Obstacle 9 – lack of a common goal

What is the point of your campaigning? Is it policy change? To recruit new  supporters? To raise your profile? To raise money? What is your goal? Effective campaigning needs focus and a clear goal. All good campaigns need these two elements. And this is time well worth spent to be clear about your answer to why you are campaigning. Don’t assume anything – be explicit.

I think that this is such an important point and I will go onto discuss some of the internal pressures on advocacy campaigners in later blogs.

To my mind an effective advocacy campaign needs to be totally focused on the desired policy or practice change. This has to be the primary goal. And there should be no ambiguity about this focus.

I have always been clear that when the goal has been more about attitudinal change or marketing, that is a very different skill and one that I am not qualified or experienced to advise upon.

An effective advocacy campaign, as I have seen from my own experience, can also be highly successful in aiding fundraising attempts and in recruiting new supporters, but again this cannot be the primary goal. As an organisation you all need to be crystal clear – why are we running this advocacy campaign? What is the desired policy or practice change?