Setting Up a Campaign Team

First you'll need a campaign team. Here are six steps for getting one set up:

1. Recruit: Convince students that they should get involved. Develop a message that inspires supporters to get involved and commit to going on the demo. Make sure they know why this is so important.
2. Record: Put systems in place for tracking the activity of your team. Make sure you are always building and updating your list. Constantly get email addresses, phone numbers. Know who is responsible for what.
3. Prepare: Convince supporters that they can be effective. Give them the tools they need to be effective (training, sample messages, role play exercises, feedback, etc.).
4. Engage: Ask supporters to take action. Be specific. Give them every detail. Be meticulous about every piece of information. Anticipate questions and answer them in advance. Ask for hard commitments. Give deadlines. From the total number of supporters who give you a hard commitment, expect only half of them to follow through.
5. Remind: Even your most committed supporter or volunteer can forget. Remind everyone the day before an action.
6. Report: Let supporters know the results of your efforts. Tell them how many people acted with them, how much of an increase that was, how it will build to the future, what the MP’s reaction was, what they will do now as a result, etc.

Keeping people motivated is just as important as getting them motivated. It is often harder to enthuse a disenchanted activist than a new one. Here are some tips for keeping people motivated:

Inclusion: Give people a sense of being part of what’s going on

Control: Allow people to control the pace of their work and to have some influence over decision-making – at least regarding their own work.

Appreciation: Give recognition for their efforts:

• personal thank you
• public recognition at meetings
• mention or photo in newsletter / bulletin
• opportunity to attend training programme / conference / outside meeting
• certificate of appreciation.

Involving Students

Once you have your campaign team in place and you have a plan for how to target your audience, the next stage is to get students aware of and involved in the national demo.

Assume nothing

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who knows nothing about the issues (it's easy to get caught up in the fine details if you've been working on the campaign for a while!) and make sure that your campaign information is clear and easy to understand. Don't use jargon or exaggerate the facts to panic students into paying attention.

Be enthusiastic

You need to be enthusiastic and confident, and appear to enjoy what you're doing: hopefully the effect will rub off on to the people around you. Publicise your victories, no matter how small, and let your membership know it was collective action that saved the day. If you’re not enthusiastic, why should anyone else be?

Recruit agents for your campaign team

Create your own local Communication Action Network - convince your course reps, sports clubs, societies and closest friends to get involved in the campaign, and ask them to each get another person to sign up. Once you have a number of people involved create campaign cells, appointing campaign cell co-ordinators to share the work and increase communication to those actively involved.

Get the message out

Don't just rely on posters to inform your membership. How about stalls, leaflets, stickers, making announcements, petitions, student media, canvassing in halls, kitchen meetings, campus radio, etc.? Be inventive and brave. It's amazing how many students’ union officers are scared to talk to a table full of students in the refectory. If you do get funny looks, it's generally because students are not used to being talked to or consulted!

Make it relevant

How does the campaign affect your members? Pare the issues down to the 'here and now' and reassure students that their involvement can make a difference.

Many students will be cynical about whether a campaign can be effective. They may believe action is counterproductive, or that the campaign is not relevant to them. You need to inspire them and make them believe they can make a difference.

Gather support

In order to give your campaign strength, you should aim to get policy on the issue passed at a quorate general meeting or student representative council. If your campaign involves a petition, circulate it around the meeting, as this is a useful way of getting names and addresses. Keep people informed as the campaign progresses and invite them to further events.

Go along to meetings

Whatever it’s for – the athletics club, the medics society, etc., ask permission from the chair first and turn up with leaflets or information about any meetings/activities you have planned. Say hello and introduce yourself, explaining what you’re doing. (Leave when asked – unless you want to join the club.) Talk to other societies at welcome week and ask them if they will get involved and publicise the campaign to their members..

Grab opportunities

Every time there is an article in the paper or an item on the news even remotely linked to student debt, cuts to further and higher education, graduate unemployment, etc., write a letter to the editor. You could also organise theme nights at your union to help raise awareness and funding for the campaign. Publicise the campaign at every opportunity.

Fun, fun, fun

It is important that volunteers have fun whilst campaigning so plan social activities into their schedule. Even if this simply means getting together after delivering leaflets, it makes people feel involved. Always make it easy for new people to join the campaign and make them feel welcome.

Are you a musician (or have you managed to charm one into joining your campaign team)? Encourage musicians, drama, and art and design students to get involved and do what they do best. They could provide entertainment at events that you hold to publicise the demo.

Talk to the student radio or TV station about organising a competition for the best protest song about restricting access to education. Convince the student newspaper to run a competition for the best education cuts-related editorial cartoon. Get them to organise a campaign gig or hand out leaflets at their events. The possibilities are endless.

Having a conversation

Once your campaign has been clearly worked out, you should spend time talking to your members, encouraging their participation and explaining the arguments. It is often assumed that all students will be as motivated to take action as you are, but they may not have your level of background knowledge and experience. An initial expression of concern does not mean that involvement will follow!

Identify and get to know your audience

Messages need to be developed in a deliberative, strategic process that requires careful planning. The first step in that process is identifying and understanding your audience.

In developing a message, you should always be asking, "To whom is this message directed, and why?" For ‘#demo2012: Educate, Employ, Empower’, you may be targeting students, the public, a legislative body like a city council, or a member of parliament.

Once a campaign has defined its audience, the next step is to better understand that audience. This is the essence of a grassroots campaign. A message can only be effective if it is grounded in the experiences and circumstances of its intended audience. A good message will focus on values that are shared between the campaign and its audience.

How do you identify those shared values, and find out what is on the mind of voters or community members? It starts with having a conversation with your audience; freshers is a great time to start this process. It means listening to your audience by going speaking to them on your campus, hosting events, sending text messages, making phone calls, etc. Campaigns that take time to get to know the people they are trying to influence are able to develop messages that truly resonate with their audience.

In addition to connecting with and understanding your intended audiences, other research is required for effective message development. It is imperative that you understand the issues that are relevant in the campaign, and the opposition's positions on those issues.

‘Crisi-tunity’

When you are talking to supporters about taking action, to get the best results you need your conversation to have an actionable moment and a movement moment.

The actionable moment involves highlighting the problem or the urgent crisis and, crucially, pointing out that there is an opportunity to stop the crisis happening. Their action at this time can make a difference.

Avaaz, the online campaigning agency, has named this the ‘Crisi-tunity’. For example:

The crisis: The current government has put the future of an entire generation at risk. Jobs are hard to come by, students are saddled with unprecedented levels of debt, it’s a struggle to get onto the property ladder, and state pensions are being phased out – it’s easy to feel despondent.

The opportunity: Through NUS’ ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’ campaign, we can show the government how angry we are at their betrayals and broken promises, and help bring about a fairer future. 

The movement moment is where you connect the action to the broader movement.  Depending on the ‘actionable moment’ in question, this can be grand and urgent, or subtle and modest. For example, the main ‘movement moment’ for the ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’ campaign is the national demonstration in November.

Inspiring people to take action

When you have a conversation with your audience, you need to take them on a journey, or they may get distracted or lose interest. Here are three approaches to conducting conversations with potential supporters:

1. Generating action – the ‘apathy staircase’
2. Listen, explore, empathise and elevate
3. Anger/hurt, hope, action

These techniques can help you overcome any potential barriers you face when you are asking someone to support your campaign.

1. Generating Action – The Apathy Staircase

The apathy staircase is a great way to remember the stages of the conversation you can use to inspire action from your audience. Start at the bottom.

2. ‘Listen, explore, empathise and elevate’

To achieve our campaign objective, we need to bridge the gap between the person’s current understanding of the situation and the understanding that we desire.

We’re not attempting to win a debate or lecture potential supporters. To bridge the gap we must first start from where they are, gain their confidence by letting them know we understand their concern, and show them another way of understanding the situation.

Listen

‘Active’ listening is important; nodding your head and acknowledging their concerns means that the person can stop trying to convince you they have a point.

It is very important not to tell the person why they are wrong or ‘how it actually is’. Allowing the person to speak gives you an insight into the values that they hold and the experiences they have had. It also indicates that you are interested in them and their experiences and do not just want to get them to the meeting or sign them up. It allows you to speak to them about their objections in ways that they feel comfortable with, without appearing to tell them that they are wrong.

Explore

Sometimes the ‘explore’ stage is just a continuation of listening. By asking questions (particularly open ones), you give someone the opportunity to tell you what they think and why. 

More often than not, the problem is not that they don’t support you – they might have issues with the action that you are suggesting. People are more likely to give a bland reason, such as ‘I’m too busy to get involved’, than tell you that they are not confident enough to do the action that you suggest or that they don’t think anything can be changed. If we are to get to the bottom of the real objection we need to explore the objection with them by asking questions until we understand it fully.

Asking a question such as ‘What is it about the activity/campaign that you are not comfortable with?’ may elicit an answer that can be dealt with much more specifically and constructively. The question ‘Is there anything in particular that’s causing the time pressure?’ might unearth an issue that they are happy to talk about.

Equalise / Empathise

Acknowledging the position of the potential supporter increases the chances that they will be willing to listen to your point of view or even shift theirs.

This does not mean that you should pretend to agree with them. But you should try to genuinely see the issues from their point of view and acknowledge their concerns. This means that they can stop trying to convince you that they have a point, and the conversation can move forward.

Elevate

The last stage is to provide the person with information that clarifies the situation and moves them past the objection. Sometimes it is the first thing that came to your mind when the original objection was raised. You should at no stage try to get them to agree that they were wrong to hold the objection in the first place. Don’t dwell on the topic or raise it again. You will rarely get a person to acknowledge they were mistaken even if they can see they were. Neutralising the objection is enough.

Once you have neutralised the objection, you should move on quickly by going back to the issue of concern to them. It may be back to one of the stages of one-to-one contact above or you may need to focus on the ‘Anger/ Hope/ Action’ process to get them thinking about their issues and what they can do about it (see next section).

3. Anger/hurt, hope and action

Often when people say ‘I don’t have the time’ often they mean:

• ‘I don’t have time to waste on something that I don’t think will work’, or
• ‘I don’t have time to waste on changing something when I have no idea how it could be better’

When faced with these reactions, we have to recognise that these feelings and beliefs are disabling. They contribute to a feeling of powerlessness. A simple technique for dealing with this is ‘Anger, Hope, Action’.

Anger: We need to remember that changing people's opinions and motivating them into action is mainly about engaging their emotions. In politics, anger is almost always a necessary precursor to change and hope. If people have issues that they care deeply about, they have a right to be angry. We should not be scared of this; not dealing with the injustice is worse. To overcome apathy and powerlessness, we can encourage people to be angry.

Hope overcomes apathy. Anger itself is not enough. Anger without hope creates frustration. By providing a realistic plan to resolve the injustice, anger can be converted to hope and action. Giving people information about how things are elsewhere, or could be here, encourages people to believe that their aspirations are realistic. Letting people know what can be done to achieve change provides hope that things can change for the better.

Action creates change. If you want people with hope to take action, you must show them how their action will contribute to the change they want. This may often involve describing the power of collective action. Inspiration transforms fear and anger into hope, and gives people power.

Here are a few things to remember when you are asking people to take action:

• Always ask in person if possible (if not, then preferably by phone – avoid email).
• Personalise the task; ask people to help you to do something – it makes them feel like they are not doing it alone.
• Give them small tasks within their comfort zone.
• Ask volunteers to do things that they can do well or have done before.
• Make it clear exactly what you are asking them to do.
• Tell them how their job fits in with the rest.
• Be enthusiastic about the importance of their work.
• Give them the opportunity to discuss any difficulties with you.

Keep people accountable - let them know when you will come back to see how they are getting on, and then more importantly, make sure you do.

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