mrtombaker, Author at Thoughtful Campaigner

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)

On holiday….back in September

A Daily Tip e-mail from the good folk at New Organising Institute reminded me last week about the importance of taking a holiday. They came up with lots of useful reasons as to why we should take a break.

With this in mind, I’m going to pause blogging until the start of September to take a short break myself.
If you’re an activist and you haven’t taken a break for a while I’d encourage you to do so.
If you have taken a break recently and are looking for useful reading on campaigning, why not have a look at;
My Summer Reading list – Lots of great books recommended by folk from across the campaigning world
The Right Ethos tweets – they’re suggesting a campaigning resource you should be reading throughout August.
These old posts that still get lots of traffic to them Best Advocacy Videos and Great Campaign Stunts.
See you in September…..

Campaign Totals 2011 – By department

Third Sector magazine have covered the Campaign Totals work that I’ve been doing in the latest edition which comes out today. So for those arriving at the blog I’ve complied the responses into one place.
In May, I used Freedom of Information to ask each department;

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
The breakdown of these numbers by delivery method (letter, postcard and email).
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.

Below is a list of the departments I’ve had responses from;
Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Department for Communities and Local Government
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Education
Department of Energy and Climate Change
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Department for International Development (and more here)
Department for Transport
Department of Health
Export Credits Guarantee Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Treasury – I’m still processing the information but click here and here for a pdf of the response.
Home Office
I’m still waiting for the Ministry of Justice to respond, while the Ministry of Defence said it did not hold this information. The Department for Work and Pensions indicated that it didn’t have any accurate information about the numbers of actions it received.
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Advocacy in 2020 – future trends and how to prepare for them

I’m not sure what caused it but the spring saw a number of reports being produced by NGOs which looked at future trends. The two I’ve found most useful are ‘Leading Edge 2020‘ by Troicaire and ‘2020 Development Futures‘ by Action Aid.
They’re well worth a read as they provide a huge amount of insight into what might be coming on the horizon, much of which could have huge impacts on our advocacy and should also provide a challenge for any organisation that hasn’t spent a little time thinking about how it’ll respond to a changing environment.

Alex Evans who, amongst other things is editor of the excellent GlobalDashboard.org, authored the ‘2020 development futures’ paper for Action Aid, in it he makes 10 recommendations for the next 10 years.
They’re all insightful but 5 stand out as being especially important to advocates;
1. Be ready for external shocks – A reminder that external shocks are often the key driver of change, reflecting on the quote from Friedman that ‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around‘. Evans suggests that ‘Civil society organisations should put aside a substantial proportion of their policy and advocacy to roll them out rapidly when ten times as much political space opens up overnight, for three weeks only‘.
2. Putting members in charge – arguing that we’ve traditionally built our engagement on largely passive engagement of members who have responded by signing a postcard or donating money. Evans argues that CSOs need to ‘put their members in charge as far as possible using technology platforms to ask them regularly what to campaign on, where, how to do it, and how they want to be involved’.
3. Specialise in coalitions – but not simply civil society organisations, suggesting that power is going to become more diffuse and that it’ll be going to bloggers, citizens, NGOs, businesses and beyond. The effective civil society organisations will need to be the catalysts to create shared platforms and the glue to keep them together. Practically, Evans suggests that coalitions will need to be more diverse and will need staff within CSOs who have experience outside the civil society sector who can act as ‘translators’ in bring these diverse coalitions together.
4. Expect failure – Which is linked to being ready for external shocks, but also recognising that CSOs will also expect to find their own operations under stress. I’ve written before about how we shouldn’t see failure as a bad thing as long as we learn from it.
5. Be storytellers – suggesting ‘if diverse coalitions are key to effecting political change, it is narratives, and compelling visions of the future, that can animate networks and coalitions over the long-term‘ and calling on CSOs to be storytellers about the future.
If you’re inspired to spend some time thinking about how future trends might impact your work, here are some ideas to get you started.

Have a read of NCVOs ‘Making Sense of the External Environment‘ booklet.
Gather together some colleagues and spend 30 minutes trying to draw together PEST or PESTLE analysis on the trends that might affect campaigning in the coming years – both are simple tools that allow you to gather your thoughts on what might be happening in key areas.
Based on your PEST chart, ask yourself what will campaigning look like in 2020. Identify different scenarios and consider how your campaign might adapt.
Spend sometime soaking up ideas on sites like trendwatching.com or www.3s4.org.uk
Look at NCVO Future Focus booklet which asks what will campaigning look like in 5 years time.
Come up with a list of up to 5 practical things you’re going to do to respond. I’ve found it’s easy to spend lots of time thinking about future trends but organisations often struggle to start to act on them.

Do you agree with the recommendations that Evans makes? How do you go about reflecting on future trends?

Campaign Totals to DEFRA in 2007 & 2008

Back in 2009 I started to use Freedom of Information to find out about the number of campaign actions to a handful of departments that I’d been involved in running campaign actions towards.
DEFRA was one of them and here are the results of the actions they received in 2007 and 2008 as pdfs to view through scribd.com
Total number in 2007 – 108,617 (38,191 emails and 70,426 postcards)
[scribd id=62041179 key=key-x81b2vusqdqtpttjv1v mode=list]
Total number in 2008 – 155,419 (30,429 emails and 124,990 postcards)
[scribd id=62041110 key=key-1qgzbgyjyvv8tnjni26i mode=list]
I also asked for information for 2005 but they were unable to provide this, and 2006 where I was informed they received 75,000 actions.
Information taken from Freedom of Information request returned on 9 March 2009 and is taken from a list of information provided by DEFRA.
More about the ‘Campaigns Total’ project for 2010-11 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)

Thoughts on the first week of epetitions.direct.gov.uk

It’s a week since the Government launched its e-petition website, so what have we learnt from the first 7 days?
Update 12/8 – 1,806 petitions have been added in the sites first week, of those 152 have gained only 1 signature and only 28 have gained more the 1,000.
1 – The site can’t cope with surges in traffic.
It was perhaps to be expected that the site would go down on the first day, indeed it’s almost a tradition for new government sites which have all failed to anticipate the number of people visiting. But it’s also been down for much of today (Wednesday) as people have surged to sign a petition to remove benefits from those convicted of rioting in London which has gained over 79,000 signatures very quickly. I’d be concerned that the site wouldn’t be able to cope if an organisation with big mailing list asked its supporters to take action by signing a petition.

Screen shot 2011-08-10 at 21.02.31 — The e-petition site has struggled to cope with surges in traffic to it

2 – The social media integration isn’t that bad…
Each petition page has buttons that allow you to broadcast the petition via twitter, Facebook and Linkedin which is good to see, but as Pete Taylor points out that site could have gone much further suggesting designed should ‘build out the e-petition system as an API – an ‘API’ allows other pieces of software to access a system….organisations could feature the petitions on their websites and recruit activists to their own email and supporter databases at the same time’
3 – But finding a petition could be much easier
One of the most disappointing aspect of the site is the homepage, which list the petitions by most recent one put up as a default option and provides two other options which allow you to sort by title and number of signatures. The search function is satisfactory, and they’re also listed by department but it would have been nice to see other ways of finding petitions, and perhaps details of the latest, most signed and most signed in the last 24 hours detailed on the home page.
4 – It’s social media that’s driving traffic to the site.
Last Thursday was a great case study for this. The petition to bring back capital punishment, which had been championed by blogger Guido Fawkes was heavily trailed in the newspaper and TV but by the end of the day it’d only got 3,000 signatures.
Contrast that to a counter petition to retain the ban on capital punishment which was promoted almost exclusively on twitter until Newsnight covered it which got 6,000 in the first day. A week later it’s still well ahead of the supposedly ‘higher profile’ petition. Similarly, it looks like much of the traffic to the London rioting petition has come from Facebook/Twitter as the media hasn’t been interested in covering it, bit.ly suggests that its been shared over 65,000 times on Facebook.
5 – Those behind it are more agile than expected.
I wrote last week that one of my concerns was that it’d take 7 days for petitions to be approved, which would make it hard for petitions to capitalise on what’s happening in the media. Given that the first report of recent events in London came through on Saturday night, the London rioting petition shows that it’s possible for those working on it to turn around petitions quicker than that.
6 – I’m already a little bored of it.
As I write the top petitions are on very similar subjects to those that were around on the No10 petition site, it’s almost predictable and as yet it doesn’t seem to have generated any interesting new ideas for Parliament to debate.
This is perhaps in part down to the format that requires any petition to get over the 100,000 signature threshold, which means many campaigns will feel that they can’t make target but also the lack of flexibility in the system. I’m expecting some media coverage of the first petition that makes it over the 100,000 line and the first to be debated, but after that I’m not sure how much interest its going to generate.
What are your thoughts or reflections from the first week of the e-petition site?

Author: mrtombaker