ILGA-Europe Communications Needs Assessment Final Report Revised Draft 14 April Background George Perlov Consulting recently completed a Communications Needs Assessment for ILGA- Europe (IE). The goals for this part of the project were to: • Obtain an overall understanding of how LGBTI organisations and groups understand strategic communications, including how it is linked to advocacy strategies, alliance building, and public campaigning. • Obtain an overall understanding of how LGBTI organisations and groups in Europe and Central Asia communicate. • Identify the main challenges around communications experienced by LGBTI organisations and groups in Europe and Central Asia, including from an organisational and resources perspective. • Identify gaps and needs around knowledge, skills, capacity of the field in relation to communications, and in particular. Methodology The findings and recommendations in this report were informed by data collected from six sources. Our goal was to be as representative and inclusive as possible in terms of the organisations and individuals from whom we collected data. Through the survey and interviews together we reached a total of 45 countries. • Literature Review: A review of the literature on communications needs assessments globally and other assessments of the regional LGBTI activist community conducted previously by IE. • Pre-survey interviews: Interviews with leaders at two organisations in France and Croatia to inform the survey, as well as a small focus group of IE staff. • Survey: A 25-minute survey of LGBTI organisations across Europe and Central Asia. Participants were mostly recruited by email from ILGA-Europe’s database and social media outreach by IE staff and included either the executive director or head of communications at an organisation. The survey was fielded from October 21 – November 25, 2019. 190 completed surveys were received. The survey was available in English or Russian. Numerous email and social media reminders/posts from IE staff were sent during the survey period to boost participation rates and to ensure the representation of diverse perspectives in the survey. • Conference Focus Group: A focus group of LGBTI organisation heads/chief communications people was held in Prague at the IE annual conference on October 25th. Approximately 15 people attended. • Interviews: A series of twenty 45-60 minute interviews were conducted following the launch of the survey from November 14 - December 3, 2019. Some were survey takers who indicated they would be amenable to an interview, the balance were recruited from IE lists. Representatives came from a mix of geographies, organisation sizes, and various 1 rankings on the Rainbow Europe index. Both broadly focused LGBTI as well as single- focused Lesbian, Trans and Intersex were interviewed. • Debrief and Planning Session with IE Staff: A debrief, brainstorming and planning session regarding recommendations for turning the research into action was held on January 16th in Brussels with IE staff. A note about the methods: As participation in the survey was voluntary, it is not fully demographically representative of all LGBTI organisations in each country that IE supports. Similarly, the 1-1 interviews provide a rich view of the opinions of a small number of participants. The value of qualitative research lies in revealing the range of opinions held and the intensity with which some participants hold those opinions. The sample size of interviews was insufficient to quantify findings, instead relevant quotes from interviews and open-ended questions in the survey have been liberally added to give context for and a taste of the discussions, and as such illustrate the findings. Some of the verbatim quotes have been gently edited for clarity. A note about the survey data subgroup analysis: This report includes findings from a subgroup analysis conducted pro-bono by U.S.-based Marketing and Research Resources of the survey data. The analysis identifies three differentiating criteria that categorize participating organisations and provides additional insights to IE and the LGBTI movement based on these naturally existing differences across organisations. It also minimizes data skews based on the non-representative data sample collected. For example, Russian organisations are over- represented in survey, so by analysing their responses in their country grouping, it reduces the influence of their dominant position. Statistically significant differences, where applicable, between subgroups have been noted in the analysis. The three criteria are: a. Country performance on the Rainbow Europe rankings. The three tiers have been colour-coded: green, yellow and red. Our assumption is that the issues and activities organisations face regarding communications will differ based on the environment for LGBTI people and their rights in their country, and that these environments vary widely across Europe and Central Asia. In rough terms, Green zone countries (ranked 1-18) mostly represent Western Europe and have marriage equality or partnership laws and other supportive legislation for LGBTI people in place. Yellow zone countries (ranked 19-35) are mostly smaller, newer democracies with a high percentage from Central Europe that are slowly growing in LGBTI acceptance and rights. And Red zone countries (ranked 36-49) are from Eastern Europe and Central Asia which have the most repressive laws and environments for LGBTI people. The breakdown is Green zone (40% of total), Yellow zone (30% of total) and Red zone (30% of total). Country Tiers Green Zone (1-18) Yellow Zone (19-35) Red zone (36-49)* Malta Iceland Ukraine Belgium Hungary Romania 2 Luxembourg Slovenia Bulgaria Finland Estonia Poland Denmark Bosnia & Herzegovina Latvia Norway Albania Moldova Portugal Kosovo Liechtenstein France Georgia Belarus United Kingdom Slovakia San Marino Netherlands Switzerland Monaco Sweden Andorra Russia Spain Serbia Armenia Montenegro Czech Republic Turkey Austria Lithuania Azerbaijan Greece Cyprus Germany North Macedonia Croatia Italy Ireland *Note that survey responses from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, countries not included in the Rainbow Europe report, have been classified as Red zone countries b. Organisational budgets The size of an organisation influences its scope of activities and ability to conduct communications activities. Therefore we have chosen to include a subgroup analysis based on budget-size of organisations and looked at three different groups: organisations that received under €10K of funding (32%), those receiving between €10K-100K (38%), and those receiving more than €100K per year (31%). €10 K-100K (38%) Over €100K (31%) Under €10K (32%) c. The presence of a fulltime comms person We are also interested in knowing what impact having fulltime staff working in communications has on an organisation’s overall communications capacity. 25% of total respondents have (at 3 least) a fulltime comms person, whilst other organisations have their communications carried out by people holding other roles or externalize communications activities to consultants. Structure of the report The structure of the report is as follows: Executive Summary – A synopsis of the entire report. Context and Need for Strategic Communications – Why this research and report was conceived and the current context for European and Central Asian LGBTI organisations. Key Findings – What insights and information we have learned from the data collected. • Current communications activities – an understanding of what organisations are currently doing vis-à-vis communications and the issues they face. • Barriers to greater strategic communications – the current understanding and application of strategic communication and the issues keeping organisations from becoming more strategic in their work. • External resources – to whom and why organisations reach out to various external sources for communications support • About the organisations – background information about the organisations that have an impact on communications. Implications and Initial recommendations – Putting the findings into context and what IE and LGBTI funders in the region can do to increase comms capacity in the sector Appendix – additional information on data collected from the survey. Executive Summary 4 Recognising the critical role that communications plays for LGBTI activists and the importance of being strategic communicators, especially as populist, hate-driven, anti-LGBTI rhetoric grows across Europe and Central Asia, ILGA-Europe commissioned a study to assess the communications needs of organisations in the region. The purpose of the study was to document the current state of communications capacity and activity, to understand where support is needed, and to identify the role ILGA-Europe and others can play in developing new tools and resources to improve capacity in the field. The study was conducted in the fall of 2019, and included a literature review, as well as one-to- one phone interviews, informal focus groups and a survey of ILGA-Europe members and other LGBTI organisations across the region. In total, over 200 activists participated in the study from 45 countries. The survey data analysis included a subgroup analysis based on three criteria: size of organisation, ranking on the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Europe scale, and presence of fulltime communications person at the organisation or not. While there was nearly universal agreement among organisations that communications is a critical