strategy
Reveille for Radicals
Legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky inspired a generation of activists and politicians with Reveille for Radicals, the original handbook for social change. Alinsky writes both practically and philosophically, never wavering from his belief that the American...
Assessing policy windows
This 90 minute workshop draws on John Kingdon’s theories about policy windows and a set of nine ‘conditions’ that increase the chances that our policy advocacy campaigns will succeed. Participants reflect on and critically analyse their current campaigns, and consider...
People Power Manual: Campaign Strategy Guide
The Campaign Strategy Guide was the first instalment of the People Power Manual, a resource created for organisers, activist educators and facilitators. Campaign strategy needn’t be mystifying, lonely or stressful. Social movements become more powerful as more people...
Assessing advocacy
This new framework provides a methodical and organised approach to managing some of philanthropy’s most complicated endeavours. The framework evaluates projects for nine conditions, from the presence of effective champions to favourable timing. It complements and...
How We Make Change is Changing: Open Source Campaigns for the 21st Century
During the Obama presidential campaigns, a lot of attention was paid to how data fuelled the strategy. Twitter was described as central to the Egyptian revolution and Arab Spring. But social movements not only take advantage of new technological tools, the process of...
Post UK Election: Next Steps for Campaigners
Chris Rose writes: ‘Lots of UK campaigners, who tend not to be Conservatives, will no doubt be feeling deflated and dispirited at the way the UK General Election turned out. So if you are running a campaigning NGO, what should you do ? There will be no shortage...
The New Now: Working Together for Social Change
The recent victories related to the rights of LGBT people have been astounding. The success on LGBT issues, especially marriage equality, is often attributed to a coordinated, unwavering, laser-sharp focus on changing policy at both the state and federal levels. So it...
The just enough guide for campaigners
In the face of a rapidly changing world, even the savviest nonprofits and foundations needed a boost to keep up and win their issue campaigns. Recognizing this, in 2008 we set about gathering insights from dozens of strategists, who knew more than a thing or two about...
Blueprint for revolution
In Blueprint for Revolution, Srdja Popovic outlines his philosophy for implementing peaceful world change and provides a model for activists everywhere through stories of his own experience toppling dictatorships (peacefully) and of smaller examples of social change...
Campaign Strategy Chris Rose 1 of 3
This short YouTube presents a brief introduction to effective campaigning as outlined in his book.
Planning to win | DIY campaign planning platform
If you are looking to win support for an issue, impact policy, or get a corporation or government body to change its policies, this guide is for you. This guide is designed to work best with issue campaigns, policy campaigns and corporate campaigns. It could also help...
‘What leads to’ (map and share your theory of change)
whatleads.to makes working together to make real change simple. It lets you visualise your aims and how you’re going to achieve them really quickly. It’s derived from the idea of a Theory of Change, which is a process where you define what your ultimate...
Developing a strategy: Advocacy’s road map
A good strategy, like a good route through new terrain, doesn’t just rely on the roads you know. It starts where you are, ends where you want to go and provides a good, plausible route in between… Without a strategy, or with a poor one, you are more likely to...
Core dilemmas of organizing: How do community organizers think?
Every tradition of social action has its own ways of making sense of the world. Community organizing, for example, generally understands social action as an ongoing series of battles over power and resources and the less powerful as a repository of potential agency....
The tactic star: A tool for planning and evaluating tactics
Choosing or inventing a successful tactic often involves some intuition and guesswork — and always risk. But the more we study our contexts, the better we become at judging when to pull which punches. Projecting and measuring success is complex, but we should not let...
The mobilisation integration toolkit
Tools and tactics being used by Greenpeace to develop successful mobilisation strategies and people-powered campaigns.
The AIDEX 91 protest: A case study of obstructive direct action
Ian McIntyre’s 2011 Masters thesis and oral history on the 1991 AIDEX protest. This thesis will provide a history of the AIDEX ‘91 protest. In doing so it will seek to understand why the issue of arms fairs arose at this time as well as how and why a particular...
Strategy tools
A collection of tools and resources relevant to organising and agenda setting, planning, implementing, learning and negotiating.