Topic

Campaign Strategy

Campaign Strategy

Resources to enable groups to plan effective campaigns and other social change projects. These tools will help you assess the social and political situation, identify opportunities, map stakeholders, develop clear objectives, and come up with creative and powerful tactics.

You will find additional strategy guidance and inspiration in the case studies section.

People walk across an open square. The ground is painted with a calendar depicting days of the week and dates.

Tactical Timeline Guide

A process guide to be used in training workshops and planning sessions to develop campaign strategy. A tactical timeline can support the development of a strategy designed to win over third-party support. This exercise needs to be used after the spectrum of allies exercise. It can also be used to enrich a critical path.

Diagram with two intersecting axis. The horizontal line is marked 'Strongly oppose your objective' on the left and 'Strongly support your objective' on the right. The vertical axis is marked 'More power & influence' at the top and 'Less power & influence' at the bottom.

Power Mapping Guide

A process guide to be used in training workshops and planning sessions to help campaigners consider the social and political context within which they are developing strategy and creatively consider allies, opponents, targets and constituents prior to embarking on a campaign.

Photograph of multiple pairs of metal scissors.

How to cut the issue into bite sized chunks

A process guide to be used in training workshops and planning sessions to develop campaign strategy. This process will help reduce the scope of campaigns in order to focus efforts on where change can really be achieved, and consider the possible consequences of working on one part of a problem rather than others.

Picture of a red manual.

The People Power Manual: Campaign Strategy Guide

Social movements become more powerful as more people are equipped to analyse their political context, consider paths to change and mindfully plan tactics. This Campaign Strategy Guide equips activist educators to facilitate a range of participatory exercises with activists, organisers and citizens. It can also be used as a do-it-yourself guide for campaigners.

Cover of Original Power's Building Power Guide - features a drawing of a turtle in red.

Campaigning to Solve Our Issues

This is an introduction to campaigning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Campaigning involves activating, mobilising, and organising people to make change and influence others to make change. This is an excerpt from Building Power: A Guide for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Who Want to Change the World.

Diagram of 5 concentric circles labelled from outside to inside: Community; Crowd; Congregation; Committed; Core.

Circles of Commitment: A Model of Engagement

This article outlines a model for thinking about the different levels of engagement of people involved in a campaign; what kinds of things people at each level can do, and what support they need to do those things; and how people can move from one level to another, aka a ‘ladder of engagement’. It also has implications for how we think about events and capacity, and for how well a campaign can scale.

Cover of the book 'How Organizations Develop Activists'.

How Organizations Develop Activists: A book review

Joel Dignam reviews Hahrie Han’s How Organizations Develop Activists. A key finding of Han’s research is that high-engagement chapters practise both organizing and mobilizing. The Voice for Indi campaign is considered as an Australian example of combining these two approaches.

A number of African American students sit along a lunch counter.

Lessons from the Greensboro Student Sit-ins

The Greensboro student sit-ins had nonviolence at their heart and succeeded, not only in their immediate goal, but also in building a lasting organisation in the SNCC. It stands now as yet another example of the successful use of nonviolence to stand against oppression.

A large crowd marches behind a banner reading 'Peoples Climate March'. The march is led by First Nations people. Marchers hold colourful placards depicting sunflowers. A large banner is held high reading 'Frontlines of Impact, Forefront of Change'.

Networked Change Campaign Grid

The Networked Change Campaign Grid provides a clear path for integrating top-performing approaches into your strategic planning and design process. This worksheet helps you apply the principles of the directed-network campaigning.

Protestors walk across the street with Stop Adani banners and placards.

Six building blocks of distributed organizing campaigns

To support organizations rolling out distributed organizing efforts, NetChange have put together a new campaign design framework drawn from best practices of the dozens of successful networks they have advised or studied closely.

Aerial photograph of huge crowd filling Federation Square and surrounding streets.

Tips for Turnout from Your Rights at Work

The Your Rights at Work campaign ran from 2005 to 2007 and included some of the largest mobilisations in Australian social movement history. This article draws out some of the lessons in relation to ensuring strong turn-out at rallies and other events.

Image of protesters gathered with flags tied around them

Learning From a Tibet Campaign Win

Kyinzom Dhongdue from Australian Tibet Council shares the story of a campaign win and the lessons that can be taken from it. The country’s oldest university cancelled a talk by the Dalai Lama. Within a week, the University of Sydney backtracked and released a hasty statement welcoming His Holiness on campus in June. The short campaign shows the value of rapid response people power tactics.

Photograph of hand drawn letters in blue and black on a white background. The word is 'Change'.

Elements of a Theory of Change

Getting clear on our theory of change can be personally empowering as well as important for alignment within organisations and campaigns. These notes are from a workshop by Naomi Blackburn, drawing on the Resource Manual for a Living Revolution and Australian Student Environment Network curriculum.

Protestor holding Stop Adani sign on stage with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Stop Adani and the Suffragettes Reflections on targets and tactics

Joel Dignam analyses two campaign moments: Stop Adani’s targeting of the ALP in the 2018 Queensland state election and the UK women’s suffrage campaign targeting of Liberals in 1905. The lesson? Target those most likely to give you what you want, and sometimes that means creating political risk for them.

Protestors, some wearing yellow Greenpeace shirts, some in prison orange, pose for a photo holding signs in Spanish, and photographs of the activists detained by Russia known as the Arctic 30.

The 21st-Century Advocacy Playbook

Build strong advocacy teams using this checklist to assess your team’s readiness to campaign for—and win—change in the modern landscape.

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