Coping with the ‘bureaucratising’ of your campaign

I think that it is so important first of all to show as an advocacy campaigner that you are committed to being held to accountable and that you want no special favours.

But you want to work in an environment that encourages responsiveness and innovation and allows you to ride the waves coming towards you.

Part of your coping strategy must be to invest time in educating colleagues in advocacy campaigns and how this discipline does differ to other disciplines as it is so bound up with changes in the outside world.

And linked to that education must be a focus on the theory of change. When I have run advocacy campaigns, I have yearned to be held accountable to my theory of change – let me set out how I think my campaign is going to take off, let me show how it is rooted in the realities of the outside world, let me report on this theory of change, show my progress and my blockages, and allow me then to craft my new theory of change. So that over time you can chart my progress by monitoring the changes in my theory of change. Is that too much to ask?