Introduction
Trying to get your campaign moving fast, and need your thoughts in once place? This is a simple template for designing an advocacy campaign that should help.
The questions in the template are the minimum you should know before you commence a campaign – but if you answer them all thoroughly, you should be right to get started. There are other great tools that this process, like critical path, which can be helpful between slide 7 and slide 8, or this template from the MidWest Academy.
But I find these basic questions to be enough to get you started – and the questions often show you what you don’t know yet and need to find out.
Make your own copy of the template, get started and let me know what you think in the comments!
Template
Permalink to the template is here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fsj8F6Kc6-zd-CthZxq5lljmI3ffl-vG1MkA4xUE-Do/edit#slide=id.p
It includes:
Why this campaign?
- You should be able to summarise the problem you are trying to solve in two lines (or, even better, one Tweet)
- What is the problem you are trying to solve?
- Why does it matter?
How will you know you’ve fixed that problem?
- What does victory look like?
- This should be a SMART objective – that is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound (These are the details of the solution to the problem you framed in the last slide)
- Who is your target?
- Who is the key decision maker who can make this happen? (There might be more than one)
- What (exactly) are you asking them to do and by when?
- Be specific!
Who is involved in this problem and this campaign?
Powermap all of the characters involved in story of the campaign. There will be four classes of character, in four different quadrants: powerful opposed, powerful in support, weak opposed, weak in support. Then begin to think about where you want to shift them to – this is the beginning of your strategy.
- Do you want to weaken your powerful opposition? or would it be better to shift them into being strong, but in support?
- If your allies are weak, can you make them stronger?
What are your key messages for the public, your supporters and your target?
Use a “Message grid” to plot what your key opponents say about you, and what you say about them.
Here’s some very basic examples – real ones should be substantially more detailed:
Then when you know what you say about each other, what are the stories you need to tell to make your case clear and their case defunct? What are your key messages – in the form of a Challenge, Choice, and Outcome to…:
- Your Supporters
- The Public
- Your target
What is your strategy?
(This is where it all comes together)
Vision goal objectives tactics
THEN: Execute! Execute! Execute!
“90% of campaigning is just getting it done” a wise woman
Explore Further
- Read more about Campaign Strategy
- Looking for more Templates?
- Campaign Strategy Planning Template
- 7 tools for defining your campaign problem