Tips Archives - The Commons

Naming an Advocacy Campaign

How do you name an advocacy campaign? Here is a guide, tips, and thoughts to help you with the process of naming a campaign.

Lessons from the Grassroots Campaign Playbook

What are the key elements of a grassroots campaign? Tips and tricks learnt from working with grassroots activists.

Photo of a woman at a rally taken from behind. She is wearing a grey hoodie sweatshirt and holding a sign that reads 'Girls just want to have FUNdamental rights'

Tips for Campaigning Women

Tips for setting up strong groups and effective campaigns, provided by Holly Hammond to the WELA program.

Singers wearing hats advocating “No Torture” line up before performing at a Human Rights Day event outside of Mogadishu Central Prison in Somalia.

Campaigning in High-Risk Environments

How do organisers and campaigners keep working for social justice when the environment they’re in becomes high risk?

close up of red button on panel of buttons

Creating a Rapid Response System

A network of allies and a checklist can protect victims of political persecution and build movement power.

A Preface to Advocacy: What You Should Know as an Advocate

Practical tips from experienced advocates. Collated by Erin Gilmer to empower any person entering the advocacy space to have the knowledge they need to make the biggest impact.

Workers with hard hats and fluro safety vests on top of building installing solar panels. Two workers are kneeling down on solar panels and two workers are looking at a plan.

Just get on with it: Talking about climate change and economics

This guide is designed to provide practical advice about how to effectively talk about climate change during a global pandemic and recession. It’s based on the findings of an extensive research project.

pencil drawing of a lightbulb with a question mark inside the bulb

Campaign Research 101

An introduction to the basics of campaign research for social change advocates. Campaign research helps you get the right message, in the right format, delivered by the right messengers, to the right audience through the right channels.

Tips for Policy Writing

Policy writing is a key part of the work of not-for-profit individuals and organisations. Follow these tips to do it well.

close up of male hand holding pen filling in survey form

Forming Survey Questions

Need to keep the data safe for your research project? Here is a useful data security protocol from the Datacenter for Research Justice.

2 women and 3 men sitting in a room in conversation with sticky notes on the back wall

Research Methodologies Comparison Sheet

Are you running a research project and need to know what research methodology to use? Here is a handy document that runs through the pros and cons of each methodology from DataCenter.

The Tactic Star

The Tactic Star is a tool for planning and evaluating tactics, it names some key factors that change agents should consider when determining their tactics.

Fundraising Checklist – How to win grants funding

How do you make your grant application stand out? Tick every box in this checklist and you’ll be one step closer to success.

dog and person running in charity marathon

How to organise a special fundraising event

How to make sure your special fundraising event does make money and not just break even. Plan your event properly and save lots of heartache later on.

Icon showing a computer screen with heart and graph representing crowdfunding

How to get started with Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a great way to get funding for a specific project. It can bring in much-needed funding and attract a whole new audience of supporters.

Black and white cartoon drawing depicting actions during social distancing. A person leans out of a car talking through a loud hailer, fists poke out of an apartment building, there are sound lines depicting music.

Action tactics during the time of social distancing

Blackout Collective and The Ruckus Society have joined together to make this user-friendly handout about action tactics you can take during the time of social distancing. Includes car bloc, noise demo, twitter storm, phone jam and physically distanced rally.

Protestors wearing masks and holding placards gathering for a Black Lives Matter rally.

Make Change: How-To’s for Effective Peaceful Protest

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement this article includes tips and links to make what you need for safe, peaceful, and effective protest. Includes signs, effigies, banners, street art, ways to manage pepper spray and tear gas, surveillance considerations and interactions with police liaison.

A woman sits at a laptop, wearing headphones. She sits in front of a window showing a city skyline.

4 tips for digital organizing when our communities are physically isolating

How to organize online to keep your movement and momentum going during the Covid-19 pandemic, including mass calls, digital strikes, livestreams, virtual town hall meetings, one-click emailing and more.

Tips for moving to online meetings for the first time

Tips for organisations, collectives and grassroots groups first engaging in online meetings. Includes tips for facilitators and participants.

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