Category: Uncategorized

With the rise of protests in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in the US, it’s been interesting to see the emergence of articles looking at the findings of academic studies into protest movements and campaigning. Because they’re not tied to a single issue, they’re able to step back and look at the trends and evidence of what works.
Here are a few key lessons from the evidence that might be useful in the campaigns that you’re running – some of them are more obvious that others!
1. The size of your protest matters, but so does who is involved – Erica Chenoweth has found that active and sustained participation by 3.5% of a population is often enough, but Chenoweth writes that her research finds that ‘An increase in the number and diversity of participants may signal the movement’s potential to succeed. This is particularly true if people who are not ordinarily activists begin to participate — and if various classes, ethnicities, ages, genders, geographies and other social categories are represented’.

2.  Make your protest appeal to others – Researcher Robb Willer looked at what happened when three different types of protesters—animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump—used either moderate or extreme protest tactics, and found ‘the reason the extreme protesters were dissuasive is that less-radical bystanders couldn’t identify with them’. So if you want to grow your movement, think about how others view your tactics.
3. Be innovative and flexible – Academics write that those campaigns the adopt a “repertoire of contention” (or use a range of different types of strategies to you and me) are more likely to succeed. The work of Kurt Schlock suggests that movements that adopt a range of approaches, including a focus on centralised efforts like demonstrations and dispersed methods – are more likely to be successful. So if you over-rely on a single method, you’re less likely to win in the end.
4. Academics can’t decide on the best form of organisation – Academics agree that internal cohesion and collective vision are needed to success and resilience, but also warn against concentrating leadership into a single figurehead.
5. People will get involved for surprising reasons – I’ve mentioned the work of Zaid Munson before, but his research on the pro-life movement in the US is a reminder that people often get involved in movements without having particularly strong ideological commitments to them. Munson found that up to half of those who got involved in pro-life activism were indifferent to the issue when they first got involved.
6. Prepare for the day after the protest – The work of Madestam et al looking at the impact of the initial Tea Party protests in 2009 found that large protests were most effective at shaping ongoing policy when they could continue to demonstrate the concerns of those who attended the initial protest to decision makers.
7. All movements need to overcome the ‘coordination problem’ – People only want to show up to a protest when they know others will participate. Social media activity dramatically speeds up coordination — and helps actions to snowball much quicker than in the past, but you still need to convince enough others that they should attend!

Back in 2014, at the start of my time at Bond I wrote this post on the 4 trends driving campaigns. I was trying to reflect on the big themes that I anticipated would shape campaigning for the networks members (and beyond) in the coming years.
I finished at Bond last week, as I’m moving on to lead the Mobilisation Team at Save the Children UK – I can’t wait to get started working with the team to continue to build a movement to speak out vital issues like child refugees, Yemen and early years education in the UK.
(It’ll also mean that I’ll be putting a pause of blogging until after Christmas so I can focus my energies of getting settled into my new role – but that’s the housekeeping notices out of the way!)
But as I finish my time at Bond after 2+ years, I’ve been reflecting back on those trends – I think they’re all still relevant for campaigning organisations to grapple with – but I’ve also been struck that there are some core questions that campaigns teams need to be discussing.
They’re drawn from some of the articles and reports I’ve been reading, and conversations I’ve been fortunate to have with campaign leaders from the UK and beyond over the last few months.
1. Is our approach Managerial or Networked?
Managerial campaigns are more centralised and controlled. With that can come the opportunities to deliver big ‘set piece’ moment, but managerial campaigns can struggle to respond with the agility that can be expected in the age of instant communications.
Networked campaigns are distributed – they haven’t necessarily given away all control, for example overall political strategy might be held at the centre, but much decision making is pushed downwards, and their is autonomy to decide what is most appropriate at a local level.
Much of my thinking of this is drawn from the Networked Change report I wrote about here.
2. Are we focusing on Mobilising or Organising?
Mobilising is building membership and focusing on maximising the number of actions that can be taken. It can be an effective at demonstrating breadth of support, but can lead to a constant need to invest in recruiting.
Organising is about focusing on building power and leadership with communities. Demonstrating depth of support and building leaders who can engage others.
Much of my thinking here is drawn from the work of Hahrie Han who I help to host when she visited London in March – helpfully summarised by Jim Coe here.
3. Do we have Convening Power or Organising Power?
Convening power is the ability to leverage identity and networks to bring leaders together- for example the ability to get lots of senior leaders to sign onto a letter or a range of organisation to ‘back’ your campaign.
Mobilising power is being able to draw on a base of supporters to back your policy demands and willing to engage in conflict with organised opposition – the ability to bring people out to actively support your issue.
My thinking on this is drawn from a fascinating set of essays on New Models of Change from a US based think-tank New America. This case study on the involvement of US evangelicals in pushing climate legislation is a perfect example of what happens if you only have convening power.
4. Are we just harnessing ‘Stop Energy’ or ‘Go Energy’? 
Stop Energy is the ability to use tools to channel ‘moment-specific opposition, expressions of dissent, reaction’ on a topic or issue. It’s something lots of campaigns are effective at doing, you see it in emails asking you to ‘sign the petition to stop this event happening’ for example.
Go Energy is the ability to use tools to help people work towards a ‘strategic action over time’ to help people to organise towards a particular goal or outcome.
My thinking on this was prompted by this essay from Kathryn Perera, which draws on the work of Micah Sifry.
5. Do we lead with facts or stories? 
Sharing facts is what many campaigns are comfortable with doing, but we all know that they’re rarely the thing that effectively shifts peoples opinions.  As this post on Grammar Schools reminds us we can have all the evidence proving that they increase inequality but that doesn’t appear to shift public opinion.
Stories and narratives can be powerful at motivating ongoing action, especially when they place those at the grassroots at the centre of the action, as Jonah Sachs says making them the heroes of what’s happening.
My thinking on this has been provoked by reflecting on the different approaches of the Remain and Leave campaigns during the Brexit vote. 
6. Are we recognising we are interconnected to other issues? 
Being interconnected recognises that we are campaigning in a complex environment, acknowledging and providing solidarity with that the issues you’re working on are linked to other causes.
My thinking of this was prompted by the findings of Networked Change and seeing how many environmental organisations have been actively expressing solidarity with those campaigning for racial justice, but with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump it seems even more important than before.

Last night I stood down as Vice Chair – Campaigns for Tooting Labour Party, don’t worry this isn’t a long post about why Labour lost, but for the last five years I’ve been juggling being a campaigner by day, and a volunteer campaigner by night (and weekend!).
Some have suggested that charity workers shouldn’t be active members of political parties. It’s not a position that I agree with.
I think we want to see campaigners involved in a range of parties (as they already are), but begin involved in the Labour Party have made me a much better campaigner.
Here is how. It’s reminded me that;
1 – Most of the public really aren’t interested – Earlier in the year, I saw a stat from Jim Messina, the US election campaign, saying that between November and Election Day the average member of the UK public would spend just 104 minutes thinking about the election. I’m not sure of the accuracy of the statistic, but spend the weekend knocking on a few doors and you’ll know what he means. Most people aren’t that interested. I’ve often thought about how the message of my daytime campaigning will play on the doorsteps of floating voters in Tooting. How do I explain my issue in the snatched conversation before they’ll politely ask if they can get on with the rest of their day!
2 – All politics is local – It’s a cliche, but it’s true. Ask people what the issues or concerns are and they’ll probably tell you about the flytipping down the street or the like. Run a campaign to save a local pub, or make your road 20mph and it’ll be hit. If you’re writing camping literature you want to know what the impact is on the constituency or better still the ward. Campaigners who can provide that level of detail are setting themselves up for success (take for example this smart campaign from Shelter that does that).
3 – See politics up close – I’ve not worked for an MP, so being involved in a political party has provided me with an insight about the multiple demands on a MP or Councillor. How different groups and organisations can position themselves effectively to demonstrate support. How politics at all levels is about trade-offs and being much clear who your opponents are than is often the case in international development campaigning. It’s given me a living template for my power analysis.
4 – Volunteers matter – Obvious perhaps, but a local political parties like many campaigns rely on the dedication and commitment of an army of volunteers. Volunteers who need to be motivated, listened to, thanked, encouraged and inspired. Make it easy and enjoyable, they’ll come back and get more involved. You can never invest enough in your grassroots.
5 – Test and trial – when it comes to winning elections every vote matters, so I’ve spent hours trying to engage in the huge body of research and evidence about how to do that better. From how to increase turnout from irregular voters to targeting your messaging someone has done a study on it. I’ve written before (here and here) about how campaigners should look to elections campaigns for example of the best practice that often end up being used in our campaigning. The US presidential election is the pre-eminent example of this, but lots of good ideas come out of the UK General Election as well. Campaigners would do well to read the articles on Labour List, Conservative Home and elsewhere about worked and didn’t work ahead of 7th May.
6 – You need to do offline and online together – like many campaigns, political parties have become enthralled by the power of social media to engage voters and volunteers. It’s lead to some awesome content and ideas, but the evidences suggests its still only effective when combined with an effective ground game. The individuals who are prepared to knock on doors or organise in their communities. Campaigns that combine the two together do the best.
7 – Change can happen – Working in international development is my passion, but change can sometimes feels like it can take a long time to come, and the impact even longer (and further away), so being involved in local politics has helped to keep my thirst for change high.