Category: How To

Getting the most from your time as a intern

I’m re-posting some of my favorite and still relevant posts from the archives. This post still feels relevant for those starting internships and volunteer this summer. It also provides me the opportunity to highlight;

  • Applications for the next Campaign Bootcamp are open, including a stack of awesome scholarships that are available to help anyone who wants to come. 
  • I’m looking to recruit a Campaign and Policy Trainee to join the team at Bond. Applications close on Wednesday. It’s a great role, paid at the London Living Wage, for someone looking to make a start working in an exciting team (and with me!)

School’s out for the summer for university students, and some will be heading into summer internships with campaigning organisations across the UK and beyond.
Doing an (hopefully paid) internships is one of the routes for getting a permanent job in campaigning, it’s also a good way of finding out that this perhaps isn’t the career for you.
I’ve been fortunate to have hosted lots of great volunteers, interns and trainees in the organisation I’ve worked in over the years, and as such come up with my 8 top tips for getting the most out of your time as a volunteer/intern with a campaigns team.
1. Be honest – Find out why you’re being asked to do the tasks your being asked to do. Some of them won’t be glamorous, but there should be a good reason for everything you’re being asked to do. Asking lots of questions is one of the best ways of understanding how different tactics and approaches come together to make a campaign.
2. Be clear – Make sure you get the time you need at the start of your time with an organisation to understand what they want you to achieve from your time, and for you to explain what you hope to achieve. If there are certain areas that you’re interested in finding out about more, ask at the start as it’s often possible to arrange something. Be clear what your objectives from the time you’ll be volunteering are.
3. Be in the room – I always try to make an effort to invite volunteers and interns to different meetings that are going on. Some of them are directly related to a project they may be involved with, but often I see them as a good opportunity to learn. If you’re invited to these meeting, GO. You’ll almost certainly get an insight that you wouldn’t have done if you’d just stayed at your desk.
4. Be bold – It can be intimidating being a volunteer or intern, but be bold and if you think that somethings been overlooked in a meeting or if you have a good idea to contribute speak up. Chances are those involved will welcome the new insight that you’re able to bring.
5. Be a networker – Make time to try to get to know others around the organisation, approach people from different teams and ask if you might be able to meet them for lunch to find out more about their work. They’ll probably be happy to share more about it, go with some good question and you’ll come back an hour later with a better picture of how the work you’re doing links with the work of the rest of the organisation.
6. Be a learner – Ask those you’re working with for suggestions of good books, websites, reports and resources. It’s a good way to learn more about the campaigning craft and find out how others do it. Many organisations also have lunchtime sessions with internal/external speakers, go along to these as well.
7. Be cheerful – it sounds so obvious, but bring energy into the office you work in. There is little worse that a volunteer who appears uninterested. Get involved in making the tea or partaking in whatever other office routines you encounter.
8. Give feedback – At the end of your time let those you’ve been working with know what you’ve enjoyed doing, and what you found could do with some more consideration. You’ll be helping out future volunteers/interns.
What advice would you give to those coming to intern for you this summer?
Update – The team at Bright One have also come up with an excellent list of Do’s and Don’ts for an intern.

How trustees can help campaigns thrive

Last week, I was working with some trustees involved in a charity that’s interested in investing more in mobilisation. It’s always fun to get out and about to help organisations looking to get stuck into campaigning.
Towards the end of the session, someone asked about the role a board can play in helping to support the organisations campaigning. I suggested the following;
1. Compliance – Trustees need to be aware of the regulations surrounding charity campaigning. They’re legally responsible for ensuring that charities meet it, so it’s good they know what can and can’t be done. But as I’m always keen to say, being compliant doesn’t mean a charity needs to be silent. The Charity Commission guidance on this clear says that campaigning can be done if it supports an organisation’s charitable activities. Trustees need to speak out when this right is being threatened.
2. Champion – If any organisation has decided to invest in campaigning and mobilisation it needs its trustees to champion this decision internally. Campaigning is about mobilising people to challenge systems and structures that hold power, and sometimes that will come into conflict with other work an organisation is doing (especially if they’re dependent on government funding where ). When hard decision need to be made trustees needs to trust their instincts that investing in campaigning will help their charity achieve its objectives.
3. Patience – Change through campaigning doesn’t always happen immediately, and as I’ve written about before, even when it does happen those impacts might not easily captured in a set of KPIs. Boards need to understand that it might be a few years before the full value of their investment is seen, and also work to ensure the metrics that a board uses doesn’t just look at outputs but also the stories behind the outputs.
4. Contacts – Trustees are often well connected individuals with contacts in media, government or other institutions that can be incredibly useful in helping to deliver campaign victory. Understanding how these can connections can be put to best use can be invaluable.
5. Challenge – It’s not the job of trustees to run the day-to-day operations of a charity, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t taken an interest in the strategy that’s being developed. The best campaign strategies have assumptions tested and challenged to ensure they’re as sharp as they can be, and trustees can often help bring another perspective to the plans. Trustees should also appreciate that good campaigning requires flexibility to respond to changing circumstances.
Campaigners can also support trustees. The composition of board often lags a few years behind the latest thinking in charities, which mean many charity boards still don’t have people with campaign experience on them. Encouraging people that do to join boards would help.

So you've joined the Labour Party – now what?

In the last few weeks many of those I work and campaign alongside have joined the Labour Party. So for readers who aren’t members of the Labour Party (or interested in party politics), please forgive me as I go ‘off topic’.
For those who have joined. Welcome.
I’m glad to be on the same team as you. I hope these notes will be of use, because I was like you just 7 years ago and have had the most amazing time being involved over the last few years. Like you want to see a Labour Government in 2020 because I believe we achieve more in power in one day than we do in a 100 days in opposition.
1 – Remember we are one party – You won’t agree with everything that everybody says all the time, and not everyone voted for Jeremy Corbyn (I didn’t but that doesn’t meant we can’t be friends!). But 99% of people I’ve met within the Party are members for the right reasons (and many of them are still exhausted from an General Election campaign followed by the Leadership election). Like you they have a passion for social justice and a fairer world. More unites us than divides us. So look for the good in everyone you meet.
2 – Get involved now – Don’t leave it until 2019. The media are looking for a story about how Labour is unelectable and the 2016 elections in London, Scotland and in councils across the country will be the first time they get to write that story. It’s easy to join interest groups within the Labour Party, known as Socialist Societies. They can be great ways to meet people who share your interest, but please get involved in your local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) as well.
Bring your skills, energy and experience as a campaigner and get stuck in. I can’t promise that it’ll always be easy, but CLPs are the basic organising unit for Labour and they need people like you in them. It’ll also help you get to know your community, its only through my involvement in Tooting Labour that I’ve had the pleasure to make friends from across my community.
3 – Knock on some doors – Firstly it’ll make you a better campaigner, but it’s also the most effective way we have as a party of getting out . The person who’s taught me the most in the Labour Party has a phrase that is so true ‘friends do things for friends’ and talking to people all year round is a way of doing this.
Sure we need to change the way we run our canvassing, engage in more of a conversations, find ways of empowering local people to take action so we’re doing it with people rather than for them, but disappearing from our communities won’t help people think that the Labour Party is a ‘friend’.
4 – Find the people who inspire you – Some of the people you’re going to meet in your local party aren’t going to be the people you’ll want to bound down to the pub with, but at meetings and events you’re bound to spot people who interest (and perhaps even inspire) you.
Get to know them, as my guess is that they’re the type of person who’ll want to change things, but perhaps because they’re now a Councillor or a CLP Officer they don’t have the time or energy to do that (I remember bounding into my local party in 2010 full of ideas but if I’m honest by 2015 I’d run out of some of that energy to get things done as the pressures of life and helping keeping my local party going got to me). Get to know them, ask them how you can help to change the culture of your CLP, make plans, share ideas, work together. These people want to pass the baton onto you.
5 – Stand for office – Within the next 12 months each CLP will hold elections for its officers – the volunteers who make things happen. Consider standing for office to bring your skills and ideas to help run your local party. If you want to really change things this can be a great place to do it, and if you are successful get to know others in the same position in other constituencies to share ideas.
6 – Change the ways meetings happen – There are some cliches about parts of Labour Party meetings which are fair, but you can help to change the way meetings are held.
Suggest changes to the venue to make it more welcoming, think about the set up – do you have to sit in rows, change the agenda – we used to have the speaker/policy discussion first followed by the business later – it’s amazing how many people don’t complain about the minutes of the last meeting when they want to get home at 9.30pm! Ensure that you find ways for more people, find speakers who’ll be interesting, helping to facilitate discussions in small groups, etc, etc.
Every time you walk away from a meeting because you found it dull those who are happy with the status quo win! Don’t just complain, go with suggestions to change things.
7 – Help outside of London – Historically local parties in London and a few other large cities have been much bigger than in many other areas of the country, so if you’re interested in helping the party win in 2016, go on a road trip to help the party in those marginal seats in the Midlands, Kent, and beyond we need to win in 2020 to form a government.
8 – Believe we can win everywhere – I grew up in Surrey Heath, its an area unlikely to elect a Labour MP anytime soon, but there is a ward that does have 2 Labour Councillors. If you’re in a safe Conservative seat ask around to understand if there are similar wards we used to be active in, and if there are think about getting involved. In the 1990s, the party ran a brilliant programme called ‘Operation Toehold’ which helped the party to start winning in seats that they eventually took in 1997. We need the same now, to show that Labour can win up and down the country.
9 – Get to know your organiser – As my local MP never tires of reminding our meetings, we’re a volunteer party, we don’t have lots of paid campaigners, and most Councillors and Officer do this alongside the ‘day job’, but many CLPs do employee an organiser. They’re often brilliant young campaigners, who are asked to work miracles week-in, week-out for little pay. Get to know your organiser, offer to share your campaigning advice, encourage them, and ask how you can help.
10 – Always have some loose change in your pocket – You’ll soon find that the Labour Party loves a good raffle. It’s because most local parties don’t have huge reserves, so every opportunity to raise a few pounds will help to fund the next newsletter or the organisers salary.
PS – Get in touch if I can help offer any advice. Together we’ll win again.