Topic

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.

The People Power Manual: Campaign Strategy Guide

The Campaign Strategy Guide is part of the People Power Manual, a resource created for organisers, activist educators and facilitators.

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 the Circles of Commitment also known as the Ladder of Engagement. 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’.

Cover of 'This is an Uprising'. Includes photograph of a person holding an umbrella surrounded by tear gas.

This is an Uprising: How nonviolent revolt is shaping the twenty first century: Book review

Joel Dignam reviews Paul and Mark Engler’s 2016 book This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century. TIAU is an analysis of social change, how it has occurred, and how contemporary campaigners may make it occur again.

Cover of the book 'How Organizations Develop Activists'.

How Organizations Develop Activists: Book Review

Joel Dignam reviews Hahrie Han’s How Organizations Develop Activists. A key finding of Han’s research is that high-engagement organizations 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.

Networked Change Campaign Grid: Worksheets

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.

The Activists’ Handbook: A step-by-step guide to participatory democracy – Book Review

Aidan Rickett’s The Activists’ Handbook is a powerful guide to grassroots activism. Naomi Blackburn reviews the early chapters of the book which are particularly relevant to Theories of Change.

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.