For the next couple of days I’m at the ecampaigning forum in Oxford and am going to attempt to live blog the main sessions as far as possible. These notes are largely unedited, so they’re likely to be a bit sketchy. For context, feel free to post a comment and I’ll catch up with them when I can.

Glen Tarman, Bond, Chair

how have elections played out around the world? what lessons can we learn for our ecampaigns and other activities? elections focus mostly on domestic issues but that is changing around climate change, immigration, etc. our focus is primarily on global issues. two elections coming up:

1. uk election that was going to happen in the autumn. a lot of us in the development community realised we weren’t ready
2. eu parliament elections. eu parliament is the watchdog of all eu actions, and the lisbon treaty will give it more power.

Paul Hilder, Avaaz

Short of mobilising around candidates you can:

• push a line
• score cards
• get an issue on the agenda that the politicians weren’t expecting
• accountability meetings. ben was at one last night for the london mayoral elections. youtube driven presidential debats, etc.
• get out the vote, issue awareness around campaign etc.

Avaaz is 14 months ago so we’ve only engaged in a couple of elections. pakistani elections and us elections. so far we’ve sent messages to candidates “we’ll welcome a new policy”. identified three issues/asks “peace not war”, “real climate deal” and human rights. ad on those asks will run as print ad in us media soon. created youtube video “stop the clash” won best political video in 2007 youtube video awards. planning to introduce that into the us media cycle and launch it in the middle east.

european parliament election. lot of people think it’s a joke. they have a point, but it’s about to take a lot more key decisions. in the context of lots of geopolitical shifts- is europe going to be a fortress or an engaged leader? lot of people in progressive political circles having a big conversation about this at th emoment. hypothetically think of getting all big eu ngos to sign up to 2 or 3 “big asks” - not heavy coalition but find common ground. maybe better to go more local. we should think it through a lot more.

Glen Tarman

how new media is used is a major issue. organising of accountability movements? how influence discourse? blogosphere goes mad during elections.

think about campaigns’ relationship with european parliament. most aren’t going to go major on this elections. but there are hundreds/thousands of ngos that could come together on their common ground. is there something we could all win together? powers? legislations? use the political window when new MEPs come in. moment after elections is the most likely time for campaign victories to happen.

when make poverty history committed to 2005 campaign it wasn’t just G8 or UN or WTO but also UK general election. part of what you saw with make poverty history was aim to show in election year how widespread support is.

also look at shared things: forcing of liberalisation in developing countries through debt deals, trade, world bank policies. labour put in manifesto that the uk would not force liberalisation of developing countries. still use that victory in campaigns/lobbying today.

should think about what victory can we all win/share?

Ben Brandzel

one question to put out as fundamental for every organisation — can our supporters vote on the issues we/they care about? do they have the information they need to decide how they vote? his main issue is global poverty but no organisation provides him with the information on whether to vote for his local legislators. has a lot to do with PAC structures in US, but is crippling for empowerment around issues. how do we get there?

is over the moon with the group London Citizens. Community organising group. helped him understand organising part of online organising better. they put together four key asks. each candidate had to answer yes/no on each ask. wondered what the key is to their power? Their members can all now vote based on those issues. They represent a key chunk of constituency. Agenda very clear. How do we get concensus around issues that way? If we can do that we can go “light years”.

Simpler versions of this — organisational scorecard — darfurscores.org — grades organisations on action to do with Darfur. Simple and powerful.

One Campaign “on the record” is as close as anyone has come in US to international development scorecards. “Bird dogged” (followed around at events, often with theatrics) politicians on campaign’s issues. get them on the record making commitment on global poverty. not a specific promise, but it’s something you can use later on.

Conversation people at the campaign of a former US presidential candidate. Asked about the impact of scorecards/bird dogging/etc, and what would it take to get them to change an issue goal? Said it’d be very hard but it can happen if someone ruined enough events to get the candidate to ask how to stop it happening. Disruption effect is powerful! Ruin some events!

Glen Tarman

we’ve heard a lot about local events. how do we help our activists hold local accountability events? in 1997 in the UK there was “the real world coalition” modelled movements coming together to hold these sessions. still in days of posters, newsletters, etc. what would it look like now?

How do we use new media to help supporters make sure local stuff “kicks ass.” Still rules controlling charities’ actions around political campaigns, but not on their supporters’ actions. In 1997 John Major said Oxfam and others were acting illegally in actions around elections. Turned out they weren’t. What are the bounds of that?

EU Parliament elections aren’t going to rock the world. How do you use that to your advantage? If not in mainstream media, maybe new media has more power as you’re not distracted dealing with mainstream.

Oliver MacColl - GetUp Australia

GetUp did not endorse any candidates. It made voters aware of where candidates stood on issues that concerned GetUp. Two things: Shaping Policy, Shaping Voters’ Perceptions/Informing. First is more comfortable, second is more important. It’s okay to tell people where the parties stand on your issues.

For policy, the window is early in the phase. Some things GetUp did:

• Use polling. Some released to media, some released to parties, others kept private
• Focus groups.
• Opposition much more likely to adopt your position than incumbents. Heard it takes an average of 6 emails from a constituent to a government MP to get them to support an issue. Only 2 to get the opposition to support
• TV ads they shot and funded, put on youtube and then asked for donations to get it on TV. Never ran the ad expensive. Run it in tiny town, then do big splashy press release and get free coverage. Then raise money, then broadcast it.
• Radio ads.
• Candidate blogs, with comments. Ask candidates to comment on issues. Post responses (or fact not responded) then email supporters and get them to act. Or shame politicians if they don’t respond.
• Youtube candidates’ forum. Not really “web 2 accountability meeting”, but media loved it. Use new media to leverage old media and to help people who can’t get to meeting
• Online petitions

Shaping voter perceptions:

• howshouldIvote.com.au - based on postcode, gives personalised candidate scorecards. sent those out to people on voting day as a reminder. liberal (right wing) party didn’t respond to request for information and then complained on election day that they were misrepresented by not being scored. They had been asked for the info! Got huge numbers of people through site and massive attention.
• If candidate didn’t have policies listed on site, suggest users contact candidate and ask them to submit their data.
• PromiseWatch - help make sure that government that came in didn’t go back on promises. not many users, but lots of return visits. now have a lot of research to hold people accountable
• Launced Oz In 30 Seconds - like “MoveOn Bush In 30s” submit 30s ad, have votes, distribute winners
• House parties on issues. Help people co-ordinate, and get media coverage
• Focus groups to find out how they could help voters
• Email to your MP/to newspaper. Didn’t work well here, but useful in other contexts

Weren’t only group doing party comparison. The Big Switch was a good example of an environmental coalition.

Discussion

Ben asked to add more on discussion with the campaign he’d mentioned earlier and talked about a climate change related policy and where it had come from. The candidate wanted to be strong on the issue so his advisors went to think tanks, etc. Someone had made that sort of policy politically desirable, and NGOs do that sort of thing. If you can dissect the think tank process, maybe even get grassroots intervention into think tanks, that could be very, very powerful.

Comment from audience on how important it is to get in at the manifesto stage, and creating the climate where there’s political capital to be gained by being good on your issue. also notes score card should show if track record matches campaign pledges.

How do you use energy from supporters of good candidate who loses? Ben says if you can get candidate to transition to grassroots leadership, that’s ideal.

GetUp asked what didn’t work well for them. Emailing an MP or newspaper editor, requiring someone to write the whole email themselves, didn’t work well though that’s a personal take as didn’t work so well.

Comment about using MySociety data but making it more non-geek-friendly to produce score cards, etc.

Glen talked about “Global View” - PDF posters of “vote for me” showing African kids and other people affected by development policies. Total failure. Oliver notes they gave out placards for people to display on various issues and they worked very well. Glen asked why Global View didn’t work: too little, too late; wasn’t a clear platform. But good lessons learned.

Ben comments he asked campaign policy and political directors whether anyone targets/lobbies them. They are the two people within the campaign structure who could most easily change policies, but no-one targets them. Get more savvy about how you target political campaigns.

There was some further discussion that I didn’t capture. Sorry!

Recommend this post:

For the next couple of days I’m at the ecampaigning forum in Oxford and am going to attempt to live blog the main sessions as far as possible. These notes are largely unedited, so they’re likely to be a bit sketchy. For context, feel free to post a comment and I’ll catch up with them when I can.

The first keynote is from Ben Brandzel

Offered four options for his talk:

• anatomy of an email
• fundraising
• politics of online organising in large, pre-internet organisation
• growth

Fundraising least popular. Joked about how the pound is so strong we don’t need to raise much money.

“In the spirit of online organising, you find out what everyone wants and then make an executive decision” — wants to talk about 3 and 4. Has 1 pre-written and can email it to us.

Growth

MoveOn has to replenish 700,000 new members a year because of rate of bounces.

• Started in 1998. Told story of Wes and Joan founding MoveOn during the impeachment process. Half a million within a few months.
• Right after 9/11 “punk kid” Eli Pariser worried that the response may be disproportionate. Put up a petition for a peaceful response.
• “let the inspections work” - 2003 - petition to security council. 700,000 people
• Save NPR. Threat to cut funding to PBS, NPR, etc.

Avaaz started just over a year ago

• petition for ceasefire, israel/lebanon
• petition for china to pressure burma
• tibet campaign

GetUp

• David Hicks
• other examples I didn’t catch

Growth in giant spurts rare. few and far between. MoveOn - 4 in 10 years.

When he looks at all of these moments, what common denominators?

• urgent and rapid. sometimes obvious, sometimes “we can’t frickin’ take it any more” (impeachment). so can be a vote in parliament tomorrow, can be a feeling. always think about the sense of urgency.
• “visceralness” - clear visceral imagery. PBS is Big Bird. NPR is you listening and being happy. Hans Blix going around Iraq. David Hicks in Guantanamo. Monks being beaten.
• all of these are a way to get at a larger problem about which there’s a great deal of passion but not a great deal of ways to get into it. Let The Inspections work tapped into a general frustration, but managed to crystallise it for a lot of people. Tibet — “negotiate with the Dalai Lama” — feels actionable. “Free Tibet” doesn’t. FInd things people don’t have an entree into.
• Clear impact - if avaaz reached 100,000 signatures they would sky-write “vote no”. How do you connect passion, visceralness, urgency, with “crucial last step” of “how will this affect decision makers” also in a visceral way.
• High energy/high information. Ratio of energy/passion and the information your supporters have about it. Best campaigns combine high energy with high information; often from media — it’s in the news, they know about it. inspections was. NPR was not in the news, so it was low information/high energy. You need at least one element. If you don’t have information, you need to signal “the time is now” to your audience. “High passion” means “high pre-existing passion” — they already care about it.
• All part of a sustained campaign. Multiple emails, multiple attempts, carefully timed.

How do we do incremental/sustained growth?

Constantly trying to get to big moments. For every one that worked, there are dozens that were failures, or minor successes. MoveOn started spin-off called “mothers rising” — great idea, no-one joined. Need campaignable moment — people unlikely to just join. Always action focussed.

He likes splash pages (’go to a web site and first page is one big page with simple action’). Obama/Edwards done really well with them. They communicate “joining, being part of this thing, is fundamental”. Most advocacy groups don’t see that, they want to get lots of information out quickly. Ought to catch on

Question - doesn’t it annoy people who’ve already signed joined?
Answer - use cookies to make sure they don’t see it

• Focus on having “movement-centered grassroots storyline.”
• Have clear internal growth targets. Know how big you want to get. Have growth targets and organise around those
• Never think you’re too small to start. You’re never too small (online) to act as if you have 3 million people on your list.

Running out of time.

Working within large organisations

Few major stumbling blocks

Strategy - difference between “inside power strategy” and “outside power strategy”. Lots of organisations think that their route to change will be keeping doors open and providing information. “outside power” is that if you have enough people you can knock down doors that may have been closed. You may need to say things insiders won’t like.

• Long-term strategy. Insider strategy only works while you have insiders who want to listen to you. That changes with every election. If we build strong constituency then whoever is elected will be much more likely to have to listen.
• Necessary to have an authentic dialogue to help your supporters become an effective force.

Mission alignment. In the nature of grassroots organisations to go for outsider strategy.

• Nimbleness. Lots of decision making layers to work through.
• Vested interests. Coalitions, celebrity supporters.
• “Org chart issue”. Sees internet as an adjunct to communications or IT departments. Rarely works.

Practical arguments

• “Help me, help us”. Explain ways in which effective online organising adds values. In presidential campaign, and probably others, it leads to good fundraising.
• “opportunity fundraising”. Outsource things to large base that you’d normally pay for. SEIU normally has to pay lots to organise, make calls, etc. but now your supporters can do that for you. $1.50 per phone call - 10,000 calls = $15,000. Can outsource design, making ads (”Bush in 30 seconds”). When Harriet Miers was nominated to Supreme Court MoveOn had their list research her. Saved lots of money.
• “internet is not a technical thing” - no more a technical thing than traditional press work is a typewriter thing. Analogy usually works
• the people who are on your list are not the general public. they are your supporters. communications is about getting message out to as many as possible. this is about “organising”/”mobilising” people who are already convinced.
• efficiency argument.
• defuse the “nutcase fear”. people worry about “the nutcase” who will do something crazy and defuse your organisation. Those risks usually far outweighed by the opportunities gained.
• Sit down with the stakeholders and explain it all carefully. Work out who they are. Maybe talk to top donors directly. If management thinks stakeholders have qualms, you should talk directly to stakeholders.

Questions:

Q. What hasn’t worked?

A: 90% of what we’ve tried. Multiple asks in a single email. Asking people to just join. Watch out for the “paradox of choice”

Q: How communicate to a new audience

A: Focus on content that is funny/compelling regardless of issue, and then draw them into issue.

Q: You said joint ask doesn’t work but seemed to contradict that with splash page comment

A: If you email your current group and ask them to join a new group, or ask people to suggest their friends join, that rarely works. In terms of splash screens, they’re mostly tested in terms of presidential campaigns which are already highly energised. Probably works better in campaign than long-term progressive movements. Try them. “test, test, test, test, test”.

Recommend this post: