Using Opposition (part 1)

A few weeks ago I was running a session for some community organisations on developing a campaign message. We had covered the key ground of highlighting the problem and the solution, as well as spending some time testing the message using the elevator test. I have found this test to go down really well in […]

You’ll never meet a poor bookie – how betting can help campaigning

Recently, I was on the Forum for Change’s Discussion board and someone asked: “We’re looking at PPCs and who is the most likely to get in at the next election so we can try and make contact ahead of May. Do you know if there is an easy way to bring up a list of […]

Letter of the Week in Third Sector Magazine

Dear Editor, I was at an event today when I heard something that nearly made me fall off my chair. Not in surprise because I know it was not an uncommon view being expressed, but not one that I thought someone was daft enough to state to the audience gathered. The person, who was responsible […]

Young Uprisers

Oh the apathy of youth! I well remember when I was a student and my generation was slammed for being apathetic and I hear similar calls today. Any maybe it has always been this way? Each generation despairing of the next generation. But it was rubbish when I was a student and it is clearly […]

Campaigning using New Media

At the last few campaign training events that I have attended, there seems to be a constant theme emerging – we must make more use of new media. And there are campaigners scratching their heads as they muse over how they might use these new techniques to advance their campaigning. I must confess that my […]

Support for campaigners – better than ever

I well remember how it was when I got my first job as a campaigner for a charity. I was hugely excited at the prospect of having a campaigning job, but we were more or less thrown into the deep end and expected to pick it up as we went along. It was just the […]

ActionAid’s campaigning postcard

I have not always been the biggest fan of campaign postcards. There are some campaigning organisations for which the campaign postcard seems to be the only possible activity – with every newsletter or magazine there is another postcard waiting to be signed and sent off. But just before Christmas I received a campaign action from […]

Paul Newman – did he have The Right Ethos?

This time last year I wrote following the death of Anita Roddick – about whether she had The Right Ethos – which she clearly did have. Sadly, I’m writing today about Paul Newman who died last month – another individual who used their wealth and celebrity to try and make positive change in the world. […]

Why it’s important to have The Right Ethos

I often wonder whether people fully understand what our organisation means by the term “The Right Ethos”. And why our recruitment consultancy, which specialises with organisations that campaign, felt it important enough to use the term as its name. Recently we successfully placed a candidate who I felt epitomised the sort of candidates that we […]

Hope for campaigners

As a campaigner, I always take a special interest when people are recruited to the big campaigning leadership roles in our sector. Therefore I was interested to see Friends of the Earth (FoE) advertise for a new Director recently – who would they appoint to this key role? You probably know that they appointed Andy […]