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ORGANIZING STRATEGIES
Campaigning
A campaign is a series of coordinated events, designed to achieve a certain goal. Most campaigns are composed of three important components: planning, implementation, and evaluation. Each stage is as important as the next. Implementation depends upon a solid planning base, and a thorough evaluation ensures that the exercise is a learning process.
Planning - There are many keys to good planning. It is important to start with the objectives of the campaign. Exactly what is it that you want to achieve? How you answer your question will determine the nature of your campaign or if in fact a campaign is necessary or desirable. It cannot be stressed enough that the objectives should be kept realistic. Your goal may be striving for a sustainable society, but like most goals, this probably will not be reached in your life time. Ideal goals are useful because you can never sit back and assume your work is finished, there is always more to be done. No one can ever tell you that we have reached sustainability and you can stop being active.
If you keep your objectives realistic there is a good chance you will be able to achieve them. Nothing is more empowering than reaching an objective. For example if you organized a protest during the Gulf War there would have been a very small likelihood that it would have stopped the war. If stopping the war had been your objective you might have gone home from the protest depressed even if many people showed up. On the other hand if your objective was to create a visible show of opposition to government policy and to spread your opinions to many people, the same protest could be considered a success. This does not mean to say you should think small, just be realistic.
Also to keep in mind besides realistic goals, is a realistic pace of activities. If you want to organize a whole series of activities, but everybody in your group has many other responsibilities, the campaign may fail because you tried to do too much with the resources you had available. Take stock of the human and material resources at your disposal, and those you are likely to need for your activities. If there is a disparity how will you make it up?
Another thing to incorporate into your planning is flexibility. Planning is sort of like predicting the future, it never works out exactly as you thought. If you plan with flexibility you can be prepared for a number of outcomes. Develop contingency plans, walk through the steps of the activities you are planning, asking at every point what could go wrong here. Think what you would do in the situation if that thing did go wrong. How would you deal with it so that your activities would still be successful? Often fate can throw unexpected surprises into the best made plans, sometimes these surprises are good, but you must be prepared for the ones that are bad. Even if something happens that you had not thought of, the fact that you have been considering what could go wrong, will help you to think on your feet and come up with a solution.
A useful tool to use in your planning is a time line. On a large sheet of paper draw a horizontal line with one end representing today, and the other the end of your activities. Brainstorm all of the tasks that should be done in order for the activities to be successful. Then decide where to place them on the time line. Sometimes it is useful to work backwards from the activities. If you are holding an event on a specific day for example, decide when you need the location confirmed by, in order to start advertising it. Always give yourself a little more time than you think. If you get ahead of schedule that's fine, but many things take longer than you think. The time line can be useful because as things get underway you can tell if you are on target for your activities or if you need to pay more attention to specific tasks.
Another useful thing is to do simulation exercises or "dress rehearsals" of planned activities. Have people act out the parts they have planned to undertake. You will find that potential problems immediately rise to the surface. It is easier to deal with them in a rehearsal than if they come up during implementation. Remember, practice makes perfect!
Implementation - This is the fun part when you are actually doing things instead of discussing them, meeting about them, planning them, and evaluating them. With good planning implementation should go smoothly but always expect the unexpected. Be ready to react to situations if anything goes wrong. You will have to think "on your feet" when things are going wrong or right, so keep a cool head. As organizers of the activities you must distance yourselves from what is going on in order to be able to critically assess the situation. Remember what works and what doesn't; these will be useful later on for evaluation. Don't get too overjoyed if things are working really well or too upset if things are going badly. It is more important to evaluate your work afterwards. During implementation you should be dealing with the situation at hand.
Evaluation - This is a very important component of any campaign, but one that is often overlooked or given too little attention. Like all of life's experiences, one should learn from the whole campaign activity. This is the purpose of evaluating things, learning from the things that went well, or went badly, or went in an unexpected direction.
There are many different methods you can use to evaluate activities. The first thing you should consider regardless of the method you use is the question of whether your activities achieved your objectives or not. You should examine what things worked well and what things did not. If you were going to do a similar activity again, what parts would you keep and what would you change. Keep in mind that this has been a learning experience. Sometimes you can learn the most when things don't go as planned. Remember that the purpose of the evaluation is not to blame anyone for the outcome or praise them for it. It should be a group learning experience or success.
Campaign Checklist
Before starting on any campaign you should make quite sure that you know exactly what you are campaigning for, and why you are campaigning for it. The following is a list of some things you may want to keep in mind when organizing a campaign:
Aims & Objectives of Campaigning
What is the aim of your campaign? Keep the aim of your
campaign as simple as possible.
What are your objectives within this aim? Your objectives should be quite specific and should determine the structure that your campaign will have.
Targeting
Are your objectives clear on:
Who is it that you are trying to influence? What is the position of those people?
What are you trying to change, their point of view or do you want to force them to change their policies?
How do you think they may respond to your tactics?
Planning and Running a Campaign
What is your timeline?
What are the particular tasks? i.e. Publicity, information
meeting, research, volunteer training etc.
You should set all these in a time scale so that you can easily follow the progress of your campaign.
What are the different phases of your campaign?
Resources
What resources are available?
What resources do you need to find?
How is your membership involved? How will you involve those outside your membership? Do you need facilities? Research? Speakers? Information sheets? Publicity?
What resources are coming from within the community? How is the community involved?
Who will affected by your campaign and who might
sympathize with your campaign?
How are you using the expertise of other local groups in what you are doing?
Involvement
You will face two challenges, getting people involved and keeping
them involved.
How are decisions made?
Do people feel thay they really do have a role in the success of the campaign or not?
Are you balancing the work and social needs of your
membership?
Are you celebrating your victories?
Delegation
Are tasks being delegated?
How are you using peoples experience?
Is there collective responsibility for the campaign?
Remember: it is important that no one person controls or is solely
responsible for the campaign!
Campaign Tactics
There are many campaign tactics that can be used by a group. However, tactics that are used in certain regions without much difficulty (such as leafleting) will meet with great repression in others. Remember, you must think through all the possible effects of your actions, and how you will deal with each one. Using the media can be your best and worst ally in a campaign. Regardless, all of your membership should receive some media training, being able to respond and deal with the media as necessary.
Letter Writing
Letter writing can be an effective way of influencing others. Groups like Amnesty International have been successful in using letter writing as a way influencing governments when it comes to human rights abuses. If people answer letters you can learn about the arguments they make to justify their actions or policies. If they don't, you can publicize the fact that they do not bother to address your concerns at all. Use your newsletters, or even meetings to get your membership to write letters. Make sure that everyone has copies of the name and address of the person that you are writing to. Try to supply people with the equipment needed to compose the letters. Before people leave a meeting, get each one to write a letter, collect them and send them!