I recently ran a workshop session for two INGOs to help them in developing a future story in Liberia. They were looking to launch a new report as the catalyst for a new piece of advocacy around food security and nutrition. What was immediately striking for me was that...
Over the past few months, I’ve been supporting a number of groups around the world to develop their theory of change, or future story, for their campaign. In both Tajikistan and Ukraine, I’ve been supporting coalitions of parents’ groups initially by providing them...
Over the past few months in the advocacy training that I have been running across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, I found myself focusing on two words: confidence and humility. I found that having done an initial training in advocacy, it is often the case that people...
I was recently asked by the Non Profit Builder website to write a post reflecting on one of my recent assignments - here is my post how to make a theory of change work
I recently ran an advocacy workshop in Pakistan. Having identified our priority issue, we then set about developing our message and working on the opposition messages on our issue. In two groups, we then began to develop a theory of change on our issue. I was...
And there is one missing ingredient here – your theory of change. I remember doing a workshop in Sofia recently, and I did a session on the importance of having a theory of change. Later that day I was talking to a workshop participant; she told me that her heart had...
Have you seen this one? So much effort goes into producing the research report and maybe getting some media coverage, and then you just collapse exhausted with little idea of how all this action happens so that something else happens. But without your theory of change...
This is another classic. With almost all of the advocacy campaigns consultancy work that I have done over the past 10 years or so this issue comes up. I find myself saying I really don’t mind what your definition of advocacy campaigning is, but I wish you had a common...
Reflecting on my last blog post made me think of a quote that I have started using in my campaign training. “No battle plan ever survives the first contact with the enemy.” This great line is credited to Helmut von Moltke. While it may have been constructed for...
One thing that I have been thinking a lot about recently is how you go about reporting on your campaign progress. How should you go about this when you are asked for your targets or for your key performance indicators? If you are running a project to build say a well,...