BREAZE

How to be an effective group for change - things all campaigners should know

Your new Climate Action Group might have a range of activities you want to focus on. Your group might want to work to help your local community understand climate change, and to take action to reduce emissions. Other groups want only to lobby their politicians for political change. In reality, we need both. Unless we are working with the community, we cannot engage new people and build the climate movement. Unless we are lobbying our politicians and community leaders for change, we will not deal with the climate crisis in time to prevent runaway climate change.

There is a lot to learn about running educational activities and behaviour change programs or events in your community. A lot of ideas are listed in this toolkit, and other Climate Action Groups will be able to help you get going.

Running a campaign for action on climate change is unique. Climate Actions Groups can campaign enthusiastically and successfully without much experience or knowledge about the most effective campaign strategies and methods. These groups will no doubt have their ups and downs as they learn from experience along the way, but wouldn’t it be so much easier if you had the right tools and strategy to start with?

This is not a full campaign training manual, but we do offer some general advice and planning strategies for your campaign. We have included a list of great manuals, websites and books that will be able to help you as you develop into an experienced, strategic and effective campaigner.

If your Climate Action Group would like to discuss training opportunities in campaigning and campaign strategy, please contact Environment Victoria.

Plan for planning

If you want your campaign to be a success (and who doesn’t?), it’s important you put the time into planning and organising the rollout of the campaign. Set some time aside, call a meeting and get planning. You’ll need to have the right people with you at the planning stage to make sure you’re taking advantage of your group’s strengths, and that key decision makers in your group are involved.  You’ll also need to know that the key people are committed to the campaign. There will be challenging times ahead as you seek to create change, and you’ll need a good team around you.

What’s your focus, and why?

You can clearly see the problem, but what are you going to do about it? Campaigns should be big enough to matter, and small enough to take on.

Define your problem, and define your solution. When you look at the problem, what is it about that problem that makes you want to act? Can you articulate why someone else should act? Will it motivate your members and supporters to act?

You’ve possibly come to this stage with a campaign in mind. Is it the best thing you can spend your time campaigning on? Is this campaign feasible, winnable, able to make a difference? If so, you need to build the story as to why this campaign matters.

Are there other considerations to account for? Can you afford to run this campaign? Does it fit with the mission of your group? Is it a key priority? Do you have the skills to undertake this campaign? Are you committed for the long haul?

This is also the time to gather information about the problem you’ve identified and the solution/s you’ll be campaigning for. What are the opportunities this creates? What other groups might be working on this issue? What can your group add to their work that is different or value-adding?

The Campaign Objective

It’s now time to articulate your campaign objective. This is different to your long term vision. Your campaign objective must be SMARTA – Specific, Measurable, Ambitious-Achievable, Relevant-Realistic, Time-bound and working with internal and external Alliances.

S – Specific: Your objective must clearly and concisely articulate what your campaign will achieve

M – Measurable: Your objective must be one against which your success can be measured at the end of the campaign

A – Ambitious-Achievable: Your objective must be ambitious enough to make it worth campaigning on, but not so big that it becomes unachievable. Your objective should not be for something you have no control over. For example, your vision might be that no new coal power stations are built in Victoria, but your objective would be that your group will campaign for a bipartisan commitment that no new coal fired power stations will be built in Victoria.

R – Relevant-Realistic: Your objective should be relevant to your group, and what you want to achieve more broadly. Is it realistic that your group run this campaign? Do you have the resources to support the activities?

T – Time-bound: Your objective should be specific about when you will have achieved your objective. For example, your objective could be that your group will campaign for a bipartisan commitment at the next state election that no new coal fired power station will be built in Victoria.

A – Alliances: To win campaigns it is important to make sure we are working with strong alliances wherever possible. These alliances should never compromise your task or objective, they should support and strengthen your voice. You will find alliances both within the climate movement, and outside of it. Accordingly, the style of alliance you form internally and externally will be dependant on who you are aligning with, and their commitment to the objective.

Once your objective has been decided, it is also essential to outline your success criteria or benchmark. How will you judge your success at the end?

Power mapping

Power mapping is an important tool used in campaign planning to highlight who has the power to make the change you want, who your campaign targets should be, who will be supportive of your campaign, who will be oppositional, and how you should focus your efforts. While some of this might seem fairly obvious, you’ll be surprised at how useful power mapping is for clarifying your next steps.

Power mapping is a fun and engaging tool that should be done in small groups and will take about one or two hours.

For a simple explanation of power mapping and how to go about it, click here

Communicating your campaign

Communication is one of the most important facets of a campaign. Unless you can effectively communicate the issue, the solution and the motivation for people to act, reaching your campaign objective will be near impossible.

Your communications strategy will probably be different for different targets. A government department is going to respond differently to certain styles of communication compared with a community meeting. However, regardless of your target, the campaign message you deliver to them must be consistent with the overall campaign Ask.

What do you want them to do? This is your Ask. But remember, your Ask is not a slogan or media message. This must be developed separately.

A common trap for campaigners in communication is being too close to the issue to be able to see what motivates other people. What motivates us now as committed and informed campaigners is unlikely to be what will motivate the majority into action. Large environmental organisations are able to run message testing to see what messages the community responds too. Keep an eye on the language these groups use when communicating to a broad audience. As a general rule, communicating on the values that the community already holds dear is effective. Think about ‘family values’ and ‘jobs’. The Victorian community is very concerned about water issues, and attaches a strong value to this problem. Communicating with people on the link between water and climate change is one way of using this community value to communicate your message.

Don’t be afraid to use emotive messaging. While it’s important to offer logical, well argued climate solutions, most people are motivated more by emotions than logic. Concern for the future of someone’s children will usually be more motivating than a logical argument about emission reduction scenarios.

For more about communication styles, strategies and values, see Communicating Effectively

Tactics and the Critical Path

The tactics of the campaign are the tools that you will use to build support, spread your message, and motivate people into taking the actions you define. The critical path is the sequence of events or changes that you will need to drive in order to achieve your objective.

In planning your tactics and critical path, you need to identify what could go wrong at various points along the way, what opposition you could face, and how you will deal with that.

Campaigners usually love to develop tactics. This tends to be the fun part. Do you want to lobby politicians, hold protests, conduct a letter writing day etc? What education methods will you use? Online information, flyers, public meetings etc? It is important to map out an order in which you aim to deliver these, and to make sure the tactics you are choosing are the most strategic to help you achieve your objective.

Too many campaigners spend time and money on tactics that are fun, without much thought for the strategy behind it.

For more information about tactics and critical pathways, you can find useful online resources and books.

Get going

So now you are ready to go. You’ve thought through the risks, developed your objective, know who the power holders are and how to reach them, and are prepared with the pathway and tactics to help you win.

Make sure you go through the plan and perform the activities you identified. Keep the team motivated, and the workplan on track. While it’s important to have your plan laid out at the start, it is equally as important to review, evaluate and update it as the campaign continues. New opportunities or challenges may arise, a power holder may move on, or another emerge. Whatever it is, your campaign plan will need to be responsive and able to adjust to the new reality.

Evaluate

Don’t forget to evaluate your campaign at its end. Your campaign will end either when your objective is reached, or it ends for another reason. Review your activities and other influences in the campaign. How did the campaign outcome stack up against your benchmark? What worked? What didn’t? Was the timing right? Was your communication clear? What can we learn for next time? Ask others for their thoughts and feedback on the campaign. And at the end of all of this, congratulate yourselves. Win or lose or compromise, you’ve just run a community campaign that is an essential part of our collective actions towards a safe climate future.