mrtombaker, Author at Thoughtful Campaigner

Holding successful events with MPs in Parliament

Conference season is upon us and many campaigners will be packing their bags to head off to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
But as Chloe Stables notes in an excellent post about making the most of attending conference they can be ‘expensive, hectic and occasionally frustrating‘ but other options for engaging with MPs do exist.
Back in March, I was involved in organising an event to mark World Water Day, which at the time one colleague musedwas a better use of resources that organising an fringe meeting at Party Conference.
A modest objective of getting 12-15 MPs along was set but in the end we got over 40 MPs came to join in, a great success and far more than we would have got attending a fringe event at conference.

David Burrowes MP at the event — One of the 40 MPs who attended the event

The idea was simple. Invite MPs to join us on and walk 100m with a jerry can on a course we’d set up in Victoria Tower Gardens, it was a symbolic act to remember the fact that many people have to walk up to 6km to get access to something we expect to get from our taps, and we hoped that it would help to build links with Parliamentarians who could act as champions for the issue in the coming year.
You can read more about the event here, but it got me thinking about what some of the elements that made the event a success.
Perhaps they’re nothing new but I wanted to share them to see what insight others have about what works when looking to engage MPs in events in Parliament.
1. Provide a photo opportunity – It’s a cliché but the offer of a photo and a pre-prepared press release undoubtedly encouraged some MPs to join us. We set up a water pump and promised to get the release to them within 3 hours. It was nice to use this as a way of helping the MP demonstrate the interest they had in the issue.
2. Targeted the few not the many – The decision was taken early in the planning not to actively invite all MPs, but to identify and approach a smaller number of influential MPs on the topic, for example those on key select committees or those who’d shown an interest in the issue previously. We hoped that our invitation was more likely to get noticed, and we already had a relationship with some which made it easier to follow up with.
3. Followed up via Twitter – Ahead of the event, we got in touch with those MPs who used twitter to remind them to come down. At least one mentioned that this had made the difference about them attending or not.
4. Used our supporters – We invited our supporters who lived in the constituencies of MPs we had an interest in to attend, but had realistic expectations about the number who’d be able to join us on a Tuesday. We also encouraged them to get in touch and invite their MP along anyhow. Again, a number of MPs mentioned that this was one of the reasons they joined us.
5. Made the most of our contacts – We found that amongst an extended group of colleagues had a number had contact with friends who worked for MPs or who could raise the profile of the event inside Parliament. A few well placed e-mails and calls from them certainly helped to increase the numbers attending. A reminder that sometimes it’s useful to use your personal contacts.
6. Kept the event going for two hours – Allowing MPs a longer window of time to come along seemed to yield dividends in reducing the number of MPs who simply couldn’t join us because of diary clashes.
What successful events have you organised with MPs? Is Conference a useful forum to engage with MPs? What have you found works and what hasn’t?
Some of this post originally appeared on the NCVO Campaigning Forum.

Five for Friday….16 September

Here is the latest selection of articles that might be of interest to campaigners….
1. Great guide from Fair Pensions about how you can become a shareholder activist.
2. Short but useful guide from movements.org about campaign planning.
3. Some good suggestions from M+R Research Labs about what makes a successful e-campaign action.
4. Brian Lamb argues that e-petitions are a shallow form of campaigning.
5. Finally, I think this action from Swiss organisation, SOLIDAR is excellent. Great target selection, a funny video and a clear message.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzHRuhzPSE]

Campaign Totals – Top 15 organisations

In my final post about the Campaigns Totals survey that I’ve been running over the last few months, I’m going to take a look at what the results tell us about the organisations running these campaigns.
I’ve already noted that actions are being generated by a vibrant civil society, and that through my survey actions from 66 organisations were named in the responses, and that excludes the 76 actions that I wasn’t able to identify an organiser for.
The table below shows the top 15 organisations by actions generated, and the only organisations to generate more than 20,000 actions in the 12 months of the survey;
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdFhMX1pqcS1aY3ZleV91UW4zdExReXc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”570″ /]

It’s interesting to note that the vast majority of actions are being generated by charities or campaigning organisations, like Greenpeace who because of the way their work is considered aren’t able to take advantage of ‘charitable status’ as opposed to trade associations or other corporate lobbying groups.

With regard to the ‘top’ issues that actions are being generated on;

Sustainable Development – 57 actions including 25 on Climate Change and other actions on bio-fuels, oil, nuclear and energy policy.
International Development – 54 actions including 11 on debt and other action on aid spending, women’s rights and water/sanitation
Animal Welfare – 14 actions including on issues such as circus animals and battery hens.
Public Services – 12 actions including a number focusing on cuts.
Tax policy – 10 actions

Astroturfing, 38 Degrees and MPs views of e-actions

Should we be concerned about Stephen Phillips MP writing to constituents in response to 38 Degrees last campaign to say that he will;
‘in the future not respond to campaigns run by what purports to be a, but what to is most evidently not, a non-political organisation’
Perhaps not, unless you work for 38 Degrees and even then I suspect that you’d think it’s good publicity. Although this tweet suggests that it’s not simply Philips who take this approach to 38 Degrees at the moment.
But Philips isn’t the first to complain, last summer we had another Conservative MP, Dominic Raab say;
‘there are hundreds of campaign groups like yours, and flooding MPs inboxes with pro-forma emails creates an undue administrative burden. I welcome anyone who feels strongly about AV writing to me in person – rather than copying an automated template’
While a few weeks ago Labour backbench, Steve Pound MP wrote in Tribune;
‘On any given day there will be between three and five campaigning bodies, trades unions or special interest groups encouraging their members and supporters to e-mail their MP – and woe betide the miserable Member who fails to reply by return’

It is of course easy to dismiss these MPs as a few grumpy MPs who simply need to get control of their inboxes, but are these the views of a growing majority?
If so, then I do think we need to worry as it could mean that e-actions to MP could rapidly become a blunt and ineffective campaign tool.
I’m not aware of any empirical evidence that exists about the views of MPs about e-actions, but anecdotally the MPs I’ve heard will tell you that they see e-actions as being less ‘influential’ as a handwritten letter, which itself is less ‘influential’ than a visit to a surgery (or similar).
I don’t think that this response of Philips means we should stop running e-actions to MPs, but I do wonder if as campaigners we need to work with the Speakers office and others within Parliament to help to identify a way of ensuring that those who take e-actions as a legitimate way of engaging in the democratic process aren’t ignored by MPs who simply think that these actions are a ‘nuisance’.
But it also highlights the importance of using other tools in our campaigning to demonstrate grassroots support, perhaps more interestingly is the description that Guido Fawkes used to describe 38 Degrees in his blog as a ‘left-wing astroturfing operation’.
Astroturfing being a term used in the US for a number of years to describe as ‘advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement’.
It’s of course unfair and unfounded to because one of the other tactics that 38 Degrees selected to use to campaign on the NHS Bill was to encourage the public in Lib Dem constituencies to phone their MPs, and they’ve also spent months building local groups to get behind the campaign.
But the impression that some see many of the e-actions we’re generating as a sector are coming from organisations that don’t have any ‘grassroots’ support behind them is a concern, especially if the majority of MPs start to view them in this way.
Perhaps if there is a lesson to take from all of this, it’s that tending to and building a ‘grassroots’ is as important as building a big mailing list to generate e-actions.
Do you agree? How much longer do you think e-actions to MP will remain effective?

Campaign Totals – A look at the departmental figures

I’ve received responses from all but 2 departments (Ministry of Deference and Ministry of Justice) that I approached, but what do the final totals tell us about the way that they’re responding to the actions that we’re sending them?
1. Real variation in numbers between department – I’m not surprised to see the Treasury come top of the survey as it feels indicative of the importance of the department and George Osbourne in a time of declining government budgets, but it’s interesting to see how few actions that No10 appears to have received in the 12 month period.
I’d expected to see more actions being sent to the Departments of Health and Education, but perhaps organisations that focus on these issues have been channeling their resources to influence MPs who have been involved in scrutinising key pieces of legislation going through Parliament.
The table below has a breakdown of the number of actions different departments have received.
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdE9FUXk1ME4zRUl3T0hCczZybHV0WlE&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”700″ /]
2. Big differences in how departments handle campaign actions – The quality of the responses I’ve received has really varied. At the top departments like DFID and DEFRA, incidentally both departments that you sense deal regularly with civil society organisations, have been able to provide me with detailed breakdowns by organisation, action and topic.
At the other end of the scale some departments weren’t able to provide me with any breakdown at all, see Department of Culture, Media and Sport as a good example.
Most departments fall somewhere in the middle, but the exercise has really highlighted to me that we can’t assume as campaigners that our actions are immediately recorded and passed upwards to Ministerial teams. It’s vital that we combine our handovers of campaign actions with other method of notification to staff in Ministerial Offices.
3. What’s in a title? It’s been alarming to see how much of a campaign message seems to be lost when the actions are grouped together. If this is the sort of information that is being processed is a list of actions by title which then gets passed up to Ministers in one form or another, then I’m not sure actions entitled ‘Inspired’ or titles like ‘Get Clever about Climate Cash’ are very clear on what they’re asking for. It seems to me the most effective are those that can be easily summarised like ‘Bingo Say No to 22% Tax’ or ‘Support New Jobs with a Green Investment Bank’ are likely to be clearer at speaking to the policy change that’s being requested. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport was very helpful in providing me with information about how they display this information to Ministers.
I’ve also been struck by the number of responses that I got that didn’t include details of the organisations behind the actions (despite explicitly asking for this information). If organisation are also using campaign actions as a way of building broader influence with government departments.

Campaign Totals – The Results

For the last few months I’ve been publishing the results of Freedom of Information requests that I’ve been making to government departments to discover how many campaign actions they’ve received in the last 12 months.

Now that all* the results are in, what can we learn?

A huge amount of campaigning is taking place. Government departments have received at least 946,000 actions in the 12 month period from 1st May 2010 and 1st May 2011. See below for why I’m saying ‘at least’.
Actions are being generated by a vibrant civil society. Actions from 66 organisations that were named in the responses, and that excludes the 76 actions that I wasn’t able to identify an organiser for.
E-actions lead the way but aren’t as dominant as you’d expect. Government departments reported receiving 400,458 email actions in the 12 month period, compared to 262,886 letters, 97,311 postcards and 39,107 petitions. Although the latter numbers need to be treated with some caution as my sense is that most departments didn’t make much of a distinction between letters, postcards and petitions. We don’t know the source of 147,163 actions.

A top 20? Below are the actions that generated the most responses;

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But it’s also important to recognise some of the limitation of the research;

1. It doesn’t include actions to MPs – With a record intake of new MPs into Parliament many campaigning organisations are likely to have been focusing their campaigning energy on MPs. For example, 38 Degrees excellent Save our Forests campaign gathered over 500,000 actions but doesn’t appear in the results. Why? Because they targeted their actions towards MPs.

2. It doesn’t tell us which actions influenced policy – It’s been a fascinating tool to measure which organisations can mobilise significant numbers, but sadly the results don’t tell us which actions changed or influenced government policy. Although I’m working on how to use FoI to discover this.

3. We can’t be certain that the information is comparable between departments – I’ve tested my request with departments for a number of years and I’m confident that I’ve got a request that make sense, but it’s still open to the interpretation by the Freedom of Information Officer responding to my enquiry. I’d welcome comments from organisations who think their action has been overlooked.

4. Not every department keeps great records – Exhibit A would be the Treasury who told me that they received 268,647 in a 17 month period, but then proceeded to give me a breakdown for 343,711 actions! Exhibit B would be the departments that couldn’t give me detailed figures! As such I think we can say that the 946,000 action could potentially be even more.

*I’m still waiting for the Ministry of Justice to come back to me. I’ve followed up on a number of occasions and will shortly be referring this to the Information Commissioner.

Great campaigning resources

Looks like it’s a day for lists of useful guides on campaigning.
Firstly I came across this list that Mark Parker, a campaign organiser in Southwark has put together of books to read on activism on his Southwark Organising blog.
Secondly, it’s the last day of The Right Ethos resource tweeting marathon! For the last month they’ve been sharing ‘a series of 30 daily guides covering campaigning, policy & parliamentary’ via their twitter account. It’s a really useful list full of some great resources, many of them come from the work of the NCVO Campaigning Effectiveness programme, but they’ve also linked to some interesting resources from the US and beyond.
The full Right Ethos list is below;
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdGhhQXQ4UU9PdzNnX2NTcDNTRlp6bEE&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”600″ /]
What resources, books or guides would you add?

Campaign Totals – Department of Work and Pensions

The Department of Work and Pensions indiciated that it was unable to give detailed figures in response to my request.

Total number of actions received between May 1st 2010 and May 1st 2011: approx 8,500

Number of letters: approx. 1,400
Number of postcards: approx. 2,800
Number of emails: approx. 4,300

Breakdown by topic and organisation: The Department of Work and Pension was unable to give me a detailed breakdown by action but said that they’d received significant numbers of actions from the following organisations;

Reform of Disability Living Allowance – Mencap, National Autistic Society, and RNIB
Reform of Child Support – Gingerbread
“Make welfare work for mental health” – organisation(s) not identified
“Hardest Hit” campaign – organisation(s) not identified
“Mind the Gap” (Poverty) – UNICEF
Remploy (“Chopper Clegg”) – organisation(s) not identified
Anti slavery/domestic slavery – International Labour Organisation

Information taken from Freedom of Information request returned on 31 May 2011 and is taken from a list of information provided by Department of Work and Pension .

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)

Campaign Totals – HM Treasury

Unfortunately HM Treasury was unable to provide the information I requested. They were however able to provide me with breakdowns for all of 2010 and up to May 1st 2011.
Total number of actions received in 2010: 230,613
Letters/Postcards: 189,282
Emails: 141,532
Biggest campaign: Bingo Say No to 22% Tax organised by the Bingo Association – 31,853
Total number of actions received to 1st May 2011: 12,897
Letters/Postcards: 10,291
Emails: 2,606
Biggest campaign: Freeze Fuel Duty organised by The Sun – 35,000
These figures don’t appear to have been counted in the total above which would mean that HM Treasury have received 47,897 actions to May 1st 2011.
Breakdown by topic and organisation:
Please note that I have added together all the information provided into one table, with actions taken in 2011 indicated as such. I’ve included information about the organisation behind the action where I can find it, as the Treasury was only able to provide me with the organisations behind 7 of the actions which I’ve indicated in italics.
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To view the breakdown spreadsheet in google docs click here. Information taken from Freedom of Information request returned on 2 June 2011 and is taken from a list of information provided by HM Treasury.
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)

Author: mrtombaker