In Cures
for Ailing Organizations I show readers how to strengthen their
leadership team and organization’s structure. But I also emphasize that without
accomplishments, a nonprofit cannot survive. Nonprofits are founded to make
specific changes for the communities they serve. The founders saw a problem
that was serious enough to go to the trouble of creating an organization to
solve it.
Sometimes such societal changes can occur over the long term
through ongoing programs. Nonprofits that provide services to particular sorts
of people are one example where ongoing programs are the best choice.
However, most other types of nonprofits need the skills to
force positive change through advocacy and proper campaign planning. The status
quo is not easily changed so a good shove is usually needed. These skills
enable the nonprofit’s leaders to choose the best campaigns and carry them
through to success. Succeeding with a campaign is one of the best ways to grow
a nonprofit because those whose lives were improved by the campaign will want
to help the nonprofit accomplish even more.
A few examples of well-known campaigns that succeeded in
improving lives:
- The lunch counter sit-ins to repeal the whites-only service at Woolworths.
- The Indian Independence Movement when Mohandas Gandhi and his team showed the British the door.
Great campaigns don’t have to be as high-profile as these.
In fact, some take place in just a few meetings with the appropriate officials.
Campaigns can also be used for malicious purposes, so
understanding the way they work can help nonprofit leaders identify and stop harmful
campaigns before they gain momentum. One example of a malicious campaign that
is particularly galling to One Street is the successful adoption of the car industry’s invention
of jaywalking to criminalize those using the public right-of-way without a
car. No pedestrian or bicycle nonprofits existed at that time because there
hadn’t been a need. So the campaign went unchecked and to this day, anyone who
sets foot in an American street is at best mocked and at worst hauled off to
jail. I have to admit, it was a damn clever campaign.
Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of exploring campaign
planning processes in detail for a very special project in eastern Ukraine. A
few months ago leaders of the Kyiv Cyclists’ Association invited me to come to
Ukraine to teach three campaign planning workshops in three eastern cities. The
goal of the project is to help reunite the country through partnerships toward positive
change, in this case, bicycle and sustainable transportation campaigns.
All three workshops had to be completed by early March in
order to meet with the requirements of USAID, the funder of the project. We
realized the timeframe wouldn’t work for my teaching the workshops, so we had
to find a way to transfer my campaign planning workshop experience to them so
that they could teach them themselves. (Read more about the project in our
upcoming Jan-Feb 2016
E-newsletter).
Through several Skype meetings and many emails Viktor, Ira,
and I worked through best practices and the most common difficulties of these
workshops to ensure theirs would start at a high level. We also created a
customized workbook for attendees, which Viktor and Ira translated into
Ukrainian Cyrillic.
Teaching someone else is one of the best ways to review and learn
even more about a favorite topic. I’ve posted the basics on One Street’s Campaign
Planning page, but training Viktor and Ira meant a far deeper analysis. Through
this project, I have been reminded of the importance of:
- Ensuring that only leaders of nonprofits attend the campaign planning workshop because only they will know what their organization can and cannot take on.
- Distinguishing between campaigns and programs.
- Choosing a campaign that is likely to win.
- Remembering that problem development is always the most difficult for attendees, so plenty of time must be given for this early step.
- Emphasizing that attendees are the experts for their unique situations and need workshop time to work through the details, so case studies from other areas are all but useless.
- Taking the time to allow attendees to fully assess who in their community has the power to solve the problem they have defined.
- Showing attendees the value of completing a comprehensive campaign plan before launching it. I like to use a favorite quote from Sun Tzu in The Art of War, 6th century BC: “The successful strategist only enters battle after the battle has been won.”
Two of the three workshops have already taken place and the
results are outstanding! See them in the E-newsletter article linked above.
Most notable are the clear goals for growing each of their nonprofits through
their campaigns and using them as springboards for even more positive change in
their troubled area.
I’ve learned many times over the years, and especially over
these past few months, that campaign planning is one of the most valuable tools
for energizing nonprofits and ensuring they forge a confident path toward the
mission their founders intended. Eastern Ukraine is becoming a proven model of
this through this inspiring project.
If you would like more info on One Street's Campaign Planning efforts please use the comments box below.
Sue
