Campaigning

Yes, do give a budget...

“Always state the budget along with your RFP because if you don't agencies will:

1) submit a proposal because they are desperate, work really hard for nothing, get frustrated, etc.

2) ask for the budget because they don't have time for a poker game”

...but you might be better off indicating a range

"My advice from trying it all possible ways on different developments is give a range, but not an exact figure. Say 'I have up to 15k' and it's just plain eerie how every developer will come back with a £14,999 quote."

"Give no guidance at all, and the developer might either not bother, or spend an unreasonable amount of time creating a quote which is completely unaffordable."

"If you give a window of about 5k range (more, obviously, if it's a hugely expensive project) and sincerely say that you won't just go with the cheapest, you get quite useful responses."

"This is always tricky whichever approach you take. My preference would be to give the potential suppliers a budget range so that they have some idea what sort of budget you're thinking about, but don't be exact or you risk people simply padding out to reach the target. So in your head you have £10K, you might suggest a range of £8-12.”

You don't have to fix a figure upfront though

"It also rather depends on the process you want to follow for procurement. Given that you say there's scope for what can be done, I would be tempted to invite indicative broad responses from interested parties and then shortlist 2-3 to pitch in more detail."

"I think a better approach is to be clear in your tender about the different elements and how much you need them. Building websites is like software development, with all the stages involved. You are at the requirements stage. I've tendered for projects where the decision was only made after the "implementation stage" (we had to build half the site as prototype before we didn't get it)."

"If you make clear in your tender which bits are essential, which would be nice to have, and which would be some icing on the cake, that will really make a difference. Then instead of having a cost for the entire project, you get them to outline the costs for each of those, which will give a better idea of what you can achieve with your money. You can then always decide to only do the essentials, or maybe a few of the "nice to have" and drop the icing on the cake or any other combination. "

If you do it like that, there's no need to give them any indication of budget. You can just say, between 5 and 50, as long as the essentials are within your budget, you'll be fine."

"Make sure to include training, documentation, and keep a bit of your budget for a continued relationship.”

Focus on requirements at each stage

"The next trick is controlling costs so it doesn't end up being hugely more expensive when you get to the actual development - clear tick list of functionality that will be delivered and a good contract are always a good idea and give focus on both sides."

Quality is harder to compare than price

But there's a big difference in the quality of what's on offer, and this can be hard for a client to evaluate. 

"Building websites can be extremely open ended. In fact, who can say that their website is finished? Eventually it's all about how much time you spend on it, and that time is generally restricted by budgets. If the budget is bigger, you spend more time. That's the reason developers often just tender for the budget available. 

"How much can be achieved with that budget generally depends on how efficient developers are with their time. So, in a way the tender process needs to identify the efficiency of the developer. Those who can do more with the money available are the ones that are (or should be) most attractive."

"If websites were cars, as web agencies we often receive briefs that are the equivalent of this:

We would like a new car please. The car should have:

• An engine
• 4 wheels
• 4 doors
• 1 steering wheel
• 40-CD changer in-car MP3 compatible digital radio stereo with Bluetooth and GPS

Can you tell us how much it will cost?

"To which our response is: how much do you want to spend? Don't you need brakes on your car as well, and windows and lights and a boot? What sort of journeys will you be doing in this car? How many people is it for? How long will you run it for? When do you need it delivered by? (And we'd also be tempted to ask, why are you being so weirdly specific about something that's quite a luxury?)

"That tells us the level of attention you want paying to the design and quality of build (for example, is it a Vauxhall or a Bentley?)

"It tells us whether the features you're asking for suit the purpose (whether you need a 2-seater for city driving or a multi-purpose vehicle with lots of storage space for long journeys).

"It also allows us to check whether there are any things you haven't thought about and we might need to make allowances for in the budget (like ABS or airbags for example).

"There is a lot of difference between a Vauxhall and a Bentley but they both make drivable cars that work for a lot of people. It does bother me that often charities make decisions on cost alone without considering quality of build. So there are a lot of people who have Vauxhall budgets going to Bentley agencies and expecting Toyota Priuses (should that be Prii?) - and everybody is disappointed.

"You can only really tell whether you're getting good value for money by balancing deliverables against quality of design and good references.”

"To further elaborate on the car comparison. When buying a car you might visit two or three different shops and compare the prices of the models, see how trust-worthy they seem and try to get a good overview of how much all those lovely extra features (like the golden ashtray and the fur on your steering wheel) might cost.

"Something you'll have a hard time checking on is the actual quality of the engine itself. Even if you bring your in-house expert along to the sales pitch she/he won't be able to test and check out every single part of the engine in a few hours. If you go out and yell "who can sell me a car for 5.000.- bucks instead of the usual 10.000.-" someone will probably say 'sure, I have one that's just perfect for you. It's been used before but it's just like a new one!'.

"The outside of the car will look super shiny and it seems to be able to do exactly what you want. But when the engine breaks down after the first trip you'll know where the other 5,000 you didn't want to spend might have been well invested.

The same point in non-car-speak:

"Websites have qualities that are quite hard to test if you are not an expert. Therefore it frequently happens that cheap websites are compared to expensive websites as if they were the same. They aren't.

"Just because one car salesman tells you that you get a Mercedes Benz for the same price it doesn't mean it's true."

For more useful advice see Rachel Collinson's article on writing a great web design brief.

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

It doesn't matter...

"Looking at this as purely an external facing pseudo metric seems hugely unauthentic.  The only time it affects your credibility is when you follow no one (or a very, very few) that just shouts out ‘I’m not listening’! "

"The only people who really care about that ratio of followers to followed are people who treat Twitter as an  'I've got more followers than you' competition. They regard following lots of people as 'cheating' in the game they imagine we're all playing against them.

"If you are trying to make those people think of you as important and influential (and they do include quite a lot of bloggers and journos), then you need to trim your following list. Otherwise, follow back. It's polite."

“The only time the ratio and score mentality comes into play is when you start looking at tools like Klout, which are often now built into other tools, like Cotweet. I think ratio plays a part in your Klout score, but there are so many other factors such as whether you're being retweeted by people who are influential, how much engagement you get with your tweets, etc... It's probably worth being aware that you shouldn't follow everyone who follows you (unless you actually want the cheap US pharmaceuticals), but following a lot of people definitely isn't a problem."

"Of course, it looks good to be following the other biggies in our sector – organizations, charities, celebs, MPs etc. But the ratio thing – I would only worry about that if our followers really cared (and I’m not convinced they do)."

And has benefits

"Also worth keeping in mind that that the more people you follow, the more likely you are of being 'found' in their lists of followers. I'd say trying to keep the ration 1/1 all the time is the way to go."

"My personal policy is to follow anyone who follows us, and seems a valid user (whenever I get the time to) - that way, they can at least DM us if needs be. Of course, I'll enter into discussion with anyone who @s us."

"the 'I'm not listening' Twitter accounts are the ones I regularly cull from who I'm following. Tools like Formulists even create simple to manage lists of accounts that don't follow you back that you can then cull. [Ed note - formulists is no more, but the site lists out some alternative tools.] Twittiquette has moved on since 2006, but on the simplest level if someone / some organisation doesn't want to engage with me socially, then I'll drop 'em."

“I tend to view people/orgs that don't bother to follow back as, at best, displaying their ignorance of the ethos behind Twitter and, at worse, their arrogance. I remember sitting in a twitter training session a few years back where small NFPs were advised to adopt an organisational, broadcast approach - inject no personality, using it to broadcast messages only and not enter into discussion (I disagreed, quite vocally, along with a couple of others in the session).”

Supporters like to be followed back

"I think – ignore it! People have responded so well to us when they see we’re following them back – because they are real people behind the twitter avatar after all. It helps them see that we care about their support, they’re important to us and surely that will encourage them to RT, share info from us with their friends, and really feel a part of our social movement."

But it does affect what you can take in

"The practicality of the matter, though, is that you clearly can't read your twitterstream in any meaningful way once you're following more than a few hundred accounts."

"...lists have to be the only way of setting up a meaningful two-way relationship while still tuning out the noise”

And beyond a certain list size – a follow-back is meaningless

"I might be a bit of an exception here, because my colleagues and I manage a pretty big twitter account (we currently have over 390,000 followers), but I think at some point, people realise that a follow back is a bit meaningless. This is why we stopped automatically following back people.

"I don't think it's ignoring the ethos of twitter, quite the opposite. A lot of people will find it way more meaningful if our account answers one of their questions with a DM or an @ reply than if we start following them and then never see any of their updates in our stream. A 1:1 ratio for us wouldn't mean much."

"Not sure where that magical number of following too many people is (10,000? 100,000?) but I'm pretty sure our account is beyond it."

Engagement is the important thing, not Big Numbers

"Forget the numbers and ratios as an end in themselves, focus instead on engagement and attracting your target audience.  A year ago we had 16 followers and we're now up to 973, but the majority are exactly the target audience we wanted - the community, local media and bloggers, historians, people interested in architecture and windmills - so we're always directly talking to the people we want to talk to."

Recommended reading: Four reasons why nonprofits should follow more on Twitter'

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

In the various e-campaigning reviews (e-campaigning data analysis and qualitative review), I have (over the last two years) defined a 'status-spectrum' of supporters (subscribers and participants) to identify were they are on the spectrum from new to active and inactive including what 'inactive' state they are in.

In this analysis, it consistently (100% of the time so far) comes up that lapsed/inactive supporters consist of 70-90% of all campaigning supporters, but also that most of them lapse within days/weeks of 'joining'.

In fact, from a measurement point of view, most lapse within minutes of 'joining' although this is an unrealistic view because it is likely people are still 'warm' to re-engaging for a few days after joining.

Step 1: Defining and identifying 'inactive'

I use a spectrum for identifying the

1. different 'segments' of new/active/lapsed supporters,
2. the 'size' of the problem (the number/ proportion of supporters in each segment) and
3. to help decide where to intervene first.

Usually, the biggest segment is 'inactive subscribers' (joined over 15 days ago, emailed 3 or more times, never clicked, never participated).

Definitions

• subscriber = someone emailings are sent to
• participant = someone who has completed a campaigning action. For the purposes below only, a 'subscriber' is someone who has not completed a campaigning action, otherwise they become a 'participant'.

Legend

j=joined; e=emailed; c=clicked; p=participated; d=days ago, x = times

Segments

1. New subscriber: j < 15d; p = 0
2. Warm subscriber: j > 15d, e < 3x; p = 0
3. Inactive subscriber: j > 15d, e 3x +, c = 0, p = 0
4. Sceptic subscriber: j > 15d, e 3x +, c > 0, p = 0
5. New participant: j < 15d; p > 0
6. Warm participant: j > 15d; e < 3x, p > 0
7. Lapsed participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, c = 0 or c > 120d; p > 0; p > 120d
8. Sceptic participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, c < 120d; p > 0; p > 120d
9. Occasional participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, p > 1; p > 60d and < 120d
10. Regular participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, p > 2; p < 60d

You can adjust the above criteria for your own uses and capabilities, but ultimately most supporters' last activity is their first activity, so it is critical to act quickly.

Step 2: Reactivation / removal

I also usually suggest a 3-step re-activation / removal process which differs for each segment, for example:

1. An email explicitly acknowledging they have been inactive/have lapsed, what active people have helpedactivein the past and what they can do to get active.
2. For anyone who didn't respond to (1), an email acknowledging they are inactive, the lack of response to email (1) and asking them to tell you (via a non-anonymous survey) what YOU can do to get them back involved
3. For anyone who didn't responde to (2),an emailacknowledging they are inactive and emails (1) and (2) saying that they will be automaticallyremovedfrom the email list (e.g. within 30 days) unless they click a special link to indicate they wish to remain on the list

It could be a four step process but a 2-step process seems too abrupt since people don't ready every email and may often be too busy one week or on vacation - so while cleaning is good, 'sterilising' the list is bad!

What you will likely find from the survey in (2) is that people want to do more than you are asking and they are not convinced that an easy action will have much impact. But you aren't giving them a more compelling (for them) way to be involved!

Step 3: Prevention

Once you have re-activated or removed inactive supporters, you never want to be in a position again to accumulate 70-90% of your supporter base as inactive. To prevent this you need to:

1. Have a welcome route for new supporters (and improve it over time based on monitoring).
2. Run the reactivation plan regularly - ideally every week based on the segment definitions.
3. Ensure every step of the engagement process is best practice - and continually test and improve it.
4. Monitor your results and use feedback from the monitoring, testing and supporter feedback to fine-tune the experience (including how compelling the campaigning is!).

Having a majority of supporters is not only a wasted opportunity, it is a waste of time and money to attract new supporters and it has the potential to undermine the perception of your organisation and campaigning in the very people (and their friends) who are most likely to be supporters.

Back in May of 2008, Amnesty UK had just over twice as many "donors" as "activists".  Like most major NGO's in those days, they almost never sent action alerts to the donors, and never asked their activists for money. 

Integration didn't alienate the donors or the activists. We got more donations and activism from both groups than we ever had before.

Coming from my work with dedicated online organizing groups (MoveOn.org, Avaaz.org etc.) I proposed a concept I called the  "Integration imperative". You don't have "donors" and "activists", you have supporters, who like to support in different ways at different times, but all of whom are far more concerned with making a difference than with what they're labelled. You serve your supporters by giving them every reasonable chance to convey any of their various assets into social and political change. You do them a disservice by deciding in advance that donors never get to use their voice, and activists never get to use their wallet. 

Amnesty agreed to the experiment to test the principle and to doing the first ever outreach to the combined list of all supporters with an integrated series of asks. 

The online staff there had been making similar points for a while (I find quite frequently that shmancy-pants consultants frequently just give more voice to what hardworking teams have been saying for years.) 

Bringing activity together

At the time, there was already an activist campaign in the works to leverage the upcoming Bejing Olympics to get China to agree to the demands of a group called the "Tienanmen Mothers,". These families had been lobbying the Chinese authorities for 19 years for the right to publicly mourn, and for an official investigation into the deaths of their children in the massacre. 

There was also a separate plan to ask the donors to "support the China campaign." And a third, separate plan to hold a rally outside the Chinese embassy around the anniversary of the massacre. So basically, we just pulled it all together. 

Here's how it went: 

Email 1: Send a Mothers day card to the Tiananmen mothers on Chinese Mothers' day, letting them know you support their struggle. 

This message introduced the characters and the overall narrative, and gave the UK members a strong emotional hook to engage in the rest of the campaign. 

Email 2: Sign the petition to the Chinese government asking them to grant the Tiananmen mothers' request. 

This highlighted the Chinese government's vulnerability to public pressure in the lead up to the Olympics. For every signature we collected, we would place a rose outside of the Chinese embassy in London at the rally on the anniversary of the massacre. 

If you donated 20 pounds, we'd place in your name a full bouquet (the official symbol of the Tiananmen Mothers group). On the landing page you also had the option of giving a smaller donation to support the free rose distribution, after you signed the petition. 

Email 3: Follow up on the petition/roses ask, closing in our goal of 5000. 

Email 4: Turnout for the rally in London to help with the delivery of the roses, or host/attend separate rallies in local areas across the UK

Email 5: Report back on the rose delivery, with ask to join Amnesty as a monthly contributor to support similar campaigns in the future. 

Outcomes

All in all, the campaign garnered record breaking results, both in terms of absolute numbers and in terms of percentage yields of actions and donations from email campaigns to those respective groups. 

The vast bulk of fundraising yield came without ever focusing on a fundraising ask.

And that was true before email 5, so the vast bulk of fundraising yield came without ever focusing on a fundraising ask. In other words, by integrating tactics, asks, and supporters, we didn't alienate the donors or the activists, we got more donations and activism from both groups than we ever had before.

Email content

The content of four of the five emails is reproduced below (without unsubscribe options etc)

Email 1 

(Note the unusual structure here, a long body with no link until the bottom. That's because unlike a classic action email, this email 

a) makes a high-bar ask, rooted in emotional engagement, so you really need more content before you take the leap, and 

b) serves a broader goal in the overall sequence of introducing folks to the characters and the story - if the reader clicked through without absorbing that it wouldn't really serve the purpose. 

I think this is a great example of why the email "formula" I teach should always be subject to review and abandoned entirely when it's strategically appropriate.) 

 

It's Mothers' Day in Tiananmen Square

Dear friend of Amnesty,

This Sunday, 11 May, is Mothers' Day in China. Just like here, it's a day for families to celebrate the strength and love that mothers bring into our lives.

And this year, it's a chance for us to reach out to some particular mothers in Beijing who have experienced the worst thing a mother could endure - the death of their own children, at the hands of their own government.

They call themselves the Tiananmen Mothers. They are a group of predominantly Chinese women who never wanted to be activists. But when their children were killed in the violent military crackdown on the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989, everything changed.

All they ask is the freedom to publicly mourn without harassment, the release all those who remain in prison in connection with the 1989 protests, full public debate about the events and an independent inquiry into what happened on those dark days almost 19 years ago.

All they want is justice. Led by Ding Zilin (who was nominated for a Nobel peace prize), they face great personal risk every time they speak out. They've suffered detentions, repeated interrogations, and prolonged house arrest. It's a long, dangerous, and all too lonely campaign.

We can never restore what they've lost. But this Mothers' Day in China, we can show these brave women just how big their global family really is, and how much we appreciate their courageous stand for justice.

If you take a moment to fill out a Mothers' Day card online, we'll deliver your comments directly to the Tiananmen Mothers by Chinese Mothers' Day. Just click below to complete and send your card:

Click here to send your card

This Mothers' day in China, let's take a moment to show the Tiananmen mothers that on this day -- which has become so bitter sweet for them - they are not forgotten. They are never alone.

Please fill out your card today.

Thank you,

Kate Allen

Director, Amnesty International UK

 

Email 2

Show your support for the Tiananmen Mothers

Dear friend of Amnesty,

On May 11, Mothers' Day in China, we delivered over 5000 Mothers' Day messages from Amnesty supporters across the UK to the Tiananmen Mothers – a group of predominately Chinese women whose children were killed in the military crackdown of June 3-4,1989 in Beijing. Your kind words touched their hearts; thank you for your solidarity. Now we must speak up for justice and take the next step.

For 19 years, the Mothers' pleas for justice have been ignored or repressed by the Chinese authorities. But the Beijing Olympics are shining a historic spotlight on China and international pressure can really get results.

So today, we're launching an urgent new petition to the Chinese government supporting the Tiananmen Mothers' simple demands – like the freedom to publicly mourn for their children without harassment, and a fair investigation of the military's actions. Please click below to add your name to the petition right now:

Click here to sign our petition

This is no ordinary petition. First, we'll collect signatures every way we can until 4th June, the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. That Wednesday, we'll gather outside the Chinese Embassy in London, with the international press looking on. For the first 5000 signatures we receive, we'll place a rose on our unofficial memorial by the Chinese Embassy.

And, if you can contribute £20 to help fund this effort, we'll add a full 10 rose bouquet – a symbol of the Tiananmen Mothers ongoing struggle for justice – to symbolise your strong support.

This is a huge opportunity to show the Chinese government, the Olympic movement, and people all over the world just how much support the Tiananmen Mothers really have. They have waited 19 years for justice – haven't they waited long enough?

We can help end the wait. Please sign the petition today, and then forward this note to your friends and family so they can sign as well.

Click here to sign our petition

Thank you, as always, for defending what's right.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

Amnesty International

P.S. I wanted to share with you just a couple of the 5000+ Mothers Day messages we passed on from the Amnesty UK community. Sometimes, there's nothing more important than simply knowing you're not alone. And for the Tiananmen Mothers, your words left no doubt. Thank you again. (And don't forget to sign the petition defending their rights.)

“I remember your children and now I have a daughter who is politically active and carries banners, just like them. I don't know how you find the strength to bear your loss - you have my deep admiration and sympathy. May your efforts bring the justice you seek. I am standing shoulder to shoulder with you all, mindful that you are the best and strongest mothers on our earth. Anne”

“As a mother and a grandmother, my heart goes out to you for your loss, all of my thoughts and hopes are with you as you seek justice. I admire your courage. In solidarity, Audrey”

Email 4

Over 10,000 roses. Come demonstrate on 4th June

Join our demonstration

Make your voices heard, in London and across the UK.

Dear friend,

The Amnesty UK community has blown away all expectations. Together, we've gathered well over 10,000 petition signatures for the Tiananmen Mothers and chipped in for hundreds of bouquets -simply amazing. Now it's time to take our message straight to the Chinese Authorities, and we need your help.

Please join us this Wednesday, 4th June to deliver our petition and place over 10,000 roses outside the Chinese embassy-each one representing another Amnesty supporter standing up for justice with the Tiananmen mothers. The international press will be on hand and the Chinese government will be watching closely, so we need a big crowd to show overwhelming public support. Can you join us this Wednesday evening in London?

WHAT: Demonstration for the Tiananmen Mothers and human rights in China

WHEN: Wednesday, June 4th. 6:00 - 7:00 PM.

WHERE: Chinese Embassy, 49-51 Portland Place, London W1B 1JL. Click here for map.

(Near the Regents Park & Great Portland St. Tubes on the Bakerloo, Circle, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City lines)

MAJOR SPEAKERS: Wei Jingsheng, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition; Xie Ze, Director, Friends of Tiananmen Mothers in the UK; and Shao Jiang, former student leader from Tiananmen Square 1989.

Please join us to add your voice to this crucial event. You're also encouraged to bring a rose, and make a flag, a headband or a t-shirt, instructions and templates are available for download here. And don't forget to forward the invitation to your friends and family who might also be interested in standing in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers.

Can't make it to London? Click here to see a list of local demos planned in other cities across the UK.

This Wednesday is the 19-year anniversary of the brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square. We gather on this day to appeal for justice for the Tiananmen mothers and all the Chinese people whose human rights are in jeopardy. The Director of Friends of the Tiananmen Mothers UK, Xie Ze, describes it below:

"In 1989 hundreds of people, including my cousin Wang Nan, were killed because they stood up for justice and equality. Every day since, their families have sought justice. We are still waiting...

What we have lost can never be restored. But this gathering today shows that we are not alone."

This is a huge opportunity for people all over the world to show just how much support the Tiananmen Mothers really have. They have waited 19 years for justice - we want that wait to end. Please join us on Wednesday evening, in London or at a city near you.

Together, we can begin to transform this day from a tragic anniversary into a historic step forward for human rights in China, in Britain and around the world.

I hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

P.S. If you haven't signed the petition or contributed for a bouquet, there's still time to be counted before Wednesday's big demonstration. But you have to act fast. You can still add your name here, or follow this link if you have already signed but wish to make a donation. 

Email 5

Tiananmen crackdown - the struggle for justice continues

Thank you

Your interest and support has proved the Tiananmen Mothers are not alone

Dear friend of Amnesty,

Last Wednesday, the Tiananmen Mothers were yet again denied the freedom to mourn for their children on the 19th anniversary of the brutal Tiananmen Square military crackdown - the day their children died. But this year, we stood strong in support of the Tiananmen Mothers.

On 4th June, nearly 2,000 Amnesty UK supporters gathered to lay thousands of roses in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers outside the Chinese Embassy in London. There were also simultaneous local demonstrations across the UK; all carrying the simple message: Justice for the Tiananmen Mothers and human rights for all the people of China. And we were heard -- by governments, the media and people throughout the UK and across the world. To continue this fight for the Tiananmen Mothers - and for human rights around the world-- we need your help.

Please join Amnesty International today - let's keep up the fight

On 30th May, Ding Zilin managed to get a letter out to all the supporters of the Tiananmen Mothers around the world. She stated "In the passing of time, such gathering is gaining significance not only as respect for the dead but also as hope for the future. I would like to thank you all for this, again on behalf of every member of the Tiananmen Mothers." See the impact of our strong united voice, watch footage of the poignant London demonstration (video courtesy of Friction.tv, Flash required)

So what's next? We're going to keep campaigning for justice for the Tiananmen Mothers, and for human rights for all the people of China. Your support will enable us to rapidly mobilise in the event of domestic Chinese protests being prevented or violently suppressed by the Chinese Authorities, in the count-down to the Olympics, during or after the games.

AIUK's Human Rights for China campaign will continue until mid June 2009 and beyond the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Crackdown. But our impact depends on contributions from people like you.

It's been an amazing month for the Amnesty UK community -- you have so much to be proud of. Here's a quick summary of what we did together:

- We wrote and delivered over 5,000 Mothers Day cards to the Tiananmen Mothers, offering vital solidarity at a difficult time.

- We collected over 13,000 signatures (blowing away our goal) supporting the Tiananmen Mothers' simple demands, like the freedom to publicly mourn and a fair investigation into 1989's violent military crackdown on peaceful protestors.

- We gathered over 2,000 supporters in London and hundreds more in towns & cities across the UK to lay down solidarity roses.

-We made our voices heard, speaking directly to the Chinese authorities and generating media stories in the UK, Europe, the United States, Hong Kong and across the globe.

This is what the Amnesty UK community is capable of in just a few short weeks. If you believe in this kind of action, please make a small online contribution, it costs as little as £2 per month to become a full member of Amnesty International.

Click here to join

Thank you, so much, for being part of the team.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

Amnesty International.

Ben Brandzel is a leading international practitioner, trainer and writer in the field of progressive online organizing. He is currently the Director of Incubation and International Programs at Citizen Engagement Lab.

Facebook released a preview version of Facebook insights – its reporting package - in November 2011.

I’ve digested some of the things I’ve read over the past few weeks to pick out the main differences – largely two new stats: 'people talking about' and 'virality'.

This 3-minute video gives a good explanation of the updates.

New dashboard

The dashboard details your:

• total likes - people who have liked your page
• friends of fans - your potential reach
• people talking about this - unique people who have created content relating to your page such as a comment, 'like' or photo tag
• weekly total reach – the total number of people who have seen content relating to your page (includes ads/sponsored stories)

This is an example of Which? Action’s dashboard. (You're stuck with the date range Facebook chooses to show you – usually the current week.)

 

Viral reach

This new stat allows you to see the number of people who saw a story and interacted with it and, as a result, the number of their friends it reached, expanding awareness of your page and organisation.

This allows you to tailor your activity by learning which posts get the most people talking about issues, or have the greatest virality stats.

For example, pictures of our cupcake delivery to the Treasury went down a treat:

Pros:

Focus on engagement - The data allows you to move on from a concern just with the number of people liking your page, to the quality of your content and user engagement.

Better feedback on content – You get information which helps you work out what works and what doesn't with your posts.

Cons:

3 months data only - Facebook can only report on the past 3 months of data so you have to be disciplined in keeping an external record of the data so you don’t lose anything.

Need 30+ people - You need over 30 people to interact with your page that week to pull any engagement stats, so pages with just a few fans will struggle to get stats.  

Twitter is becoming a way for people to discuss programmes as they're broadcast, and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic are tapping into it. As you'll have seen – many shows broadcast a suggested hashtag for viewers to use to share comments and thoughts.

At Greenpeace, we've done a small amount of live tweeting during TV shows to join in the discussions happening on social media and hopefully capitalise in a small way on interest generated by the show. 

Make sure it's relevant

It's worth choosing the programmes or events you want to jump on with some care - not just to avoid the appearance of bandwagon jumping but also to keep it novel and fresh for your followers.

The shows we've chosen have all been relevant to our key campaign topics - such as Channel 4's Fish Fight and the BBC's Frozen Planet and that's vital in making it worthwhile. Forcing a campaign message into a discussion that isn't relevant is going to turn more people off than it attracts, and will be blatantly opportunistic, like jumping on an irrelevant trending topic. (Ok, it's opportunistic anyway!)

You can see a selection of our tweets in this #frozenplanet Storify. 

Bring something to the conversation

We've learnt to avoid having campaign messages or links in every message. Instead, talk about what's going on on-screen, respond to comments made by others, be part of the audience. Humour works well, and links to related content can also be well received - links to Greenpeace images from the Arctic went down very well during Frozen Planet. Perhaps leave your campaign ask until the end of the programme - 'if this has made you think, why not do something about it?'

For Frozen Planet we were lucky enough to have two activists involved who had just returned from an expedition to the Arctic. This meant they had fresh information to contribute, and could tweet with real authority.

Make sure you're well-resourced

It's surprisingly difficult to watch TV and maintain a Twitter presence at the same time. You don't really get to see much of the show, so it might be an idea to watch with someone else who can fill you in on the bits you miss.

Plan ahead

Lining up a few messages or links to push out is very useful, so you're not scrabbling around for them during the live tweeting. It also gives you more space to think about what would be most useful or popular.

Getting in early is also a good tactic. Just before the final episode of Frozen Planet, we posted "We <3 #FrozenPlanet (and Sir David Attenborough) RT if you agree" which got over 400 retweets, placing it in the top tweets for the hashtag and making Greenpeace a prominent voice in the discussion. Cheesy, but it worked.

Think about records

Twitter is ephemeral by nature, but if you want to keep some information about what you've done, for internal reports for example, you might want to use a service like Storify to allow you to take note of the highlights.

Jamie Woolley is Web Producer at Greenpeace UK.

At Concern Worldwide UK, we are looking to deepen engagement with a small group of campaigners. Our Unheard Voices campaign currently only engages through e-actions and sporadic invitations to attend events, but we’d like people to be more involved. This will be a big challenge as we have limited resources.

Planning will be a long process and won’t begin until 2012, but to inform our thinking, we did a small survey to look at how other UK organisations engage their campaigners. A big thank you to staff from ActionAid UK, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Cancer Research UK, CARE International UK, Greenpeace UK and Results UK who gave up time to help us out. Here is some of what we learned from them. 

Concern staff at the ‘Put People First’ march in 2009, at the time of the G20 summit.

Engagement

Most of the organisations surveyed engaged campaigners in quick campaigning activities, as well as offering deeper engagement to more dedicated activists. Generally they all try to keep focused by only pushing on one campaign at a time.

‘Super-activists’

Organisations all aspired to segment their campaigner into different  categories but none did this as well as they would like. Organisations defined 'active' in different ways. For example, one divided campaigners into Level 1 (taking 1-2 campaign actions a year), Level 2 (more active, plus on email) and Level 3 (most engaged). Another organisation’s ‘least engaged’ campaigners don't take actions regularly at all. 

Of the four organisations that did have existing ‘super-activist networks’ of engaged campaigners, two began these through training and preparation in the run up to a large event. Several organisations acknowledged that it would be desirable to recruit engaged campaigners in relevant Ministerial constituencies, but have had very little success – targeting to this extent is obviously very difficult!

Recruitment

Those with higher brand awareness amongst the general public are regularly approached by campaigners asking for ways to get more involved. Several organisations commonly email their supporter base to ask campaigners to become more engaged, or they ask their existing groups to recruit through stalls at appropriate events.

Organisations had emailed the supporter base specifically about becoming more involved, had offered this in place of a campaign action, or included it as a question in a survey. The ask was generally something along the lines of ‘do you want to become more involved in our campaigns?’

Staffing and support

Looking after more engaged campaigners in a structured way took up a lot of staff time for those organisations that did this. All had at least the equivalent of 1 full time staff member looking after these campaigners, and some had several.

Most staff support is provided by phone calls and emails, but one organisation holds regular monthly teleconferences with their groups to discuss that month’s action.

All organisations with more engaged campaigners provide some form of training. This varies from just providing training materials to organising training events and national or regional gatherings which include training.

Inside or out?

It is generally seen as good practice for campaigns to adopt a mixture of insider and outsider tactics, analogous to a ‘carrot and stick’ strategic approach. Insider lobbying meetings, which seek to build relationships, offer ‘carrot’ incentives to decision makers, while large scale protest and direct action seek less to persuade and more to try and force, hence the ‘stick’ analogy.

All the organisations we spoke to supported their campaigners to engage directly with their MPs, ranging from sending emails to organising mass parliamentary lobbies. Some complement this approach with demonstrations, stunts and/or direct action.

Thanks again to all those who helped with the survey. I hope this information is useful to other organisations in a similar position.

Natasha Adams is Campaigns and Parliamentary Officer at Concern Worldwide, UK

Mental illness will affect so many in their lifetime (the stats are as high as one in four), yet often people feel they can’t admit they’re affected by it, let alone talk openly about their mental health. Time to Change campaigns to change attitudes to mental health problems.

The campaign is supported by a social marketing strategy, which has periodic campaign ‘bursts’, using different approaches to help effect public behavioural change.

Last year, we focused on how many people behave in ways that could inadvertently be hurtful to people with mental illness. We set up a social experiment to see how many people would positively respond to a flatshare advert with Erik, once he disclosed that he had depression.

It was a controversial yet successful campaign, and raised many issues with our vocal Facebook followers which they wanted to talk about.

Time to Change on facebook

Facebook has turned out to be a wonderful way of bringing people together and giving them the space to talk with people who all have something in common. A vibrant community has gradually built up on the Time to Change Facebook page, with people who are keen to share their experiences, offer advice to others and who want to debate mental health and discrimination issues.

Working with a subject like mental illness and stigma means that we can have a lot of live, emotional content, but we’ve learned not to be afraid of this, rather to embrace it! If we need to remind people of the community guidelines, we do that publically (it’s on the info section of the Facebook page too). We find that if someone steps out of line, someone else in the community will pick them up on it - great peer-moderation!

Because Erik is a real person with a real-life experience of depression, it put the campaign into a context which people could recognise in their own lives. We decided that rather than Time to Change responding to the many queries and conversations, we should ask Erik himself to give an account of what it was like to take part in this experiment and advertising campaign. So we decided to do a Q&A on the Facebook page. 

How we prepared

We prepped our followers by trailing the Q&A on Twitter and on Facebook in the weeks before, encouraging people to leave their questions in the comments section of the post.

We also set up a profile for Erik, so he didn’t have to speak as Time to Change, and so we could help direct the conversation if it strayed off track, or moderate people’s comments if necessary. We almost never delete people’s comments, and make a point of responding openly and honestly to criticism, only deleting posts which are damaging to the other users.

Managing the Q&A

On the day of the live Facebook Q&A, Erik came into the office and sat next to me using a laptop, so I could moderate whilst he was focussed on responding to the questions. Having questions in advance gave him the chance to prepare, and also let us know the kinds of things people were interested in and the volume of responses. We then asked Erik to reference those questions in his responses – and mix these in with live questions people asked as the Q&A took place.

I kicked it off with a welcome to Erik, and from that post (which went into all our followers’ newsfeeds), people started to leave their comments and questions underneath. And from there, Erik posted up his responses all on the same ‘thread’. (Visitors to the Time to Change page can view posts from Time to Change or posts from everyone else. This helped the Q&A to all remain in one place, making it easy to read and follow.)

Part way through, we put up a fresh post, as the previous thread was getting really long – but also so that people would be reminded that the Q&A was taking place, as it would appear in their news feeds and remind them. (It was at lunch time, so people joined us when they could).

We linked through to our twitter feed as well, with excerpts from the Q&A, so people could join us from there – or not miss out if they couldn’t make it onto Facebook. And as is the nature with Facebook, the Q&A remained up on the wall, so if people had missed it, they could go back to read it and add comments when they had the time.

What happened

As you can see from the comments, people were keen to ask Erik about the social experiment and why he wanted to take part, but they also asked him advice about how to manage depression and the resulting stigma. Erik could speak honestly and knowledgably, and made a powerful impact.

Erik’s response took me by surprise. I was concerned that he may have felt under pressure to defend the social experiment, and be anxious about how public it was (by then we had over 30 thousand followers). But he was so supportive of what we were trying to achieve, and enthused by the tangible, positive difference he was making to people’s lives that he couldn’t have been a better advocate for Time to Change.

He said he actually found the whole Q&A experience very helpful, because he realised he was really connecting with people (albeit keyboard to keyboard, not face to face) and talking with the campaign, which is essentially a large group of people all wanting to end discrimination.

Outcomes

I was so happy at how positive and encouraging the live chat was, and how tangible it made this social movement. The public nature of Facebook meant that our followers were able to share it with their friends, spreading the message to people we couldn’t reach alone.

We’ve repeated the same format for live Q&A chats since, and it’s great to know we can use this model again and again to bring the different voices of the campaign together, breaking down the ‘them and us’ into a united ‘we’. 

Abigail MacDougall is Digital Manager for Time to Change.