Category Archive For "learning"
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. …
What can campaigners learn from start-ups?
I’ve finally got around to reading ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Reis. It’s one of those books that has come across my radar from time to time, and I ended up buying it after an impromptu book buying visit to my nearby book shop. I can’t say I found it the easiest book to read …
5 campaigns that I’ve learnt from in 2018…
Today’s my last day in the office, and I can’t wait for the Christmas break to come, but as another year of campaigning comes to an end I wanted to add to some of the great blogs already written – see this from Pete Moorey on some campaigns from the UK, and this masterpiece from …
Lessons in doing campaign strategy
We’ve just finished a process to sharpen some of our campaign strategies at work – so it’s got me thinking about some of the lessons that I’ve learned about what makes a good advocacy strategy process. There are lots of articles written about what needs to go into a good campaign strategy and the approaches …
What my friend Sam taught me…
My friend and former Tearfund colleague, Sam Barker passed away last month, after a short but brave battle with bowel cancer. You can read more about Sam in this obituary here. For the last few weeks, and at his funeral last Friday, I’ve been carrying around with many many thoughts about Sam; about what he …
A summer reading list for campaigners…
I set myself a challenge at the start of the year to read a book a week – and it means I’ve got a few recommendations for those looking for a good campaigning read as they head off on holiday. If you’re looking to dive into the lessons from successful movements of the past – …
Could ‘unsafe thinking’ help us come up with better campaign approaches?
I’m reading a lot at the moment – so forgive me if the next few posts are based on thoughts solely derived from the last book I’ve read. I’ve just finished Jonah Sachs ‘Unsafe Thinking’. If you recognise the name, Sachs is the author of Winning the Story Wars, which is a brilliant read on using …
What will campaigning be like in 2040?
In 2010, NCVO produced a useful resource asking what campaigning might look like in 2015, it’s worth a read as it accurately predicts some of the trends that we’re seeing today. I’m also a big fan of this resource from Mobilisation Lab looking at some of the trends that campaigners will face in 2018. But …
Re-energise your campaign – lesson from #BondConf session
I was really fortunate today to host a panel at the Bond Conference on how to ‘re-energise your campaign’. It was a great hour-long discussion between four inspiring campaigners, who are all leading really important campaigns with some new and different approaches. It was one of those hours where I was trying to keep time, …
mrtombaker
Head of Mobilisation at Save the Children, was Head of Campaigns at Bond, co-founder Campaign Bootcamp, blog about campaigning because I'm passionate about seeing more campaigns win, election geek (and former Labour Party activist), interested in monitoring and evaluation, blog is all my own views. Prone to bad spelling!