Full Spectrum Engagement Building Community Power to Win Campaigns 1
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1 FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT BUILDING COMMUNITY POWER TO WIN CAMPAIGNS 1 FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT, a marriage of effective community-building practices and new engagement tools, is a field-tested strategy for activating grassroots power, targeting decision makers and moving them do the right thing. This engagement framework foregrounds community power and relationship building at a critical time when bots and social media manipulation make authentic distributed communications essential for any campaigner. Full Spectrum Engagement provides modern campaigners with five key principles of engagement and three execution components to help you build community power and win your campaigns. And it’s not just for campaigners: election candidates, fundraisers, marketing and comms people - anyone who is trying to grow their constituency and keep them engaged - will value this approach. Thanks to some high-profile recent success stories, this emerging approach is empowering a new generation of civic actors to feel like they can actually can make a difference again. produced by STEVE ANDERSON with contributions from SHASTI CONRAD TOM LIACAS RYANN MILLER JASON MOGUS ANGUS WONG MEREDITH HOROWSKI CARRIE SARACINI 2 PARTNERS New/Mode is a values-based enterprise that provides targeted online engagement tools to activate grassroots power. NetChange Consulting helps innovators in social change institutions integrate new models of organizing and mobilizing to grow influence, raise funds, build power, and strengthen movements. A trusted advisor to campaigners and senior leaders, we’ve led directed-network campaigns and organizational change projects for some of the most prominent social change organizations and movements across the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Care2 is the world’s largest social network for good, with over 45 million standing together, starting petitions and sharing stories that inspire action. For thousands of leading nonprofit organizations worldwide, Care2 is the preferred source for recruiting new members, supporters and donors online. 3 WHAT IS FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT? 4 WHY DOES ENGAGEMENT MATTER RIGHT NOW? There is a deepening mistrust online and in our political sphere. People from around the world are wondering, “Even if I do something, will anything actually change?” Fake news abounds, and studies have found that trust in NGOs has fallen between 10 and 20 points from previous years. This is why we need to get engagement right. We’re in the midst of a democratic crisis in many areas of the world. Widespread cynicism is making it difficult for us to meet the challenge head on. The Edelman 2017 Trust Barometer1 found that trust in institutions including governments and Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) fell between 10 and 20 points from previous studies, where it was already low. Studies show that young people may feel this lack of trust in traditional institutions even more than others. The deepening mistrust extends into our communities and feeds into what some are calling a global democratic recession. Google’s recent study of civic engagement trends2 notes that the largest block of the population in western democracies is held back from engagement in part because supporters wonder: “Even if I do something, will anything actually change?” In politics, one of the main drivers seems to be a legitimate feeling that elites are in control of the decision-making apparatus3 and that civic access to power no longer exists. Those who turn to NGOs and community groups hoping to see some leverage are often frustrated by the futility of old strategies and tactics, such as repeated symbolic petitions that never seem to move the needle. Research from Social Change Agency4 points to a growing “cycle of mistrust” between campaigning organizations, their supporters and decision-makers. Bucking the larger trends, a small group of high-performing, community-driven campaigns are winning real policy changes and engaging millions of supporters in this mode of political activity. We call this framework for campaigning: FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT. We think the framework, and its emphasis on building real relationships and community power, is essential in this era of mistrust and political corruption. 1 https://www.edelman.com/trust2017/ 2 https://politics.googleblog.com/2015/06/understanding-americas-interested.html 3 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/ 4 https://thesocialchangeagency.org/case-study/lost-voices/ 5 WHAT IS FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT? Full Spectrum Engagement is the combination of strategic principles and multi-channel tactics that together enable campaigners to effectively activate community power, target decision-makers and win. Drawing on the power of networks, Full Spectrum Engagement empowers campaigners to activate supporters by meeting them where they are, helping them recognize their own power and equipping them with the tools to make a powerful impact. As supporters gain skills and confidence through a series of actions, Full Spectrum Engagement opens the way to deeper involvement and gives everyone a serious stake in the campaign. Full Spectrum Engagement also meets decision-makers where they are, using multiple communication channels to surround them with your supporter’s stories and demands. In this way our framework is bidirectional, encouraging campaigners to build meaningful relationships with both your community and the targets of your campaigns. Beyond winning campaigns, we hope that a wider adoption of Full Spectrum Engagement in the political and advocacy sectors will lead to a more engaged public and to renewed democratic institutions. When supporters learn by doing and see that they can still make a difference, we believe this will help rebuild trust, show people the power they have, and provide evidence that we can work together to overcome our shared challenges. 6 WHERE DID THE FULL SPECTRUM ENGAGEMENT FRAMEWORK COME FROM? Our Full Spectrum Engagement framework wouldn’t be possible without a combination of extensive field testing, in-depth primary research, and a review of literature on digital campaigning and civic engagement. The Full Spectrum framework detailed here was developed from our own experience running hundreds of mass civic engagement campaigns at a national and international level through OpenMedia, SumOfUs, Beyond the Bomb, StopAdani and others. In particular, some of us helped build OpenMedia1 into a leader in digital rights campaigning by bringing together over one million supporters from 155 countries to fight a series of landmark policy battles on Net Neutrality, privacy and free expression. Over time our experience has helped identify the right conditions for effective mobilization and community building. We have also examined trends across New/Mode’s campaigning platform2 subscribers and their 1,710 campaigns, which when combined with other sources, gave us a view of millions of civic actions. Working with other senior campaign strategists, we also engaged in big listening and learning exercises, talking to many in New/Mode’s subscriber base, allied strategists, and technology suppliers. 1 https://openmedia.org/ 2 https://www.newmode.net/ 7 SOURCES AND INSPIRATION This framework benefits from an extensive review of literature. We’re building on research behind new ideas such as: • Big Organizing1 • New Power2 • Engagement Organizing3 • Directed-Network Campaigning4 • The Missing Middle5 along with primary research by: • Google Civic Engagement Trends6 • Edelman’s Trust Barometer7 • The Change Agency8 • McKinsey&Company9 • Apathy is Boring10 • Samara11 Finally, we made extensive use of: • The OpenGov Foundation report12 which followed 58 US Congressional staffers to study the impact of advocacy campaigns • Social Change Agency’s research13 from hundreds of Parliamentarians, technology providers, NGOs and supporters spanning Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK 1 http://www.rulesforrevolutionaries.org/ 2 https://thisisnewpower.com/ 3 http://engagement-organizing.org/ 4 http://netchange.co/networked-change 5 http://seachangestrategies.com/missing-middle/ 6 https://politics.googleblog.com/2015/06/understanding-americas-interested.html 7 https://www.edelman.com/trust2017/ 8 http://www.thechangeagency.org/stop-adani-and-the-suffragettes-reflections-on-targets-and-tactics-joel-dignam/ 9 https://mck.co/2J4D5lz 10 https://bit.ly/2x6BbfH 11 https://www.samaracanada.com/research/active-citizenship/message-not-delivered/youth-are-not-apathetic-in- fographic 12 https://v2v.opengovfoundation.org/ 13 https://thesocialchangeagency.org/reports/ 8 THE FIVE PRINCIPLES OF ENGAGEMENT BUILDING THE FOUNDATION In our experience, no matter how clever the strategy or how efficient the tools, no big campaign win was possible without the support of an engaged community of supporters. That means smart campaigners should start by thinking of how they can integrate strategic engagement principles into their strategy with the primary aim of empowering a community of supporters and deepening relationships. The following engagement principles, drawn from years of thinking and doing, are a way to start campaigning in this new, more effective way. Let’s get started. 9 PRINCIPLE 1: SHOW HOW CHANGE IS POSSIBLE SHOW A CLEAR THEORY OF CHANGE AND HOW YOUR PLAN - POWERED BY THEIR ACTIONS - LEADS TO THE GOAL. Start by proposing to your supporters that the political system and society are malleable and that their civic actions in community can have an enormous