Planning a successful campaign

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“Vision without action is only dreaming, action without vision is only passing time, but vision with action can change the world.”  - Nelson Mandela

The importance of planning your campaign

Effective campaigning means using the minimum amount of effort to achieve the maximum impact. Many campaigners like to follow their gut instincts and seize opportunities as they arise - leading to a danger of doing a lot of things but without getting anywhere.  Planning is critical to making your campaign focused and effective.  Consider the following in your campaigning:

• external factors play a significant role in campaigns. Try to predict how the external environment or the area you are working in might change, for example, what kind of response might your campaign get? Do you understand the political climate in which you are campaigning? Will the current economic conditions affect your campaign?
• resources can be organised in many different ways and the people you are seeking to change can be influenced in many different ways. Analysis will help you think through some of the best routes to take and make an informed judgement.
• how can you best reach your end goal? What changes do you need to achieve along the way? For example, to get the change you want, will you need to have one meeting with officials or to have 1,000 people protesting outside the ministry? Keep the change you want to create forefront in your mind, as you think about what methods you could use. 

All of these factors should be addressed in the early stages of campaign planning. Your campaign may not succeed or have the impact you want if you haven’t given sufficient thought to planning what you are going to do.

Our key planning questions will help you to start planning your campaign strategy.

Campaign planning process

In order to increase the likelihood of your campaign succeeding, you need to put sufficient time and effort into planning what you are going to do and thinking about why you are going to do it.
The four stages of good campaigning are: analysis, planning, action, impact.
 

What do we mean by campaign ‘impact’?

The Good Campaigns Guide (NCVO, 2005) defines 'impact' as: 'Significant or lasting changes in people’s lives, brought about by a given action, or series of actions'. It goes on to explain: 'This definition is important because it identifies the ultimate goal of campaigning in relation to changes in people’s lives. Changes in institutional policies and practice, for example, should be seen as means to that end, not ends in themselves. Effective campaigning is about impact not action, results not effort, outcomes not outputs.'

The campaign cycle

Another useful way of understanding campaign planning is through the ‘campaign cycle’. This builds on the areas of work carried out by the campaigner in the planning process (as above) and grounds them in the context of the broader campaign process. Here, campaigns are viewed cyclically, planned on the premise that they will perpetuate themselves until the issue is no longer relevant.
 

Description of the campaign planning cycle diagram

The campaign planning cycle involves the following stages:

• analysing the issue
• developing a strategy
• planning the campaign
• campaign delivery and monitoring progress
• evaluation.

Steps to success – understanding the outcomes/impact of your campaign

What’s important is to think about the impact – the change in the world - you want to achieve and then the possible methods you could use to achieve that, rather than thinking of a method first. A realistic plan of how you are going to do this will help you to campaign effectively. Without this, it will be difficult to assess your progress and achievements and understand what is or isn’t working well.

The real impact of your campaign can be harder to identify or measure than the achievement of campaign goals. While you may have helped contribute to a specific policy change, it can be harder to see and to track how (and if) that has lead to a change in people’s lives.

For example, securing commitments from rich countries to increase overseas aid may represent a great campaign victory, but it is only a meaningful victory if it makes a positive difference to people’s lives. This may require international campaigning to help build southern advocacy capacity, to help ensure that southern governments use and spend the money wisely.

Unintended consequences of campaigns

Campaigns can sometimes have unexpected, and even negative impacts, as a result of your campaign’s objectives. For example, a charity successfully campaigned to end the down-rating of welfare benefits for long-stay hospital patients to a weekly allowance of £15.90, ensuring that the patients’ original level of benefit, pre-admittance was maintained. An unexpected consequence of this victory was that the very small number of patients who hadn’t been in receipt of benefits before going into the hospital, no longer received this weekly allowance. This was initially overlooked as a potential side effect of the campaign.

The campaign impact chain

The process which leads to your campaign’s impact is outlined in the following diagram, taken from NCVO's 'Is your campaign making a difference'. Part A: is available as a free download.

 The diagram shows two related processes. The first process starts with the campaign, moves to the social/political effects of changes secured and ends with improvement in people's lives. Each stage correlates to the related process which starts with activities, moves to outcomes and ends with impact.

Your campaign plan should be detailed, but shouldn’t be set in stone. It should be a working document that you review and amend as the campaign goes on and things change.

Campaign tactics: the right tool for the right job

Tactics are about choosing the right tool or method for your particular campaign. There’s no right or wrong way to campaign, no one method that will work for all your campaigns, it’s about choosing the right tactic for that particular campaign at the particular time you’re doing it. 

If your campaign involves amending an important but highly detailed clause in an existing piece of legislation, you may not immediately choose to chain yourself to the front doors of the town hall.

Conversely, if you are campaigning on an issue that the government has consistently ignored or opposed, you might not want to devote a large part of your time to an insider lobbying approach to change. See 'What is campaigning?' for more information on insider and outsider approaches to campaigning.

Campaigners need to know what efforts will create the greatest impact and need to be clear about the methods that are most likely to bring about the change they are hoping to achieve. Campaigners who are used to a certain type of campaign may start to view that particular activity (for example, protesting or lobbying) as campaigning, rather than as a tool of their campaign.

Using the wrong tactics usually leads to an ineffective campaign that fails to achieve its intended impact. At times, the wrong tactics can actually be damaging to the cause or issue in question.

One common pitfall comes from choosing your tactics before you have developed an effective strategy. Don’t decide you’re going to have a public meeting, protest outside the town hall, have an event in Parliament or produce thousands of postcards, unless you’ve worked out that is the most effective way of making the change in the world you want to achieve.

Once you have understood the impact you want to create, the most important piece of a campaign strategy, before deciding on tactics, is understanding your targets (the people or institutions that your campaign is aiming at) - who they are and how they are most likely to be influenced. If you haven’t asked yourself these questions, it is unlikely you will know which tactics will help you win your campaign.

Useful links

• NCVO’s Strategy and Impact team
  
• Shelia McKechnie Foundation
  

Have your say

How long does your campaign planning take? Do you plan and then re-plan as your campaign takes shape?

Have your say and ask your questions on the Campaigning and lobbying forum.