GDPR – what is it and why should campaigners care about it?

I’ll confess as a campaigner thinking about data and data regulation, isn’t one of the most exciting parts of my work.
But, the GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation to give it its full title, are important EU wide changes that will impact all organisations, including charities and campaigning organisations, who hold data about members of the public. And with the GDPR coming into effect in May 2018, it’s worth spending a few moments engaging understanding what it is and what it could mean.
Important disclaimer – the points below are drawn from reading a number of really helpful guides to the GDPR. I’m not a GDPR/data expert, so please check in with someone who is if you have specific questions. 
Here are 7 things that you should know;
1. It covers all communications – lots of recent regulations have focused on fundraising practices, most prominently through the ‘opt-out’ from the Fundraising Regulator, but the GDPR affects anything that involves processing an individual’s personal data, which includes who can receive your campaigning communications or information held by volunteer campaign groups.
2. It’s not a moment to panic – We already have lots of guidance and regulation about how data is processed and held, so many of the GDPR changes are an ‘evolution, not a revolution‘. Plus there is still lots of time to make sure that you’re compliant, and loads of people are providing helpful advice – my big recommended starting point is to look over the IoF report, which, although written for fundraisers has lots of practical advice, as does this NCVO guidance.
3. It is about clear consent – At the heart of the GDPR is being able to show that consent to use someone’s data has been ‘freely given, specific, informed and an unambiguous indication through a statement or clear affirmative action, such as actively ticking a box’. So it means that there has to be a clear ‘opt in’ to getting further communciations. The guidance suggests that pre-ticked boxes aren’t appropriate, and you’ll need to be able to show how the consent has been given if someone asks. You also need to have explicit consent if you plan to share the data with third-party providers.
4. Review the information you currently hold – ahead of the GDPR coming in you need to be reviewing what data you hold. So now is the time to make sure you’ve looked at all those extra spreadsheets and lists you might have with personal data in, and also make sure you’re aware of the changes that the GDPR brings to communicating with under 16s.
5. Power over information – The GDPR gives individuals more power over the information you hold on them, including being able to ask to have their personal data deleted from your database, being able to request what information you hold on someone through a ‘subject access request’ (there is a campaign tactic in this as well I think) or to be rectified if it’s not correct.  Again it’s thinking about what that means for the information you hold.
6. Work with others within your organisation – if your organisation has someone who is responsible for your database if you’re not already, it’s time to talk with them about what they’re doing and how you can help. If your data management approach is shared across different teams make sure you’re starting to talk together.
But either way, start to check in with others, and also make sure that you’re drawing your board or senior management. Although they might not do the work of implementing the guidance, the risk of not being compliant means they need to be aware, not least as the fines from the Information Commissioner for data breaches are much higher.
7. Share with others outside your organisation – Some of the most ways that organisation have found to grow and build campaigning lists will have to change under the GDPR, but that shouldn’t mean that growing your list, re-engaging lapsed supporters or supporting local groups isn’t possible. Organisations sharing approaches that are working and compliant will be really useful in ensuring that this is regulation that stifles campaigning.
Still looking for more on the GDPR? Then I’d recommend a read of GDPR: The essentials for fundraising organisations by the IoF and How to prepare for GDPR and data protection reform by NCVO. The official ICO guidance is here.

Inside a failing campaign – lessons from the Conservative 2017 election effort

Regular readers will know that I believe you can learn as much from an unsuccessful campaign and you can from a successful one.
Conservative Home editor, Mark Wallace, publishes a three part insider look at why the Conservative campaign failed at the General Election (part 1, part 2 and part 3). It’s a really great set of articles which gets under the bonnet of what did and didn’t work at an operational level – rather than too many post-elections which focus on the personality clashes between competing politicians. As an aside, I’d also recommend Mark’s writing on the referendum campaigns.
Although the articles are written with the intention of trying to change practice in the Conservative Party going forward, there are a number of lessons that I think can be applied whatever issue your working on. I’d strongly recommend that you read at least the first two articles, but here are the takeaway lessons that I’ve taken from the articles;
1 – You can’t fatten a pig on market day – the famous saying of Conservative election guru, Lynton Crosby, as a reminder that successful campaigns take months, sometimes years of meticulous planning. That it takes time to have the right staffing infrastructure in place, message testing done and materials ready to go. It really is a process you can’t rush.
2 – Get the right people on the bus – successful campaigns need the right people, with the right experience, making decisions at the heart of them. Wallace’s articles include numerous about the lack of clarity in decision making, too many people involved at the tops and the fact that many experienced staff had been let go after the 2015 election. You need to have the right skills and experience to win.
3 – Practice open loop listening – Conservative activists on the ground were repeatedly finding that the data selections that they were being given we’re missing often known Conservative voters, but despite feeding that upwards the data selection stayed the same. Those at the center of the campaigns were so sure that their models were correct the ignored what those on the ground were telling them, a classic example of closed loop learning.
4 – Data deteriorates fast – at the end of the 2015 General Election, the Conservatives had over 1.4 millions usable email addresses, but fast forward just 24 months, and the articles suggest that up to much of this data was out of date (as a reference between the 2010 election, when they had collected 500,000, and 2013 when they started planning for 2015, the list had shrunk to 300,000). A reminder that any campaigning organisation needs to be proactive at continuing to collect data.
5 – Distributed v’s Centralised – the campaign was heavily centralised, with a focus on a few core messages – remember ‘Thresea May’s Conservative Party’ and ‘Strong and Stable Leadership’. This meant there was little space in literature for candidates, who often have a much better sense of what messages would work in a community. That lead to big errors, for example literature featuring quotes from The Sun being sent to seats in and around Merseyside where their is a significant anti Sun feeling, but the same approach surely meant the Conservatives missed opportunities for picking up effective local campaign led by candidates.  As a contrast, Ben Pringle has some reflections on how localised campaigns helped the Labour Party
6 – If it ain’t broke don’t change it – Following the 2015 General Election, the Conservatives had found a number of effective approaches working both in individuals constituencies, and how to make the most of working with activists. But many of those approaches were thrown out for 2017. Sure innovation and changing approaches is important, but not at the cost of the basics that have been proven to work.
7 – Message amplification – Wallace reflects on the role that a range of third party organisations and individuals were active at amplifying the messages coming from the Labour Party – the micro-PAC phenomena I’d highlighted in this post – while the same didn’t happen for the Conservatives. A good reminder that the reach of your own social channels, however large, can only get you so far, and you need to build a wider network of support. See more on this over at Political Advertising.
8 – Don’t forget to say thank you – Imagine you’ve just put your life on hold for 8 weeks to run to be a candidate, you’d expect in the days or weeks after election night that you’d get a personal thank you for those who’ve lead the campaign. That didn’t happen for most Conservative candidates, they got a generic email, sent to thousands of other helpers, and that was about it. Not good for motivation!
If you’ve read the articles, what other lessons are you taking from them?

What stops us embracing an organising approach?

A colleague in some recent handover notes wrote ‘while we talk a good game on organizing, we’re still really focused on mobilising’, or something to that effect. It’s a very fair challenge and one that I’ve been reflecting on since reading it.
Like many in the campaigning sector, I’ve got really excited about the opportunities that an organising approach to campaigning brings – not least because I’ve been inspired by the campaigns that are using it and winning, but the day to day model of campaigning that I’m most accustomed to is a mobilising one, and getting from one approach to another isn’t easy.
So I was really excited to get a copy of Matt Price’s new book ‘Engagement Organizing – The Old and New Science of Winning Campaigns‘ at the start of the month. I’d met Matt at the MobLab Campaign Con in Spain last autumn, and read some of his online articles looking at campaigning approaches in Canada.
Matt is based in Vancouver, so the case studies are drawn from NGO, Union and Party Political campaigns that are north of the 49th parallel. We might look across the Atlantic to the US for most of our inspiration, but the reality is that the similarities in political systems in Canada mean we’ve probably got as much to learn for our campaigners, and it was really nice to read some case studies of campaigns and organisations I wasn’t so familiar with.
But what I really like about the book is that it’s a practical how-to guide, that looks to blend together how campaigners can draw on the best of the digital. Instead of trying to push a particular organising perspective, or suggest that everything can be won by smart digital campaigning, the book explores how to blend these approaches together for maximum impact.
Lots in Matt’s book resonates, especially the chapter on the Engagement Cycle, as opposed to the more traditional pyramid of engagement, and also the stories of the approach of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in using house meetings as an organising approach.
At the end of the book, Price offers some reflections and challenges that prevent NGOs from embracing this approach. They got me thinking back to the challenge from my colleague, and if they’re true in the campaigning that I’m doing;
1. The work is hard – Price writes about the challenge of ‘organizers entropy’ suggesting there isn’t always enough energy in the system to do useful work. That means that organisers need to keep bringing energy into a system, and that often a win can take energy away as those you’ve organised feel that their goal has been achieved. That resonated – moving to an organising approach means keeping moving away from the norm. It’s learning a new memory muscle, and that can be exhausting. As a campaigner, I need to keep bringing energy into the system, and to those pushing this work forward.
2. Resources – while the ‘snowflake model’ shows that you can build an approach at scale with volunteers, and digital tools have lowered the costs for campaigning, Price points out that even then organising at scale costs money. Something that can be especially challenging in organisation where you need to continue to demonstrate impact and value for money. Again this feels very relevant – how do I resource the slow but important work of taking an organising approach, when the mobilising approach can demonstrate ‘quick wins’.
3. We don’t review our ‘stop doing’ lists – rather than a ‘to do’ list, Price suggests we need to ask some hard questions of what we’re already doing, and ask if they’re the most important things we can be doing to ensure we’re effectively using time and resources. It’s a really neat idea, and Price has some helpful questions to ask to help do it;

4. Overcoming organisational inertia – Linked to the work is hard, is the challenges we can face within our organisations with systems, practices, and cultures that are hard to change. Some of that comes from the experiences, practices, and expectations of those who’ve risen to more senior roles who’s campaigning was shaped in a more broadcast era (I count myself in this), some of it is about the systems we use which aren’t built, while culture is often seen as the ‘way we’ve always done things’ and is hard to shift. I’m not sure I have any simple solutions to this, but it’s something I’d like to reflect upon in future posts.
5. We need to talk about power – One of my reflections from time spent with Hahrie Han last year is that an organising approach requires us to have more conversations about power – its something that came through again reading the book. Both about how we give it away, alongside control to those we’re seeking to empower, but also how we ensure we’re directing our campaigns to focus on where the power is. As Han says ‘movements build power not by selling people products they already want but instead by transforming what people think is possible’.
I’d recommend Matt’s book for anyone interested in how to embrace a more organising approach in their campaigning.

A Summer Reading List

Summer is here, so I’m going to take a brief break from blogging during August. I’ll be back in September, but if you’re looking for some great content to keep you thinking over the coming month, here are some recommendations of some ace books, blogs and podcasts to keep you busy.
Books I’ve enjoyed;
1. Hegemony How-to: A Roadmap for Radicals – Jonathan Smucker’s honest look at why movements too often fail, and what we can do to avoid being closed groups. One of those books you find yourself nodding at as you read + highlighting sections of it!
2. The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough – Alex Evans has written a really enjoyable read about the need for us to rediscover the power of stories and myths to inspire change.
3. Analytic Activism – David Karpf looks inside Move On, Avaaz and other online campaign platforms approach. It’s one of the most accessible academic books I’ve read, and full of useful learning. Good podcast with David here if you’ve not got time to read the book.
4. Radical Candor – I took a while to get into this, but have been recommending Kim Scott’s book on how to give and receive feedback as a manager, but found it really helpful for anyone managing a team.
5. The Talent Lab: The secret to finding, creating and sustaining success – a really interesting look into the drivers behind the success of the GB Olympic team. As I suggested in my post on what we can learn from Chris Froome there are lots of lessons for campaigners to reflect upon from winners.
Books I’ve had recommended to me which I’ll be reading in the coming months;
1. This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark + Paul Engler
2. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit
3. How to Resist by Matthew Bolton
4. Carpe Diem Regained by Roman Krznaric
5. Get Up! Stand Up!: Personal journeys towards social justice by Mark Heywood
6. No is Not Enough by Naomi Klein
Some long reads I’d recommend;
1. Barack Obama on how to bring about change.
2. Stop Raising Awareness Already
3. Protest and persist: why giving up hope is not an option
If you’re not the read type then here are some ace podcasts to add to this list;
1. Advocacy Iceberg
2. Candidate Confidential
3. Freakonomics Radio
And if you’re able to get to London, then here is an exhibition to check out;
1. People Power: Fighting for Peace at the Imperial War Museum
Finally, you need to add the following blogs to your reading list;
1. Analytical Activism by Alice Fuller
2. The Good Campaigner by Emily Armistead
3. The Social Change Agency
4. Jim Coe

What campaigners can learn from Chris Froome

I’ve been fascinated by politics and campaigns from a young age, but my parent have evidence that I’ve been making Tour de France scrapbooks to follow the annual cycling race since I was 10!
So as Chris Froome wins his 4th Tour de France, I’ve been thinking a little about what lessons campaigners can draw from cycling, and in particular Team Sky (who’ve won 5 of the last 6 races) when it comes to strategy, approach and execution.
1 – Be totally focused on winning – Team Sky come to the Tour de France with one clear objective each year – to win the race. Throughout the 3 weeks that the race moves around France, there are plenty of other sub-objectives to distract – you can win stages, win other jerseys, and more. But Team Sky don’t get distracted by them – they just care about getting their leader across the line in Paris at the end of the race. It’s a ruthless focus on a single goal.
2 – Adjust your plans daily – The old adage that ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’ is true in the Tour. There are so many factors the can’t be immediately planned for or predicted – the weather, someone on the team might be injured and not able to race or a mechanical problem.  Anticipating what might happen, and then adjusting has been evident throughout the race, when Froome got a puncture, the team member riding alongside him was ready to sacrifice his wheel, while others were ready to pace him back to the front. And because the team have a clear objective, they know what the implications of adjusting the plans are.
3 – Poor planning leads to poor performance – Let me take you to Rodez and the end of stage 14. Chris Froome has lost the Yellow Jersey (worn by the leader of the race) to Italian Fabio Aru, but his team have spotted that the finishing line is uphill and could allow Froome to get some time back on Aru. So the team ride the whole day with the objective of getting Froome to the foot of the climb at the front of the field. Aru’s team don’t and he loses the jersey.
Other examples abound, from having support staff down the narrow roads of the French countryside to give out bottles and musettes (the bags with the cyclist food) rather than rely on going back to the support cars, to exploiting the changing direction of the wind on stage 16 to break the field into a smaller group, to having mechanics double-check everything on the final Time Trial stage because Froome couldn’t afford a mechanical mistake. Team Sky don’t let anything get past them when it comes to being brilliantly prepared. It’s a good reminder for campaigners to apply the same approach.
4- Marginal Gains – Team Sky are built on the concept of marginal gains – the idea that you should be looking for ‘the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do’. It’s about being data driven and question everything + challenge existing assumptions. Earlier this year I read ‘The Talent Lab‘ which looks at the approach of the British Olympic team, which shares many of the same approaches as Team Sky.
When members of British Cycling, who work closely with Team Sky, identified that they could improve the power output of there cyclists by making small adjustments to the saddle angles they lobbied for the rules to be changed. Nothing is left to chance when it comes to the approach they’re taking, but perhaps more importantly no question or assumption is a dumb one to asks. For campaigners I think it’s a reminder to look for improvement in every area, but also have a really questioning mindset.
5 – It’s a team effort – Sure it was Chris Froome standing on the top step of the podium in Paris, but he’ll be the first to tell you that he couldn’t have achieved it without the 8 other members of his team. Everyone in the team has a clear role to play across the range and through each stage. Some to support on the flat, some when the race goes up hill. In some way cycling is the ultimate team sport. It reminds me of this list of roles needed in an advocacy movement. You often need all of those roles to be successful.

Building Coalition – learning from the best

When it comes to building brilliant coalitions that achieve change, the team at Crisis Action are some of the best in campaigning sector at doing just that. And to benefit all of us, they’ve shared the approach and model they use in Creative Coalitions – A Handbook for Change.
I’m passionate about the importance of coalition campaigning, and it’s something I’ve written about before on the blog, but listening to Nick Martlew, author of the guide and UK Director of Crisis Action speak when he came to the Save the Children office a few weeks ago, I was struck that there are some characteristics and approaches that epitomise highly effective coalition builders that we can all learn from.
1. Strive for excellence – coalitions can often fall into a ‘lowest common denominator’ approach, where you start out by considering what are the asks that everyone can agree on, rather than what is needed to deliver change. For Crisis Action that’s the wrong approach, they start by asking what’s the outcome they are looking to achieve and then ask who they need to involve to make that happen. Work to build together a critical mass of individuals or organisations who have a shared view of how a change will happen.
2. Thrive on feedback – you can only improve if you are actively asking others if what you’re doing is or isn’t working. See feedback as a ‘gift’ and actively seek it out from those you’re working with. It might not always be comfortable received but it invaluable about making you more effective. Be generous is sharing it with others.
3. Keep ‘other’ people in the game – if you’re building a coalition that isn’t going to involve everyone that doesn’t mean you have to ignore them or cut them out. Keep others informed of what’s happening, draw on the insight and knowledge they have – you never know when their insight or connections might come in useful later down the line. Share the insight you have.
4. Always talent spot – keep asking does the tactic your delivering do enough to solve the problem. If it does bring together the best people that can help to deliver that. Crisis Action always asks who should be on the team – who are the talented individuals that they need to be seeking out to get involved.
5. Exceptional networkers – be active at building out networks beyond your usual suspects. Spend time asking them for their opinions – share your ideas for plans and tactics with them and get them to give you an honest assessment of it the tactic is likely to bring about the change you’re looking to achieve. Ask contacts in your networks for ideas of what they think is likely to make the difference.
6. Be Servant Leaders – deploy ego wisely, remember that the cause or the goal matters more  than an individuals profile. But that doesn’t mean being un-directed, Crisis Action encourages the principle of ‘democracy of ideas but a dictatorship of delivery’ ensuring leaders are effectively and rapidly bringing the best ideas to life, and delivery is kept on track.
7. Risk Takers – not in a cavalier or reckless way but they’re calculated gamblers who’ve asked around for evidence of what is likely to have the biggest impact, asking informed targets directly what would happen if they attempted specific approach, and then make the calculation about if it’s an opportunity that worth pursuing. That means it’s as important to learn from failure when things don’t work out as it is from success.
8. Seek efficiency – working in coalition often with high costs (I’ve written about what economics can teach us about working coalition). Great coalition builders seek to actively lower the transaction costs of getting involved. They look to find efficiencies that help to keep others involved.
9. Compulsive chroniclers – Write down everything that happens that suggests you’re having an impact – don’t just leave it to the evaluations. Crisis Action have an ‘evidence of change‘ database which helps to capture all the seemingly small changes that those involved in the coalition are seeing which often add up to the big impact.
For those that want to learn more about the report here is a useful summary, and Jim Coe (as always) has done a fascinating podcast with Nick.

Up all night – questions about the direction of campaigning

Occasionally I find myself wide awake in the middle of the night (tip here – if you ever find yourself in the same situation put on Radio 5, you’ll get to experience Up All Night, one of the best shows on the radio) and I find it’s (sometimes) the time to consider some the big questions about campaigning.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a few events where I’ve been able to wrestle with some of the big questions that Campaigners are facing into. It kicked off  at a discussion as part of the Sheila McKenchnie Foundation Social Change Project, then I got to hang out with some of the team at The Good Lab, before finishing up at CharityComms post-election event for campaigns leaders.
So lots of good conversations, but what are the big questions about campaigning that are keeping me awake at night? Here are a few I’d suggest from listening to conversations in the last few weeks;
1. What’s the future of digital campaigning? We’ve all dived in wholeheartedly to embrace the opportunities that digital campaigning provides to win change and increase our supporter base – and seen many successes as a result, but as organisations find it harder to mobilise the numbers needed to win change, while acquiring new supporters is proving harder to do for many – impacted I think by the wider conversation about charity preferences.  So if the future isn’t in list growth and petition inflation is starting to fatigue many of our targets, then what is the future approach? How do we harness a digital first approach to ensure we have real impact. How do we embrace the way that digital has transformed and democratised campaigning for so many?
2. What does true collaboration look like? We all know that unusual coalitions secure change, and many of us are actively working with others in our campaigns. But given the scale of the challenges that we face, and the limited resources that we have, do we need to consider deeper forms of collaboration? That could be around building shared tools, or finding shared narratives that we can all use beyond single issues. But beyond that what does collaboration look? What’s the role for bigger and more well resourced campaigning organisations to support individuals and movements that are being established?
3. Do we even know the edge of our bubbles? We are increasingly more data driver in our campaigning. We segment based on what you’ve done previously and we aim to target individuals we believe are most likely to take, but are there limited to being data driven, and does it just keep us in our bubble without realising what’s happening outside it. How do we rediscover the skills of listening and adapting to what the external world is telling us. Everyone marveled, for a time, at what Kony 2012 achieved, but that was because they’d sharpened their message by getting out at the coal face and giving hundreds of talks to their target audience of young people.
4. Do we worry enough about our opponents? It’s perhaps a result of how much campaigning has been professionalised, but how munch time are we actually thinking and anticipating our opponents? If the root of the word campaigning comes from the military concept of ‘taking the field’ – as troops moved from the safety of a town or fort into a field for battle – do we need to grow more confident about defining and naming our opposition? Is it OK to put no limits on who is on ‘our side’ and see campaigning as simply a skill like IT programming, or do we need to be clearer on calling out who our opponents are? In politics, opposition research is a key part of any professional operation, but while we devote resources to define our power mapping, should we do more to understand what making our opponents tick?
5. Are charities the best vehicles to deliver social change? I was struck by a comment at one of the sessions about how we need to do more to create organisations that are able to bring about change. Do our structures and approaches actually prevent us for responding in the ways that we need to?
As Naveed from Results observes ‘Recent mobilisations channelling public concern have been far more organic; not leaderless or disorganised, but working perfectly well without a top-down structure. Successful movements allow people to do their own thing, based on a central idea or goal that fires their imagination, but doesn’t tell them what to do. Look at the way people came together around the Manchester terrorist attack, the Women’s Marches, Black Lives Matter, or the Refugees Welcome movement. Only in the latter have NGOs played any kind of a role, and it seems that we haven’t yet properly woken up to the reality of how people organise around causes today.
And if we do have a role to play, and I think we do, how do we adapt to respond to the times we’re in and the approaches we’re finding are successful.
6. Where does change happen in the new political context? If we’re likely to see a period of political uncertainty, with a Parliament focused almost exclusively on Brexit, and all of the parties having their own internal challenges, how do we adapt as campaigners? Is now the time to invest in long-term attitudinal work that needs to be undertaken, ensuring support among politically key groups. In Parliament, should we continue to look to build support from across parties, or utilise the tiny majority that the Government has to play parties off against each other?
Just a few questions I’m grappling with – what are the questions about campaigning that are keeping you awake?

'Mistakes, I've made a few'

‘Mistakes, I’ve made a few’ so goes the song. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can learn from mistakes and failure since the start of the year. Much of it was prompted by reading Matthew Syed’s Black Box Thinking. In it, he writes

‘a closed loop is where failure doesn’t lead to progress because information on errors and weaknesses is misinterpreted or ignored; an open loop does lead to progress because the feedback is rationally acted upon’

The book explores why some industries, like airlines, are good at practising open loop learning, while others, like the medical profession, less so – see here for the obligatory Ted Talk to accompany the book.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I can get better at learning ‘open loop lessons’ in my work. Many of the campaigning organisations that I admire at the moment talk about how they have a culture of testing, and a high tolerance for failure, so what can I do to encourage that where I’m working?
It was something I challenged others at ECF to do (and it’s something I’ve blogged about before), so informed by a Chatham House rules session at ECF back in April, and my own reflections on when I’ve not got things right, here are a few reflections on how projects that I’ve been involved in don’t always work out the way they should.
1. The internal excitement bubble – sure they say in a brainstorm that ‘no idea is a bad idea’ but if you’re going to invest significant resources in taking an idea to market, it can pay to do some insight work first. To check that when you take your idea out of your organisational bubble it still a great idea.  I remember the campaign I was involved in when we were sure people would want to stick around and ‘make a weekend’ of the march, so we invested in a range of events. Hardly anyone came along. Something we would have found out if we’d asked a few people about their plans. Great idea in our bubble, less so outside of it!
2. Going to scale too quickly – sometimes good ideas need to take time to grow, you need to start small to learn what’s really going to work and what’s not going to work before you go to scale. I know that I’ve fallen into the trap of believing that we can quickly grow a scheme or idea, but in the attempt lose a huge amount of the goodwill you need for a project to succeed. I can vividly recall one volunteer project when we came up with an elaborate plan involving, but soon found it wasn’t working. A quick pilot of a few months would have easily helped us to iron out the kinks in it, but instead, we squandered a huge amount of goodwill.
3. Less failing, more fizzling out – Perhaps this shouldn’t be talked about in a post on failure, because much of our focus on the failure of a project or idea to get off the ground. But the truth can be that sometimes not knowing when to end something is as much a failure as not getting something started. I can think of a number of projects that we should have closed down rather than just keeping them going with just enough resources to stay afloat but not enough to have the real impact they should.
4. The resource gap – I know I’m guilty of this, especially as a manager where it always feels like you’ve got to make a trade-off between the amount that you can resource a project. But not backing a project with the resource it needs, or worse still ignoring what experienced colleagues are saying about the resourcing needs, in the hope that by sheer determination you can get it over the line.
5. Who wants a project to succeed? – Successful projects need clear owners. I’ve seen many projects squander because they lack someone who feels responsible for delivering. This is especially easy in a big organisation where. Since starting in my new role at Save the Children I’ve really found using a R.A.C.I. to be a useful tool. They help to ensure everyone is clear on who is responsible (the person who is going to make it happen) and accountable (the person who needs to be held to account if doesn’t happen). How I’d wish been introduced to that earlier in my career.
6. A Fresh Pair of Eyes – We’ve all done it, sent an email out with a terrible typo in the subject line, forgotten to add the link in or accidentally over promoted someone in an email. Lots of the mistakes I make are because I’m too close to the topic and thus blinkered to the details. A fresh pair of eyes is what’s needed. But as Jim Coe writes in this post on why we missed the election outcome, the concept could be used more widely, by making sure that we’re involving a wide range of perspectives and approaches, to challenge what might be in front of us but we can’t see because we’re blinded by certainty.
I’m certainly on a journey on all of this, so I’d love any reflections that readers have about how as campaigners we can get better at open loop learning.

After the results – a few election thoughts for campaigners

I’m still in that post-election daze, trying to catch up with sleep and making sense of what happened on Thursday. There are already acres and acres of writing about what we can make of the result, given that few saw it coming, so I’m just going to add a few reflections for campaigners as we look at what happened and look ahead.
1. Jeremy Corbyn can really, really mobilise people – I was running a Campaign Centre in Tooting on Thursday. Normally for a General Election, you’d expect a few hundred people coming through to help get out the vote. Thursday was something else. We had close to a 1,000 people come down and join us.
Whatever you thought of Jeremy Corbyn before Thursday, his ability to mobilise and energise people to get involved is phenomenal. Most of those helping out in marginal seats hadn’t ever got involved in a political party before. Lots of lessons for campaigners looking to mobilise to be learnt, but my hunch is that he’s embodied much of what’s been written about networked campaigns – a central strategic goal, but a huge amount of autonomy beyond that to allow individuals to express that in different ways.
2. Celebrate that turnout amongst young people is up – While I have a nagging concern that it might not be sustained – so I hope someone is thinking about the turnout operation for the next election – it something to celebrate. For campaigners, it’s time to identify how your issues poll with young people. This slide from a presentation I saw in Canada (which experienced a similar bump in youth turnout when Justin Trudeau was elected) a few weeks ago shows how the priorities of millennial are very different.


The other good news about the increase in turnout is that, as this Economist article suggests ‘one of the strongest determinants of a person’s likelihood to vote is whether they voted in the previous election‘ so that bodes well for future elections.
3. Targetted is the new broadcast – While been lots written about the Conservative’s use of Facebook targeting at the election, much less has been written about how Labour used social media. This Guardian article suggest Jeremy Corbyn also benefited massively from lots of content that was shared across the internet, again often outside of the view of commentators and many others who weren’t the target for it – I didn’t see any because I’m clearly getting old. A reflection for me that while as campaigner we can often obsess about getting mainstream media coverage, lots of campaigns can now be hugely successful by reaching the right audiences through social media.
4. Welcoming new players to electoral politics – I wrote in my pre-election piece about the more active role campaigning groups like 38 Degrees was planning to play. I don’t think these can be underestimated in the final results. For example in one of the seats that 38 Degrees focused on turning out the vote, they saw an increase of 6.6% in Hove – that’s well above the 2.3% increase in turnout across the country.
Avaaz is reporting that in focusing on 50 key constituencies it saw them ‘flood them with 1.9 million Facebook ads, sending 3 million emails with voting information, reaching 737,000 people, 48% of women voters on Facebook, and making sure young people turned out to vote. Finally, Avaazers SMSed 50,000 people on polling day’. 
Beyond that, the existence of organisations like More United who were able to quickly provide funding to pro-Remain candidates can’t be underestimated. Unexpected elections cost money and those donations would have been invaluable. Zoe Williams reflects more on the role of these groups here.
5. To influence you must build local power – I’ve written before about why marches aren’t going to stop Brexit. Given the new political arithmetic, I’d argue even more strongly that those who want to see a ‘soft’ Brexit need to look to build power in the places where they can have the most impact – but it’s the same for all topics.
Right now over 50 MPs sit on majorities of 2,000 or less, so for those concerned about their issues need to demonstrate pressure in the right places. With such a small overall majority, just a few dissenting voices from the Government benches and you could have a huge amount of leverage, but that needs local pressure to make it happen.
6. The Lobbying Act needs to change – if I’m correct, given the fact a Hung Parliament could mean an election at any time, we could be living in a state of a perpetual Lobbying Act, as the rules regulate any activity that happens 12 months before an election could be seen as regulated activity. That doesn’t seem like a sustainable situation, where campaigning charities are going to have to influence, especially when the Parliamentary maths means that smart campaigning is going to have to make the most of the different parties positions.
7. Don’t assume anything and prepare now for the next election – It’s easy with hindsight to suggest it would have been sensible to plan for a Hung Parliament, but as campaigners sit down to think about the possible scenarios for the next election, if we’ve learnt anything from the last few years is the importance of gaming out all possibilities from a Labour or Conservative majority, through to another Hung Parliament.

Before the results – some observations from the 2017 General Election

I love elections.
While I might have complained when I first heard that Theresa May was taking the country to the polls, it wasn’t long before I found myself getting stuck in campaigning in my local community, and implementing our (hastily assembled) election plans at work.
Who knows what will happen on Thursday evening, but before the results come I wanted to highlight a few ‘winners’ from the election, based on the campaigns that I’ve noticed.
1. The rise of the MicroPACs – BBC News has this great article on the rise of individuals who’ve used Facebook and other social media platforms to get their campaign messages out, what they’re dubbing MicroPACs – after the Political Action Committees that pour huge amounts of money into campaigns in the US. While much of the campaign news has focused on the huge ad spends of the Conservative Party on Facebook advertising, learning from what Trump did in the US which is summarised well here.It’s fascinating to see how individuals with some expertise of how to do effective targeting, and effective messages can get them out in front of tens of thousands of people.
Certainly a lesson to be learnt here for all campaigning organisations about how giving away some control of your message can lead to creative execution of ideas. Having said that the work that the team behind Who Targets Me has been doing is also fascinating work tracking the adverts that the parties are pushing – this article gives a small snapshot in the breadth of messaging targeting.
2. 38 Degrees and Avaaz dive right in – Unlike 2015 when it felt that both of the big online platforms seemed to be less involved, both Avaaz and 38 Degrees have been really active in this election. Perhaps been learning from colleagues at Get Up in Australia who’ve built themselves in formidable election campaigning machine.
While 38 Degrees have been focusing on voter turnout in two marginal seats (Hove and Bath) looking to encourage civic participation rather than pushing a specific party, as well as organising a hustings. Avaaz have been much more active at pushing supporters to join activities of progressive parties, and supporting the work of the Progressive Alliance (see below).

It’s also been interesting to see a few other initiatives emerge during the election, including More United, which was is campaigning for pro-Remain candidates, and Campaign Together, which has been driven by some campaigners involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign. I’m sure post-election there will be time for those involved in some of these initiatives to share the stories of what worked and didn’t work, hopefully providing some useful lessons for campaigners on new models of organising.
3. Go local – I’ve long been impressed by the School Cuts campaign run by the NUT but they seemed to have kicked it up another level this election. The website has been updated to show the impact of proposed party manifestos from each party, coordinate local groups – I’ve seen an increasingly active local campaign in Tooting where I live, and some cracking social content which has clearly tapped into parents concerns. Some really useful lessons in this for all campaigners, including about the importance of providing local information if you can to help make your campaign as tangible as possible to people.
4. The Lobbying Act – despite renewed assurances from NCVO and even the Electoral Commission that charities can campaign, the act seems to have had the anticipated ‘chilling effect’ on many charities (see here as a good example of concerns). Perhaps it was the short notice of the campaign that meant unlike 2015 organisations didn’t have time to prepare, but the act has once again appeared to have an impact on the way that many charities have engaged in the election. Following the election, campaigners need to look again at how we can get the Act amended to remove any ambiguity about charities campaigning during elections.
5. Aid Campaigners – so I’m biased, and can’t share everything that happened, but the first few days of the election saw a huge amount of focus on if the Prime Minister would commit to maintaining the 0.7% aid target. It was a heavy lift, but within a few days we’d seen all parties commit to the target. It happened through a combination of bringing smart insider engagement with key influences together with targeted public pressure demonstrating the depth of support for the issue, and developing messaging we felt would resonate beyond our traditional supporters (see #BiggerBritain). It was lesson for me of the importance of how all the aspects of advocacy can complement each other, and how to use different tactics to drive the issue across news cycles. I’ll write more in due course!
And finally, NCVO has also come up with a neat list of 10 great charity campaigns this election – it’s full of more good ideas of how charities can make the most of an election.