so many times you can listen to ex footballer discuss with other ex-footballers the chances of Man U winning at the weekend on Radio 5 Live!
So here is my list of 5 podcast for campaigners that I’ve enjoyed, but I’d love your suggestions of what else I should be listening to.
1 – The Advocacy Iceberg – a brand new podcast from consultant Jim Coe. Really excited to see Jim kick off this regularly. The first episode on the his work with Rhonda Schlangen on what we should be evaluating is a really good listen for anyone grappling with what to measure. Listen carefully as I’m due to make an appearance on the show in a few weeks time.
2 – The Good Fight – Sadly this podcast from Ben Wikler from MoveOn.org has gone quiet in the last few months but I hope it comes back soon (and in the meantime listen to the back catalogue). Ben’s interviews brought some of the most interesting voices from movements across the US and beyond that are winning campaigns.
3 – The Axe Files – my unhealthy obsession with US politics coming out with this suggestion, but David Axelrod (former Obama campaign manager and now at University of Chicago) has a rolodex with anyone who matters in US politics so you can be assured of lots of fascinating insights from those on the inside of making change happen.
4 – NEF Weekly Economics Podcast – Demystifying economics and what the business pages really mean. A helpful listen for anyone who wants to understand macroeconomics and the financial forces that shape much of our
5 – Media Focus – a fortnightly interview with some of the key movers and shakers in media and PR. Lots of relevant content for any campaigner wanting to understand how to get your message into the media. I found the interview with Lyton Crosby especially interesting.
As a bonus, I’ve found the Political Betting Polling Matters podcast a good weekly round up of what’s happening in UK politics.
Over to you, what are the podcasts you’d recommend for campaigners?

Organising to build power – reflections on Hahrie Han skillshare

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend a day learning from US academic and trainer Hahrie Han on how we can organise activists. It was a cracking day alongside 50+ other campaigners, full of lots of thought provoking, challenging and inspiring content about how we can work to organise activists to deliver change.
It’s part of a series of events that Hahrie is doing while she’s here in London, this evening Hahrie is giving a lecture in conjunction with the University of Westminster. While the lecture is fully booked you can watch a free web stream of the lecture from 5.30pm today (31st March) here.
Walking away from the day I’m struck by a few lessons that I want to dig into more in my work.
1 – We need to get comfortable talking about transformation and power – Perhaps its our British reserve but because the word transformation seems to be associated with religious fever, while power is seen as a battle between good and evil, we don’t feel comfortable talking about them.
But as Hahrie suggested ‘movements build power not by selling people products they already want but instead by transforming what people think is possible’. We need to help people believe that transformation is possible and that starts by talking about it.
When it comes to power, we spent time considering the work of Steven Lukes and his Three Dimensions of Power. Lukes argues that power is exercised in three ways – visible, hidden and invisible.
Visible power is what we see happening in voting in elections or in Parliament – it’s perhaps the form of power that as campaigners we spend much of our time considering – how can we get MPs to vote for our issue in Parliament for example, but invisible power are the factors/beliefs/assumptions about how the world works that are often imbedded into our institutions.
Campaigners can spend lots of time talking about how we can overcome visible, but organising requires us to consider invisible power that prevents challenging the status quo. We need to spend more time talking about and wrestling with where power really is, and strategising on how we respond.
2 – Agency is about autonomy as well as competence – Agency is the ability to achieve purpose – and in most western countries individuals sense of agency is declining.  We’ve often see increasing agency in those we work with as simply providing people with the skills they need – so they have competence to go out and make the change we’re looking for – perhaps because they’ve been trained to use a particular tool or approach.
Hahrie suggested that agency is not simply about make people feel they have the competence to use a tool it’s also providing them with the autonomy to use those tools – the space to act on it free from the control of an organisation.
3 – Good organisers are not always the first to put their hands up – Zack Exley one of Bernie Sanders lead organiser has spoken about ‘the tyranny of the annoying‘  when the worst people with the most time on their hands take over, and when it comes to picking organiser the same could be true.
Good organisers aren’t always those who are the first to volunteer, they can just be those with time to get involved, but instead individuals who have an ability to learn and reflect, are able to hold the juxtaposition between pain (the challenge of injustice) and redemption (hope that it can be overcome) and relational capacity.
4 – What brings you into belonging to a community – Growing up in a church community, I spent lots of my teenage years in debates about if becoming part of the church meant that you have to first believe then behave before you could belong. There is a growing conversation in church circles that actually the focus should be on belonging, and from that behaviour and belief will come. See below for more on this.
belong_believe2
For many who come into activism the same is true. We often assume that people’s engagement in our issues comes first from a belief in our message and from that becomes the behaviours (like taking an action) and belonging (forming your support for an issue as part of your identity).
But evidence from pro-life activism in the US suggest it’s the other way around. Half of those who got involved in pro-life activism were indifferent to the issue when they first got involved, instead they did so because they were looking for community or invited by a friend. The belonging came well before the believing, are we creating activism spaces that encourage belonging?
5 – It’s not just about how profitable an organisation is – When it comes to metrics of success, we should take the same approach that financial analysts who don’t just judge the performance of a company in a given year on the profits they’ve made, but also the assets they have which inform their ability to make future profits for an investor.
Should the same be true of our approaches? Focusing on the wins achieved (the profit) but also the capacity going forward (the assets) which will inform the change we can deliver in the future.
There was lots of other insight wrapped up in the day, but I also walked away with some very practical reflections;

  • We need to be finding our own community of academics and practitioners who are researching this – most of the literature that we covered was drawn from the US (and even then the body of work is fairly small). We need to find academics in the UK who want to dig into what’s working and not working here.
  • It’s about mixing up and learning from different disciplines – Across the day we drew on insights from a range of approaches as wide as behaviour psychology to those teaching at business schools. Campaigners and organisers would do well to learn from across academic approaches.

For those who joined the skill share or the lecture, I’d be interested in learning what you’re thinking.

Campaign innovation and the US elections

I get hugely excited about the US elections – and now we’re 2 months into the primaries – it’s a good opportunity to look at some of the different innovations, tactics and approaches that the campaigns have been using.
So here is some Easter reading from the campaign trail – and don’t worry it doesn’t mention Trump once!
1 – Bernie Sanders is building a whole new approach to organising – Lots has been written about the Obama organising model, but reading about the Sanders campaign it looks like he’s building ‘Organising 3.0’, with a focus on local empowerment and leadership coupled with technological innovation. This from Paul Hilder who is inside the campaign is good as is the always excellent Sasha Issenberg.
2 – Everyone is using persuasion – I’ve long been fascinated by how social pressure techniques can get individuals to take action. It’s a growing area of academic research mainly in elections – for example helping someone make a plan for voting on election day can increase turnout by up to 4% – this is a good primer of some of the approaches used in the Iowa Primary.
3 – It’s getting harder to reach people on the phone – but text is where it’s at – Phone banking had long been a key element of reaching voters but its getting less and less effective – in one week in January, the Sanders campaign had to make 250,000 calls to have just 11,000 phone conversations, but all the campaigns are actively trying to build SMS lists (and the Sanders campaign is also using some cool tools to engage volunteers via text)
4 –  Digital innovation – From Hilary Clinton on Snapchat, Ted Cruz’s campaign mining information from Facebook profiles, John Kasich looking at networks built from offline sources of information and the use of Facebook Live lots of campaigns are doing interesting digital innovation. Lots more here.
5 – You probably can’t win without getting the basics right – While it’s easy to get excited about the new tools and approaches, campaigns still need to be won by getting people out to vote,  and that needs a well targeted ground game something that Ted Cruz’s campaign used to led him to victory in the Iowa primary. While on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders team have build a app that allows anyone to start canvassing for him.
I’m sure in the next 6 month we’ll see lots more interesting innovation and learnings from the US campaign trail. Watch this space.
 
 

Leadership roles within an advocacy movement

I’m reposting some of my favourite and still relevant posts from the archives. This first post looks at the variety of roles needed in any advocacy movement. I’m reposting it after reading this over on OpenDemocracy. 
American’s love the concept of leadership. Go into any bookshop and you’ll find shelves dedicated to the subject, attend a conference and you can guarantee that the word ‘leader’ will have been used a dozen times before the lunch break.
So perhaps it’s no surprise to find that it’s our colleagues in the US who have been thinking about leadership models and advocacy.
The Institute for Sustainable Communities – Advocacy and Leadership Centre has produced ‘Leadership Roles within an Advocacy Movement’, a short and readable paper in which they identify 11 different types of leadership needed within a movement arguing that ‘a movement must have a plurality of leaders, filling a cabinet of distinct, yet complementary, leadership roles.  By utilizing a diverse cabinet of leaders, a movement develops a powerful dynamic that strengthens and emboldens, bringing the movement closer to optimum gains and successes’.
The list looks like this;

  • Visionaries who raise the view of the possible
  • Strategists who chart the vision and achieve what’s attainable
  • Statespersons who elevate the cause in the minds of both the public and decision-makers
  • Experts who wield knowledge to back up the movement’s positions
  • Outside Sparkplugs who goad and energize, fiercely holding those in power to account
  • Inside Advocates who understand how to turn power structures and established rules and procedures to advantage
  • Strategic Communicators who deploy the rhetoric to intensify and direct public passion toward the movement’s objectives
  • Movement Builders who generate optimism and good will, infecting others with dedication to the common good
  • Generalists who anchor a movement, grounded in years of experience
  • Historians who uphold a movement’s memory, collecting and conveying its stories
  • Cultural Activists who pair movements with powerful cultural forces

I don’t disagree with any of these but wonder if they’ve missed out a couple of key leadership approaches;
Pioneer – Someone who pushes the movement to make use of new tools and tactics. Most recently they would have been engaged with making the most of digital tools to further our campaigning, but throughout the history of campaigning we’ve had individual leaders who have been prepared to push into making use of new tools and tactics. This is different from the ‘visionary’ because they’re defined by the tactics they use.
Administrator – Too often forgotten but every campaign needs a solid and dependable administrator. This is not simply a service function, but a leadership function, someone who is their to ensure that the organisation of the campaign keeps pace with the growth of the energy behind a campaign issue. Too often campaigns fail because they don’t have the material resources or the structure to sustain them.
I was also thinking about the idea of adding in a ‘visualiser/designer‘. Someone who use creative tools to help communicate the essence of the campaign. Someone who harness the notion that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but I’m not sure if this is more a branch off from the ‘strategic communicator’ role than a stand alone approach.
Postscript – The comments on the original post generated a few suggested other roles;
The Activist – the person who constantly pushes others to action, who says “Let’s stop talking and DO something!” This not the “cultural” activist (which I suspect is hard to distinguish from the Strategic Communicator). This is the person who boards the oil rig, who takes round the petitions, who pushes the boundaries of what normal people are willing to do. Some movements are dominated by these Activists, especially the “non-violent direct action” folks.
The Process Addict – every movement has these, especially when there is consensus decision making! This is the person who holds people to the values of the movement, and helps develop an internal culture that is ethically consistent. You may think “that’s not a leader!”, but actually a good many social movements reject hierarchical models of leadership altogether. You can’t ignore the long tradition here. The Process Addicts are concerned with means as well as ends, and hold people to values of respect and openness even when they are “inconvenient”. Too often “leadership” implies single individuals taking major roles and responsibilities. Don’t forget that the shepherd can be a leader too.
What do you think? What else has been missed out? 

Mobilising for Impact – links from my talk at The Campaigning Summit

Today I’m excited to be speaking at the Campaigning Summit in Vienna – it’s a gathering of over 300 campaigning professionals from across Europe (check out the amazing talks from previous Summits on video).
I’m going to be speaking on ‘Lessons I’ve learnt about how to mobilise for impact’
I’m going to be drawing on some of the lessons I’ve learnt from working on global poverty issues for the last 10 years or so. I’ve only got 20 minutes to fit a lot in, so I’m posting the key points and useful links to further resources.
Hopefully they’re useful to both those at the Summit and those reading the blog.
1 – Ask do I need to mobilise? It’s a question that we don’t ask enough. I explore some more key questions we should be asking here.
2. Build a politically diverse coalition – this is a good resource which looks at some of the different models that have worked. I’ve also written on how to make campaigning in coalition work here.
3. Nurture your activists – find out more about the work of Hahrie Han here and here. My friend Natasha Adams has written more here, and I contributed to a series of articles based on the book here. The table I shared in my presentation is below, taken from this blog by Jim Coe (who is also the host of an awesome advocacy podcast).
mob-vs-org
4. Focus on moments but beware of the cliff! – some tips for avoiding the cliff!
5. Learn from others – This is the brilliant Purpose Drive Campaign overview I mentioned (and more here). On learning from Bernie Sanders I enjoyed this and this.
6. Say Thank You and Celebrate – my learning from the Turn Up Save Lives campaign and some reflections on Make Poverty History.
 And finally;

 

Lessons from #BondConf session 'Secrets of Winning Movements'

I had the pleasure and privilege today of hosting an amazing set of campaigners at a session on ‘Secrets of Winning Movements’ which was part of the Bond Conference.
Over 90 minutes, a wonderful line up of speakers shared top learnings from movements as diverse as the campaign to win equal marriage in Ireland, to Mumsnet and it’s wonderful member generated campaigns, to 350.org and a focus on divestment, to the inspiring stories from those at the heart of the Tunisian revolution to community organising in the UK to welcome more Syrian refugees.
Trying to chair and live tweet it was hard to take lots of notes, but briefly, and before I forget them all, here are some of my key learnings;

  • Movements are messy – they require you to experiment with what’s working and not working. To iterate and innovate. To change tactics.
  • Ensure there are strong relationships at the heart of your movement – take time to build trust with those involved.
  • Leadership is about the relationships you have to get people to take action.
  • Help prevent burnout – Don’t forget to provide space for those leading your campaigns to take the time they need to sustain there activism.
  • Focus your message – Grainne Healey shared about the importance of finding a messages that worked for the ‘middle million’ in the Yes Equality referendum campaign. That meant taking what focus groups were saying seriously.
  • A movement need a clear slogan – but ensure that resonates with those you need to engage not simply your ‘base’
  • The messenger who delivers your message is as important – make sure they work with those you’re trying to reach.
  • Humour, satire, parody and ridicule all have a role in campaigning – find creative ways of getting the message out.
  • Use social media effectively – Aya Chebbi from Tunisia shared about how those leading the revolution would use it to get the news they wanted out first.
  • Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it and polarise it – Jonathan Cox from Citizens UK shared about how they’d focused on Bristol Mayor George Ferguson to agree to welcome more refugees through a relentless focus on him.
  • Give people a sense that they can make a difference – Payal Parekh from 350.org shared about how the divestment movement success has been built on the experience of local campaigners making a local dent on a global problem.
  • Training is critical for equipping your movement and sharing the vision.
  • Be movement generous – many of those you train and equip will go on to work on other issues. Celebrate that.
  • Learn from others – Grainne shared about how the Yes Equality campaign had benefitted from the insight of US marriage equality campaigners.
  • Build unusual and diverse coalitions – not just the usual suspects.
  • But sometimes its as important to decide who not to include can be as important as who is involve. Rowan Davies from Mumsnet talked about who didn’t get involved in a coalition they built on libel reform
  • Be clear about the role your organisation is playing. For many NGOs its about supporting the existing movement.

If you were in the session, please feel free to add your key lessons and learnings in the comments below. 

In/Out, Leave/Remain – the EU Referendum and what it means for campaigners

So the starting gun for the EU Referendum has been fired, and for the next 4 months it’s going to dominate the political discourse.
So what does that mean for campaigners? Here are a few initial thoughts.
It’ll shape all political decisions – I’ve highlighted the comment from Tim Montgomery below before, but I think it’s really pertinent and worth every campaigner thinking about.
This government is behaving differently because the outcome of the In/Out referendum (likely to be held in June 2016) may well determine David Cameron’s place in history and is uppermost in his mind. He risks Britain’s membership of the EU if he’s an unpopular mid-term prime minister at the time he is recommending Britain should vote to “remain” (as he certainly will). I underestimated Downing Street’s determination to organise everything in terms of avoiding Brexit. The go-slow on cuts, the living wage announcement, the retreat on tax credits, the extra money for defence… this pre-referendum behaviour is pretty boilerplate pre-election behaviour.
As Tim says the Government are going to want to go into the Referendum looking like they’re in step with the public mood. What does that mean for your campaign, does it provide new opportunities to push, or should you be prepared for an unexpected announcement? Also, now that Cabinet Members have come out for and against the deal what will that do the dynamics of the Cabinet will it effectively mean more briefing against each other?
Prepare if you get caught in the crossfire – Many campaigners will chose not to get engaged in the Referendum, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be immune to the Referendum. My work is on international development and I can already see how the ‘out’ campaign might choose to use that issue to demonstrate another reason we should leave the EU. I’m sure lots of other examples exist in other areas as well, basically any issue where the EU has some involvement. Scenario planning and preparation is essential.
See which messengers get cut through – The anti-politics/anti-elite mood that seems to be engulfing the country mean that I think, that while we’ll see a lot of them, it’s unlikely that politicians will be those who deliver the most convincing messages (see the YouGov Tracker to see why George Galloway was a spectacularly bad idea to use at the Grassroots Out rally on Friday). This is particularly a challenge for the ‘Remain’ campaign, with it focus on a message that staying in is good for both economic and national security, need to find credible alternative messengers to motivate people to get out to vote to stay. Look out for who are the messengers who do get cut through – there might be some good learning in here for your campaign.
Watch out for the grassroots interest groups – To counter the ‘politician’ problem that both sides have, we’re already starting to see an emergence of grassroots groups to amplify the voices of different interests (see this list of some of the pro EU groups emerging – I think Football Fans 4 EU is my favourite so far). These groups are presumably aimed at making the case for different issues and engaging specific audiences to vote. It’ll interesting to see if the most vocal manage to cut through. One of the things I’ve already liked about US election is the emergence of grassroots interest groups, but it’s not really a trend that seems to have caught on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps the Referendum will change that.
Lookout for innovation in campaigning tactics – To be honest, I’ve not seen very much of this from either the Remain or Leave campaigns so far. It seems that they’re both deploying a fairly standard field operation which combines phone calling (and the US primary elections have shown how hard it’s becoming to reach people) and street stalls, with some interesting social media content – which often ends up in an echo chamber of those who’ve already decided what they think. But keep an eye on what the Remain campaign does, it’s got some smart people working on it and has the bigger challenge on its hands, to motivate those who are instinctively ‘in’ but perhaps don’t have the same motivation to get out to vote as the ‘out’ campaign does.
Understand what you can and can’t do – Lots of the rules for how the specifics of this referendum will be run still don’t exist, but in CC9 we already have general guidance about what Charities can and can’t do around a Referendum. In short the guidance says that ‘The principles that govern political activity by charities also apply to referendums. This means that, depending on the nature of the referendum issue or question, there may be some circumstances in which it is appropriate for a charity to set out the pros and cons of a yes or no vote for their beneficiaries’. It also goes into more detail about when it might be appropriate to take a specific position around the referendum when a charity thinks it will directly affect the work they do.  NCVO is holding a breakfast briefing on Friday for anyone interested in this. 
Think about what happens with a Brexit – While negotiating the details of a Brexit will be protracted, it’s worth starting to scenario plan what that could mean for your work. What routes to influence it’d open up or close down. How would your strategy have to change?

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Fundraising Preference Service – what it could mean for campaigners?

It would be easy to think that the ‘Fundraising Preference Service’ (FPS) isn’t something to worry about as a campaigner – not least when the Government is including anti-advocacy clause in its grant agreements.
But while the focus of the FPS is about regulating fundraising communications, I think it’d be short sighted for campaigners in charities to assume that it won’t affect them as well.
If you’ve not been following in details how the FPS came about, you’ll be aware that last summer there was a number of stories about fundraising practices. As a result Sir Stuart Etherington from NCVO was asked by the government to review the current self-regulation arrangements. One of his recommendations was the Fundraising Preference Service with the idea it being;
“a list of people, and their contact details, who do not wish to be contacted with fundraising communications. Charities can access the list to cross check their own databases against prior to fundraising campaigns. And where members of the public continue to receive fundraising communications despite registering, the Fundraising Preference Service offers a basis for changing the relationship”
Now the creation of a FPS hasn’t been without its critics (see here and here), and until it exists it hard to quantify what impact it will end up having. But it’s happening and a working group formed by NCVO has been created to look at its implementation.
So it’s helpful for campaigners to be thinking about the implications for their communicating with supporters. Here are 3 questions to be asking;
1. Will those who’ve signed up appreciate the different types of charity communications? The FPS proposes a reset button which would mean those who sign up wouldn’t be able to get any more fundraising communications (see Joe Saxton on the challenges of getting the data to work here).  But will those who’ve signed up appreciate the difference between a direct mail asking them to donate to a email to sign a petition. While we might appreciate the difference will many see signing up to the FPS as putting an end to all communications from charities?
Joe Jenkins argues here if we are to have an FPS that is workable it should focus on communications that primary or sole focus are on soliciting financial support so newsletters, campaign asks, etc wouldn’t be affected – good news for campaigners but something that needs to be made clear in the development of the guidance – but my hunch is that the FPS it will lead to charities being more cautious about all mailings that go to supporters (perhaps a good thing). If was being very cynical, I’d suggestion that the existence of the FPS would make it easier in the future to extend the guidance to include all charity communications.
2. What about integrated campaign/fundraising asks? Many campaigners have worked hard with fundraising colleagues to develop integrated campaigns which combine ask people to take campaign actions and donate (see some great examples here). If we take the principle that Joe Jenkins has made about the FPS being focused just on ‘communications that primary or sole focus are on soliciting financial support’ will that means that you can’t include a fundraising PS in a campaigning direct mail, or invite people to donate following an online action they’ve taken? On the other hand as Joe Saxton suggests perhaps it’ll lead to the rise of ‘fugging’ – fundraising under the guide of campaigning.
3. What will be the impact of the new ‘opt in’ legislation? Over the summer, the EU has passed new data protection legislation which will will mean personal data must be ‘freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous’. That won’t just affect fundraising but all charity communications, and while it’s a separate process to the FPS what this will mean for recruiting new campaigners isn’t yet clear. NCVO have a group looking at it and it’s another process to follow.
The work to shape the FPS is underway guided by a group convened by NCVO. As yet I’ve not seen any detailed proposals of what it’ll include, but I’m sure those involved will want to get input from a range of organisations.
So my recommendation. Don’t assume this is someone else’s problem. Start talking to your fundraising colleagues to understand how they’re engaged in the process and ensure that the FPS is shaped in a way that doesn’t inadvertently reduce your ability to communicate with your supporters.

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