Entries Written By mrtombaker
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 …
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 …
Why you should add a campaigner to your charity board
I really love being on the board of trustees of both Campaign Bootcamp and Results UK, but as I look around I don’t see lots of other campaigners on charity boards. I wonder if it’s because board chairs don’t always appreciate the skills and experiences that a campaigner might bring onto a board when they …
When ‘normal’ resumes what could be different for campaigners?
I’m not sure when the General Election is going to be, if we’ll leave the EU by the end of October, who’ll form the next Government. Politics is unpredictable at the moment, and like most campaigners, it can be hard to look up from preparing for the next key moment or just keeping up with …
Trend watching – how technology is affecting political communications
Going away for a week has been a good time to catch up on reading and podcasts – plus the inevitable train adventures with my 4 1/2-year-old son! One of the best podcast I listened to was this retrospective interview with Government vs the Robots host Jonathan Tanner. Over the last 40+ episodes, Jonathan has …
A toolkit for playing defensive advocacy
A new Prime Minister, a possible General Election and Brexit continues to rumble on. In our current, politically uncertain times do we need to start to reconsider what campaign success looks like? That’s why I really enjoyed the latest paper from the team at the Centre for Evaluation Innovation which looks at how to define …
What does it mean to be movement generous?
“Think of any campaign success you’ve seen or been involved in. I would wager good money – that it wasn’t achieved by one actor alone: it was collective action that brought about change” I couldn’t agree more than with Nick Martlew in this excellent Mobilisation Lab post on what makes for effective collaboration in campaigning. …
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!