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 capacity for LGBTI organisations to possess (86% of survey respondents say it is very important), the study found that a majority of organisations lacked critical skills and that communications were mostly handled in an ad hoc manner by 72% of organisations surveyed. Coupled with the growing anti-LGBTI rhetoric and attacks from populist leaders and others, there is a growing sense that more needs to be done to enable activists regarding communications and to build capacity in this area.
Key Findings: Communications Activities
LGBTI organisations across the region provide a large number of activities and services, most of which are supported by communications. These activities include, amongst others, community building, social, psychological, legal and health services, advocacy, outreach to schools, police and businesses, running Pride events, fundraising as well as campaigns to win the hearts and minds of straight allies. In fact, over two thirds of organisations surveyed are involved in this kind of campaigning. Larger organisations and those with fulltime comms staff are more likely to utilize communications to support their activities.
Activists find they have to reach to a wide range of audiences, and that certain audiences are harder to reach than others. The core audience for many organisations is typically the local LGBTI community. Many are also engaging with broader audiences of potential non-LGBTI allies, policy makers and the media. The police, teachers, doctors (especially for trans and intersex groups) and the business community are groups which many organisations now also identify as priorities. Engaging with the general population is seen as expensive and hard to maintain over time, especially as many organisations have limited budgets. Reaching older audiences as well as those in rural areas were mentioned as challenging to many. And in more repressive environments, engaging with politicians is seen as especially challenging. Those in the most repressive environments look to “under the radar” methods to reach the LGBTI community via more broadly focused human rights campaigning or HIV testing campaigns.
5 Crises are common, but activists are not well prepared for them. Ranging from physical attacks on LGBTI people in the streets, at bars/clubs or other locations, to reacting to anti-LGBTI legislation proposed, or verbal attacks on the community in the media by politicians, journalists and others, about half of survey respondents find that they respond to crises often or very frequently. Yet at the same time, 40% feel they are not at all or not very well prepared to address a crisis. While some activists report they are beginning to prepare for some of these outcomes, a crisis can embroil staff for a number of days and take time away from their already numerous day-to-day activities.
Activists, especially those in smaller countries, report that they often collaborate with other LGBTI and human rights organisations on a range of campaign themes. Typically loosely organised, these coalitions can help smaller groups have a larger voice than they could individually. Some groups report participating in multi-country campaigns on HIV, hate speech or family/ally building. In more repressive environments, some groups are partnering with embassies from Northern European countries which have more political ability to be vocal on human rights issues.
While the basic communications tools of maintaining a website, as well as social media and press outreach are generally well developed, more strategic and sophisticated communications activities like content and message development, including values-based messaging are less developed with organisations. Many organisations are recognising that they can reach new and larger audiences using social media, but at the same time struggle with the strategic coordination of content across media. Nearly two thirds of organizations report not doing any research to inform their comms efforts or developing message frames, and over half are not producing video or podcasts, although these are areas that many are interested in developing over time. Only a handful are exploring more non-conventional/sophisticated approaches like communications database management or content analysis of LGBTI hate speech.
When asked to rate their organisation’s communications efforts on a scale of 0 (non-existent) to 10 (fully integrated with program work), over half of survey respondents felt they rated a 7 or higher. Participants described a number of issues that kept them from better outcomes: a number felt that their organisations lack the knowledge capacity to do comms work, others cited lack of human or financial resources, as well as environmental issues in more repressive countries that prohibited them for greater efficacy.
Key Findings: Becoming more strategic and barriers to greater strategic communications
Despite an interest in becoming more strategic in their communications efforts, the majority of activists report comms being handled on an informal basis. Less than 30% of organisations reported that they have a communications plan or strategy in place, the rest operating on a more ad hoc basis. Given the growth of anti-LGBTI sentiment and random smear campaigns, it has certainly become harder for groups to make longer-term plans while in a reactive position.
Some organisations report having a rough comms plan in place, but also having regular meetings to discuss tactical and timely comms activities given the changing environments. While many groups aspire to having a comms plan or strategy in place, some feel overwhelmed by the
6 prospect of taking the time to develop one. Values-based messaging and other strategic tools are becoming more common in the campaigns from LGBTI organisations, and story-telling approaches using real stories of community members are also growing.
While about one in six organisations do no evaluation of their work at all, easier and cheaper assessment methods are being used by majorities of organisations. These include social media analytics, used by nearly 70% of organisations, and website usage analytics which are used by about half. More sophisticated methods of evaluation like message testing, focus groups, surveys or external evaluations are utilised by very few organisations, mostly due to cost and timing considerations. However, there is general interest in learning and applying more evaluation tools among activists.
Ultimately, activists cite a lack of funding (77%), staffing (67%) and training (51%) that keep their organisations from being more effective with communications. Lack of planning (44%), as mentioned previously, is also a factor. In conversations, activists cited a number of issues like not being able to sustain campaigns over time, or the successful transfer of institutional knowledge within the organisation due to turnover or burnout as hindering their efforts. Those in more repressive environments also noted the government restrictions on their ability to take more proactive measures.
Key Findings: Access to External Resources
Despite the need, few organisations reach out for external support or know how to access it. Only 38% of organisations surveyed report they get help on communications from outside resources. Some fear that it is extra work to bring a consultant on board and get them up to speed. In other countries, cultural expectations dictate more of a do-it-yourself mindset. Those that do get outside help typically look to other activists or experts for help. While some activists described good working relationships with advertising and PR agencies, many felt they needed a lot of hand-holding in the process or didn’t understand the sensitive issues involved in communicating LGBTI issues. Activists have generally had better experiences with more targeted support on skills training like press releases, creating videos, etc., than full strategic campaigning.
Notably, boards of directors are not typically involved in communications, and the survey found that a third of organisations don’t even have a board or other external advisory group. Similar to other external resources, some activists found that board members may not know the specific organisational issues well enough to be helpful. This finding points to overall governance issues that also impact communications capacity. When they are involved, however, some noted that board members can be excellent spokespersons for their organisations.
Implications and Recommendations
7 As the research has borne out, there is a tremendous need for improved communications capacity. Needs vary from country to country and organisation to organisation, as do best learning methods for acquiring new skills and capacities.
Regarding basic skills, there is much room for improvement in digital skills like website and social media management, and more importantly, the strategic coordination of these tools. Social media is seen as a critical as it is where the battle for hearts and minds around LGBTI issues is often fought. Other skills like video and podcast production, which also support these digital tools, are also seen as needing improvement. On the strategic front, there is also much room for improvement, both in approaching the planning of comms from a thoughtful and coordinated perspective, and also in the evaluation of communications activities, which is where activists state they need the most support.
Using six indicators that identified highly effective organisations from a previous NGO communications needs assessment conducted by Cause Communications in the United States as a framework, the following are offered as initial recommendations to improve communications capacity at LGBTI organisations in the region: • Communications planning and organisation-wide planning: As only a quarter of organisations report having a communications plan, this can help provide structure and efficiency to organisations. Provide webinars, templates and other tools that will help organisations develop and stick to a comms plan. Ideally, a plan that is seen as agile and not burdensome. Include planning for crisis communications as a key part of this capacity building process. • Staffing and the use of outside expertise: As many LGBTI organisations in the region are operating with a mix of paid and volunteer staff working on communications, more basic training materials and resources are one possible solution. Providing communications mentors to help organisations may be a way to build capacity at all levels. And creating a network of comms leads across the region could offer needed professional and moral support to this important group of activists. • Donor understanding and support for communications: While the funders of this project understand the need for supporting strategic communications, it will be useful to widely share the data and recommendations from this report with a broader group of private funders who support the regional LGBTI community and capacity building within its organisations. Reaching those politicians and bureaucrats at EU and national government funding sources is also recommended. Per the findings, making grant reporting requirements realistic and not putting undue administrative burden on organisations is suggested. • Managing the communications basics: Although most organisations seem to have the basics of website, social media and press outreach covered, there appears to be need for more coordinated and strategic approaches to these activities, especially among smaller groups. More (peer) learning opportunities on key topics requested – assessing communications impact, managing social media accounts, creating videos and audience research/message testing – is suggested. • The role of evaluation in communications: While roughly one in six organisations report using no assessment tools at all, a significant number are using web and social media metrics, observation and media clippings to provide some assessment of their work.
8 Given the interest in learning more about evaluation and other impact assessment tools, training and resources should become part of the (peer) learning opportunities IE provides. • Involvement of organisation leadership in communications: More focus on how boards or extrenal advisory groups can support under-resourced staff or over-extended executive directors is recommended. Guidelines for staffing and supporting an effective communications program should include the role of external advisors can play.
Context and need for strategic communications Communicating well with stakeholders is essential for any organisation. For European and Central Asian LGBTI organisations, this has traditionally meant a diverse group of community members and allies, legislators and other policy makers, as well as the media. More recently activists have been building relationships with broader audiences including schools, the medical community, business groups, law enforcement agencies and others.
Per the below chart, there is nearly universal agreement among survey respondents that communications is extremely or very important to advancing their mission.
As beautifully expressed by the following excerpt from an interview with a Russian Trans activist, communications is the not only about building bridges but about fighting for rights, and reducing stigma and discrimination.
Communications for us is about what we do, who we are. Communications is about building relationships. Communications for us is probably a way of advocacy as well, because the more we talk, the more they recognize us, the more we communicate, the more acceptance we get. The more we are accepted here, the more rights we have, the less stigma there is and so on. – Trans Activist, Russia
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Yet, as this report will demonstrate, despite strong beliefs in the power of communications, there are still significant needs to be met and capacities to be built in order for the movement to fully utilize communications effectively and strategically. The survey results and interviews with activists across the region assess the current situation and their abilities to use communications strategically.
At the same time activists are facing an increasing number of attacks from populist leaders and others seeking to diminish, denigrate and demoralize the LGBTI community. While this has been especially true in countries where some legal or other advances have recently or are currently being made, activists in many solidly LGBTI supportive Northern European countries are also reporting an increase in public and media attacks on the community. Many described the timeframe for this shift to have been over the past two years. While some reported some small legislative wins as well, there was a sense that LGBTI-phobic behaviour was escalating. The following quotes from the interviews give a taste of the mixed results activists are experiencing.
Because we have the Equal Marriage Campaign running since spring, 2017, the general public somehow feels a bit overwhelmed by the LGBT topic, and they feel that the LGBT community wants many things, and many rights. And it’s only because before LGBT issues were not talked about publicly at all. Suddenly with the campaign, it’s present in the media and everywhere, in the parliament, and in politics throughout the whole year. (Czech Republic)
The visibility of LGBT people, thanks to the media, has greatly increased from a dangerous to a positive or adequate context…when the LGBT movement intensifies, the anti-LGBT movement also intensifies. (Kyrgyzstan)
The situation has gotten very bad, very fast. The new government includes the far-right Conservative Party, which has been very outspoken and very hostile since they were elected in March. Members of their party barged into our event and made it unsafe. (Estonia)
The Hungarian media is becoming more and more centralized pro-government. So basically, we don’t have access to the largest part of the Hungarian media. And if we are covered at all then our stories are covered in a negative light. And there’s a growing number of homophobic comments made by leading politicians. (Hungary)
Before we could really say that the situation for LGBTI people here is getting better, now we cannot say that anymore because of the rise in hate speech and hate in general in society. Not only towards LGBTI people but towards refugees, towards migrants, towards all minority groups in Slovenia, hatred is rising. (Slovenia)
The combination of an evidenced lack of capacity and a growing, more inhospitable environment for LGBTI people puts a heavy burden on organisations in reshaping their messages and strengthening their communication work.
Key Findings
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I. Current communications activities
Organisations provide a large number of activities and programs and support most of them with communications
Most organisations, even those with specific target audiences (such as “L,” “T,” or “I”) reported numerous mission related activities that include community building, social, psychological and health services, advocacy, outreach to schools, police and businesses, running Pride events, as well as campaigns to win the hearts and minds of straight allies. Per the blue bars in the chart below, over two thirds of organisations surveyed reported conducting activities such as shifting public attitudes, community organising, supporting trans rights, fundraising, advocating for policy change and supporting under-represented groups in the community.
Conversations with activists confirmed these findings but also suggested that they might be overstretched in their capacity to do all of these activities well, especially those working in smaller organisations. The belief that if they didn’t have these programs and activities in place to support the LGBTI community, no other organisation would do this work came up in many interviews.
The subgroup analysis of the survey data found significant differences in which kind of organizations were doing these activities. • Red zone countries organisations are significantly more likely to conduct fundraising campaigns. This finding was evidenced in interviews with activists in red zone countries as well, who tended to be more open to exploring new ways of raising funds outside of typical foundation and foreign government support, and suggests that the need for funds is pushing them to be more inventive in their fundraising strategies. Similarly, those that have budgets over €10K were also more likely to conduct fundraising campaigns, which suggests that very small, grassroots organisations likely don’t have the human resources needed to successfully do fundraising work. • Those in yellow and red zone countries are more likely to provide legal services, as are those with budgets of €10K+. As these are the countries in which the legal rights of LGBTI people are most challenged, it follows that these would be key services offered. • €100K+ organisations are more likely to work on workplace discrimination issues. Since these services tend to require more trained and dedicated staff, it fits that larger organisations have the capacity to handle these activities. • And those in green and yellow zone countries are more likely to have programs working in the schools with LGBTI students. Given that red zone countries have the most repressive environments for LGBTI people, this finding suggests that working with schools is only a possible activity in countries with more progressive LGBTI laws and policies.
We also spoke with some organisations that have more targeted programmatic approaches, such as an Italian group that functions as a think-tank for research on key topics to support the LGBTI community there.
11 Organisations typically support these activities with communications to a varying and overall lesser degree. The red bars in the chart below highlights those services and activities that are typically promoted through communications. Shifting public attitudes or norms regarding LGBTI people is the only activity for which over two thirds of organisations report actively using comms. Many of the executive and communications leaders we interviewed spoke with great pride about their national or local campaigns on this topic and the continual work they need to do in this area to win allies and support.
The subgroup analysis found that those organisations with a fulltime comms person and those with budgets of €100K were significantly more likely to use comms for almost all of these activities. The presence of a comms person suggests that these organisations are taking a communications approach to their programmatic work. Similarly, large organisations are poised to support more activity overall, including communications.
In countries with more repressive anti-LGBTI laws, organisations reported they communicate on an international level to bring awareness to the inherent human rights violations, as per the following comments:
It's very important for us, when our Prime Minister doesn't want to respond to our initiatives to have Evelyne (Paradis, IE Director) send a letter, and to have some members of European Parliament send letters and then we get a response for what we need. (Montenegro)
We also have a Twitter account, but as Twitter is irrelevant in Hungary, we use it to communicate with international partners. Our Twitter channel is in English, and its content is only information that is relevant to our international partners. (Hungary)
One newer programmatic area that surfaced during the Prague focus group and in interviews is working with LGBTI refugees and migrants, which is becoming important work for many activists across the continent. From a communications perspective, this not only means work in terms of advocacy and outreach, but also requires organisations to have the capacity to communicate in additional languages.
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Activists have to reach to a wide range of audiences, and certain audiences are harder to reach than others Activists have become more thoughtful and strategic about reaching out to diverse audiences that can help build bridges to the larger community. In doing so, some have found a number of audiences that are harder to reach via communications. For instance, a few interviewed activists mentioned that it was hard to connect with LGBTI community members living outside of the major cities.
With the community, it's hard to reach people in certain parts of the country who may not have proper access to the internet, or they may not be on social media. (Montenegro)
Those working in HIV prevention also mentioned non-LGBTI MSM as another group that is hard to reach through media channels.
Those who live in countries with more repressive governments in place noted the challenges of reaching politicians with anti-LGBTI bias. While access to policymakers is not seen as an issue, getting them to listen is always harder.
I think the hardest thing to do is to communicate with policymakers, because they don't want to hear you. You can have direct access to them, and they will read your memos and letters, but they don't want to hear you. That’s the problem. There are a few MPs who are allies, but up to the point that it doesn't really damage their public image. (Montenegro)
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Police were mentioned by a few interviewees, and while some were making inroads with this audience, in terms of getting their support and cooperation for Pride marches and similar gatherings, activists in other countries found the police to continually be aggressive to the community.
The point is that, in fact, neither the Ministry of Health, nor Ministry of Internal Affairs are stepping forward or openly admit that, the main aggressors, according to almost all LGBT research in Kyrgyzstan, are police officers. (Kyrgyzstan)
Teachers and doctors (among interviews with trans and intersex groups especially) also came up frequently as influential audiences that have more recently become a focus and that have some inherent challenges in reaching them.
We did some good campaigns with the help of ILGA-Europe, but we don't have the funds to really be sustainable in addressing the general population. We have a campaign and will do it for one month, two months and that's it. (Slovenia)
Similarly, in Russia, for example, an interviewee mentioned the challenge of reaching older audiences who are not using social media as much and cannot be reached via state-run media.
Sadly, in very repressive countries like Tajikistan, activists reported not being able to directly reach LGBTI audiences in their comms efforts but noted that they reach them more through “under-the-radar” methods such as HIV prevention testing and/or more broadly focused human rights campaigning.
Lastly, due to costs to develop and maintain them, reaching the general population through campaigns is also seen as hard to maintain over the long-term.
Crises are common, yet many feel they are not well prepared to respond to them In interviews, activists described crises ranging from physical attacks on LGBTI people in the streets, at bars/clubs or other locations, to reacting to anti-LGBTI legislation proposed, or verbal attacks on the community in the media by politicians, journalists and others. The random and unpredictable nature of these situations makes them extremely challenging to address.
We have an extremely pro-Russian newspaper, and for no reason at all, this journalist will wake up and write something completely terrible not connected with anything, and then we act: "OK, we have to react, we have to do something." (Kyrgyzstan)
Per the chart below, while about half of survey respondents reported that they respond to crises often or very frequently, four in ten felt that their organisations do not respond very well or not well at all to crises. The subgroup analysis found that those organisations with a fulltime comms person and with €10K+ budgets are more likely to frequently respond to crises. And those with a fulltime comms person and budgets of €100K+ are more likely to be better prepared for a crisis.
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On a positive note, some noted that they have begun to prepare in advance for these challenging times. For example, in countries where high-profile LGBTI legislation is close to a vote, activists have been preparing press releases and outreach strategies in advance for both potential positive and negative outcomes. And some mentioned having rough guidelines developed to help start their response.
We prepare our statements in advance, how to address the crisis, and also reach out to stakeholders that would be involved in that. (Slovenia)
Based on our experience in the past we have this general framework of how to respond when a political party launches a smear campaign. Or how to react when there is an attack and what message to convey. But it's one page or two pages of just guidelines. (Montenegro)
However, many activists mentioned that their limited comms teams could lose days or weeks of time dealing with crises instead of doing their regular ongoing work.
We have an upcoming marriage equality case and are expecting a negative decision. This means that we will need to stop work for two days as we will be writing press releases, dealing with the media, etc. (Bulgaria)
Some collaboration on common themes, with other organisations A number of interviewees mentioned local campaign alliances with other LGBTI or human rights organisations. These tend to be more informal partnerships on specific issues or initiatives, but overall, many report that they do stay in close contact with fellow activists, especially on advocacy issues.
We have a regular cooperation with both other LGBTI organisations, and broadly, human rights and any kind of rights organisations. (Montenegro)
Trans and intersex issues are often the focus of these efforts as those organizations serving the broader LGBTI community and may not have dedicated staff to support such work and smaller trans or intersex -focused initiatives can benefit from the support of a larger coalition of
15 supporters with better comms and media resources. As described by activists, this work can be more time consuming in terms of defining goals and taking planned actions.
Together we have a political coalition where we meet regularly to discuss the hot topics of LGBTIQ people, and we also often work with them on different campaigns. For example, now on an anti-discrimination campaign, even though it doesn't include intersex per se, we're still allies of course. (Switzerland)
We now have a coalition with other LGBTI groups that started to push the topic of intersex. We were working together with Amnesty International and they actually provided really good media coverage because they have good relationships with journalists managed to get a lot of media interviews. There were six organisations, so the process was quite challenging. (Slovenia)
Russian speaking organisations mentioned collaborating on collectively organized multi-country campaigns like “I am Near,” (families and allies) “Minus Virus” (HIV) and “Speak Up” (anti- hate speech). Others have participated in the EU-wide “Come Forward” campaign against hate crimes. And other groups mentioned supporting other progressive agendas, such as feminism or gender issues.
We write about feminism, because we believe and share the ideas of equality inherent in the feminist movement. Sometimes we write about ecology, because we also believe that it is important. (Kyrgyzstan)
In the most repressive countries, activists mentioned fewer opportunities for collaboration. In Azerbaijan for example, the LGBTI organisation, found a sympathetic partner with the Dutch embassy there and co-sponsored a film series on gender and sexuality.
The basic communications tools of website maintenance, social media and press outreach are generally well developed; more strategic work like content and message development less so.
The chart below suggests that most organisations are doing and want to do more basic communications work focused on using social media channels (95%), maintaining a website (85%), conducting media relations to reach the press (73%), as well as holding conferences and seminars (71%). The subgroup analysis of the data finds that those organisations in yellow zone countries, with a fulltime comms person, and with budgets over €100K are more likely to do most of these activities. They are also more likely to report wanting to make them a priority in the future.
While an interviewee from the South Caucasus told us they barely manage to keep a Facebook page operating to inform community members, many others described with excitement their ability to build new targeted audiences and engagement through social media.
16 Until 2018, our main social network was Facebook. Then our SM manager changed, and we started using Instagram, and this gave us a 50% growth, probably. In 2018, 5,000 people came to our pride march. This extra 50% - it was just youth who came from Instagram. Then we added Telegram. Now we have plans for developing Twitter and YouTube. We use YouTube because we make a lot of videos. (Ukraine)
And then we of course have, LinkedIn for Pride Business Forum, because most business people prefer LinkedIn to Facebook for example. (Czech Republic)
However, a recurring theme in conversations with activists was a lack of strategic coordination and resources to ensure that social media and website activity are most effectively optimized.
We are very active on social media. InterAction has a Facebook page, but then I am doing YouTube videos and it's in my own name, but I'm always pointing people towards InterAction Suisse and I'm always sharing the videos on the page of InterAction Suisse…we are not to very consistent with the website uploading. (Switzerland)
We have a website, which is not updated that much, because it requires funds, and it has been alive only just because of our own contributions. (Azerbaijan)
We actively use the website and social networks, but we simply copy what is on the website to social networks. (Kyrgyzstan)
In interviews, a few organisations mentioned the use of other comms activities for advancing LGBTI rights that have worked for their needs. For example, a pan-European lesbian rights group focuses only on getting press coverage for lesbian issues.
We have our own online newspaper, and it is a very well-written source for journalists. Even though we don't send press releases, journalists are checking the website and doing their own news articles in their websites or newspapers. (Turkey)
The survey data also describes a number of strategic activities where over half of organizations are doing nothing: conducting research to inform communications (63%), creating message frames (62%), planning for upcoming media content (58%), producing videos and podcasts (55%) and developing values-based messaging (52%). The good news is that most of these are areas respondents reported (see Section IV – What They Want from ILGA-Europe) they are interested in learning more about/doing in the future.
On the topic of being strategic, the comment below epitomizes a larger trend we heard in interviews about the challenge LGBTI organisations have with many audiences to reach and numerous competing issues and activities to address.
17 Because we do a lot of different kind of projects, my colleagues don't always realize that you have to focus on one audience for a campaign. And that you can't target everyone at the same time, because everyone's at a different level of knowledge of empathy with our struggles. I think that when we have a clear idea of who the audience is, we usually succeed in reaching them. (Belgium)
Limited exploration of non-conventional/more sophisticated comms tools and activities Very few organisations are using sophisticated marketing tools, but the following were interesting, non-traditional comms activities/programs that surfaced in interviews:
Recently we launched a contact database that collects not only contact names and addresses, but also it has fundraising module. It tells us how much money the person donated, and how many emails or calls or newsletters we sent to that person. So, we can track communication towards them. Also, for the media, I will be able to see properly how many press releases I've sent to each journalist in recently year, for example. (Czech Republic)
One other time we hired an expert - from the School of Mass-Media Policy. She's cool, she uses media technologies. The service is expensive, but they are ready to offer discounts. They gave us an assessment of hate speech in the comments under LGBT posts. (Kyrgyzstan)
We organize media schools for LGBTI activists to increase their capacity on media literacy and also give them incentive to write their own stories, actually, to become our volunteer reporters. (Turkey)
Fundraising campaigns typically seen as a challenge Although 71% of organisations reported they fundraise to support their mission and activities and 45% of survey respondents mentioned that they use comms for fundraising, in interviews a
18 number said they had little luck with these efforts, especially with online campaigns. Those in smaller/less affluent countries ascribed the challenge to the local economic situation.
We tried, and we really tried but... It doesn't work here. Generally, nation-wide, people are either poor or struggling. (Montenegro)
We don't really see any other Hungarian civil society organisations who are really successful in fundraising. (Hungary)
Others described struggles with promoting planned live gala events to ensure good turnout. One exception was in a Baltic country where recent anti-LGBTI sentiment by populist politicians seemed to encourage more donations.
We got a lot of support financially from the fundraising campaign during the crisis, because normally, we don't get very many donations. Donating isn't big in Estonia. But our donations doubled, tripled, quadrupled basically, in the past two months. Which is good, because if we don't get any funding next year, then we're going to need it. (Estonia)
A few activists also expressed their interest in using their communications vehicles as fundraising tools.
It is very important to learn new methods of monetization on YouTube, targeted advertising, to understand how it works if we pay for it. (Kyrgyzstan)
I go to different institutions and organisations and I say, "OK if you want to be part of our project, I can put your logo in my website (for a fee)." (Spain)
Overall, LGBTI organisations rate their communications efforts positively and integrated with their activities Survey respondents were asked to provide a self-rating on communications ranging from 0 (non- existent) to 10 (fully integrated with program work). 49% gave themselves a rating of 7+, 38% between 4 and 6, and 14% at or below 3, according to the chart below. Those in yellow zone countries were significantly more likely to rate their use of comms in the 7+ range. Those in red zone countries were more likely to choose between 3-7 and those without a comms person or with budgets under €10K were more likely to choose a rating under 3. Conversations with activists about this signalled that many felt they were doing as good a job as they could with the limited people and financial resources they had.
I think we’re doing a pretty good job to account that we’ve only existed for two years. We’ve already been on national television three times and every month at least once or twice in the newspaper. (Switzerland)
We have a team that deals with social media. Unfortunately, we do not have resources to provide for them so they can work full time. Accordingly, they do not have time to do all what we would like to cover. Therefore, we consider this level insufficient. (Russia)
19 0-3 4-6 7-10
When asked in the survey why they gave this ranking in a follow up open-ended question, responses tended to cluster in a few inter-related areas.
Capacity to do comms versus other mission-critical activities:
We lack the tools to organize fundamental elements in our organisation such as proper member acquisition and retention (data for community building), planning, budgeting etc. Comms is not yet integrated cause we are struggling with fundamental issues and we feel helpless (e.g. our constitution is not processed yet, we cannot hire a legal advisor, we cannot have office space, etc.).
Development and strengthening of public communications is among the strategic goals of the organisation, we also have communication strategy till 2022 and an operational plan for 2019/2020 developed, but we just started to work within this framework, so we do not have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the success, but we plan to introduce them in 2020.
Lack of human and financial resources:
We are able to reach a significant amount of people with our communication. However, despite our successful activities, most of our communication is ad-hoc and non-professional and we do not have a communication strategy. The main reasons for these are lack of financial support and human resources.
Staff communicate as and when they can. Mostly to promote services as opposed to goals or campaigns.
Environmental issues that prevent use of comms more broadly:
20 Communications deliberately limited for self-preservation in a hostile environment.
For security purposes, we do not use communication in some cases.
II. Becoming more strategic and barriers to greater strategic communications
Despite an interest in becoming more strategic in their communications efforts, the majority of activists reported comms being handled on an informal basis Most organisations we spoke with could clearly define strategic communications. They understand it is about setting goals, targeting audiences, and developing engaging messaging and messengers, as well as measuring their efforts. And they aspire to be strategic in planning their communications as well.
Some strategic plans are finalized, some of them still are in development, but we plan to have a communications strategy written down next year for all of our programs. If you don't have that kind of planning, then you will miss a lot of opportunities, so it is helping us in our work. (Turkey)
Despite this knowledge, the majority of LGBTI organisations surveyed are typically operating on a more ad hoc basis as evidenced in the chart below that shows that less than 30% of organisations have a written comms plan. Not surprisingly, the subgroup analysis found that organisations with budgets of €10K+ and those with fulltime comms people were significantly more likely to have a communications strategy in place.
To their defence, the increased levels of anti-LGBTI sentiment and random smear campaigns from populist groups and politicians have made it harder to plan for communications. At the focus group in Prague, a local organisation noted that due to this environment, they work on a more hybrid model where they still have their annual comms plan but are now engaging with their board on comms issues on a weekly basis to be more tactical and reactive.
Overall, most groups seem interested in having some sort of strategic communications plan, but many interviewed felt that it was a lot of work to create and then follow such a plan, especially in very unstable and uncertain circumstances.
When I started as the Head of Communication, I wanted to have at least a monthly plan. Annual might be a bit too much for us, because we're a small organisation and things constantly happen. We don't know if we're going to have a project in three months, or not. We have all events marked in a calendar and every few weeks we go over the calendar, and talk about the posts we are planning, talk about the content we're planning. (Estonia)
And so now we are doing a bit of all things. We're going somewhere and we have this idea, but we don't have the strategy exactly like short, middle term or even long term on how to do it and how to go through with it. (Switzerland)
21 We have a general outline of what's going to happen or what must be communicated. But our more effective communications are our stories that reach the most people, which are usually reactive. (Hungary)
Many are taking a strategic approach to campaigning, but it is challenging In some cases, the idea of using values-based messaging is beginning to become more common as a communications strategy to fight for LGBTI equality.
In practice, we try to tailor the messaging and timing for each campaign separately. Of course, we have some values that our communications should incorporate. But these values are not directly communicated in our brand. We don't have a tagline that identifies us. (Hungary)
We mainly focus on issues of equality, liberty, and human rights, these three concepts are our general discourse. But we create other messages targeted to the audience and the issue itself. (Turkey)
A number of organisations interviewed noted that they are using personal stories from community members in their communications efforts. This may be a first step in creating a communications platform that focuses on equality.
People asked for more happy stories, of everyday life stories of LGBTI people, so we changed our strategy last year, and we published more content on the experiences of LGBTI people. (Turkey)
We published a book in 2017 with stories of people from the community, people living their lives openly. Now we are planning the next edition with stories of people who have used our legal program. (Bulgaria)
One approach that we adopted early on is to make these issues personal, and to have voices of the community heard as much as possible. So, instead of being bureaucratic and stating the
22 facts, we tend to have one of us activists or someone from the community who feels free, and comfortable to do it, raise awareness about an issue through their story. (Montenegro)
While a minority of organisations do no evaluation of their work at all, easier and cheaper assessment methods are being used by majorities of organisations Regarding the assessment of their comms work, roughly 1 in 6 reported that they do no assessment at all per the chart below. Those organisations in green zone countries, without a fulltime comms person and with budgets under €10K were more likely to not measure their communications activities at all.
However nearly half or more use observation, as well as web and social media analytics to track their progress. And about a quarter of survey respondents report using focus groups and surveys to assess impact. Those with a fulltime comms person as well as with a budget of €100K+ were consistently more likely to have used most of these methods of assessment. Red zone countries were more likely to have employed surveys, focus groups or case studies, while those in yellow zone countries were more likely to have utilized message testing.
Like the programmatic goals and activities they support, the evaluation of communications efforts developed by organisations have varying degrees of difficulty.
The LGBT community campaign was more focused, and we could identify more tangible KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The number of the clients for our legal aid services is, of course, a KPI as well as the number of stories that were submitted via our reporting interface. But for the general public campaign, it's very difficult to measure the real change in behaviour of the general population. (Hungary)
While receiving web and social media analytics is relatively easy and without cost, few interviewed mentioned applying the learnings from these analytics to their current work, mostly due to limited time resources.
I follow what happens on social media and how our newsletters do. But I haven't been able to work with that information too much yet. (Estonia)
Media clipping and monitoring, also relatively inexpensive, was mentioned as a tool used by many interviewees, as well as by over 40% of survey respondents. The below is an example of a more sophisticated media analysis used by one activist organisation. Time constraints were mentioned by some as a reason for not analysing this data and applying the learning to future efforts.
We also have an annual analysis of the media, which tells me what the trends for the year have been, what journalists wrote more about, in what manner, whether the tone of writing changed compared to other times, whether the number of publications increased, what terms are used and so on. (Kyrgyzstan)
Others interviewed mentioned more grassroots or informal ways of getting input from the community or others on their comms plans or initiatives.
23
We organize an event to debate our communications activities and invite several LGBTI activists around the country, and learn more about their expectations, and we get their advice. In our social media platforms, at the beginning of the year, we do a survey about our representation and ask participants what they find good, what is bad, and which parts should we continue. (Turkey)
When I write a press release, I think, “Is this something that my family will understand?” And if we're writing something that's more like a legally framed message, we send it to a few lawyers who we work with, and then they will say like, "Okay, this makes sense, this doesn't make sense." So that kind of testing, yeah, but not we don’t do many campaigns or research projects that require any kind of structured testing. (Montenegro)
One organisation mentioned the lack of funder support for evaluation overall and for comms campaigns specifically.
They (funders) are asking for the effect of that program, but they don't give us money to measure the effect. The traditional funders are not very eager to fund communications campaigns. (Turkey)
Lack of funding, staffing and training keep organisations from being more effective with their communications As expected, and logically following some of the previous findings about strategic planning, evaluation and assessment, lack of financial resources (77%), lack of staff /time to focus on comms (67%) and lack of skills/training (51%) are the key barriers survey respondents reported to effective communications. The subgroup analysis showed that those without a fulltime comms person were more likely to cite a lack of human and financial resources.
24
I haven't really been able to strategically approach message framing. It is something I definitely want to do, once things have calmed down a bit. It's on my list. But so far, I don't have the expertise in that yet. (Estonia)
We did some good campaigns, some with the help of ILGA-Europe, but we don't have the funds to really be sustainable in addressing the general population. We will have a campaign, we will do it for one month, two months and that's it. (Slovenia).
Lack of planning/coordination were also cited by larger numbers. Both organisations in green zone countries and red zone countries were more likely to cite a lack of planning as barrier. Not having standard operating procedures, as the comment below from Azerbaijan reflects, makes it hard to build continuity or systemize activities.
I feel that we start a lot of things that we don't really have the capacity to maintain. We have an English language website, which of course we should, but in reality, we can't publish that many stories as we want to. (Hungary)
I think it would be good to have institutionalized communication tools within the organisation that explain how things work. It would be better for the next person or the new people coming to the organisation to have this guideline for what to do and how to do it. Because we are only doing something if it pops up. (Azerbaijan)
Suppression/oppression also hinders communications efforts. Close to a quarter of survey respondents have government limitations on their ability to and/or fear backlash if they were to communicate on LGBTI issues, or believe that LGBTI issues are too sensitive for public communications. Those in red zone countries were significantly more likely to cite these issues.
25 III. External resources
Despite the need, few reach out for external support or know how to access it Despite reporting limited internal capacity for comms, a minority of survey respondents reported that they look externally for support and help. Per the below chart, only slightly more than one third of respondents report that they have received help from outsiders to support their comms issues. The subgroup analysis found that those organisations in yellow and red zone countries are significantly more likely than those in green zone countries to get help from external sources.
One explanation that surfaced in interviews for this behaviour was the amount of work that developing these relationships might entail. Others believed that comms work can only be an internally-generated discipline.
For some reason, I don't know if it's just us being overworked, or if it's something in our own character, but we don't reach out very often. Which is really what we should do, especially in times of crisis. I think our main worry in terms of collaborating, or just keeping up relationships in the broader sense, is just that we're afraid that it might give us extra work, and we don't have a lot of time for that. (Estonia)
It is no use outsourcing (communications work). Basically, people need to grow the capacity to do it. People need to acquire the skills for critically engaging in this work because outsourcing it with an agency who comes and does the work and then hands in some results that are not... it only scratches the surface or they bring in some results that are very theoretical but it just says exactly what we already know without giving any further insight. (France)
Per the below chart, of those 38% of survey respondents that do get help from outsiders, other activists (72%) top the list, followed by experts (58%) and people from their personal and professional networks (54%). Red zone countries organisations are more likely to get help from experts. Those with a fulltime comms person and with budgets of €10K+ are more likely to
26 utilize external consultants and agencies. Yellow zone countries organisations and those with budgets of €10K-100K are more likely to get board member help.
In interviews, a number of activists acknowledge that working with outside groups, especially comms agencies can be challenging and requires a lot of work and prep time to help get them to understand the issues facing LGBTI people in their countries.
Advertising agencies are used to doing commercial stuff. You cannot rely on them in terms of communications strategy. We need to do the strategic thinking and what they are able to deliver is only creative work, even though some of them are gay, too. It doesn't work. It's too commercial. (Czech Republic)
We used an outside agency for the rebranding of our helpline. And it wasn't a bad experience, but it's the same amount of work as doing it yourself. (Belgium)
It's not easy to work with a mainstream communications agency. (Bulgaria)
Few described very positive experiences working with outside agencies. Those that have been successful in this area have staff that typically come from a communications agency background and know how to best manage these relationships.
One PR agency actually approached us for a street action for Valentine’s Day and we did it together. It was really nice and I'm hoping to work with them again because the theme was great, and they did it pro bono. (Slovenia)
Activists report a desire to do better, more professional work, rather than the “quick fixes” from personal contacts many use to get things done. A few interviewees reported having worked with other external groups for training and support.
27 When you want to do a professional video, you cannot be always relying on those personal favors that people can do for you. We'll try a free tool that we find on the internet to do it but sometimes it's not enough if we want to really combat discrimination. (Spain)
We worked with the BBC ten years ago. They helped us to have a more structured communications strategy. (Turkey)
I write most of the press releases because I've been trained by OSCE on those topics. (Montenegro)
External Board of Directors’ not typically engaged in communications As the chart below notes, roughly a third of organisations do not have a Board of Directors or external advisory group that support communications activities. Of those that do have a board, about 2/3 are very or somewhat involved in communications. Significantly more organisations that don’t have a fulltime comms person and those with budgets under €100K don’t have a board or external advisory group.
LGBTI organizations have had mixed experiences working with their boards. This finding touches on the larger issue of governance, especially for smaller organisations and those without a fulltime comms person, which are typically in most need of external support for communications and other functions.
Our board of directors is not fully involved. But there is a dilemma - the more people involved in communication, the more difficult it is to agree on the final result, therefore, on the other hand, less involvement of the board gives greater speed in the implementation of communication. (Survey)
One of our board members is Russian and an online marketer. He tried to give us advice, but his recommendations were too simple. (Kyrgyzstan)
One specific board member acts as a spokesperson, so it's very rare that I personally have to communicate, like stand in front of the cameras. That's a very important asset of our organisation, that we have people who are willing and able to communicate. (Hungary)
28
IV. About the organisations
Budgets and staffing vary widely Per the chart below, there are large numbers of organisations with budgets under €10K, as well as a significant number in the €20K-€250K range and many fewer that are larger than that. The data captured is in line with ILGA-Europe’s more extensive recent report on fundraising Funding for LGBTI activism in Europe and Central Asia. As expected, those organisations with budgets of €100K+ are significantly more likely to have a fulltime comms person. Almost all organisations with budgets under €10K did not have a fulltime comms person. And contrary to the perception that Western European organisations are larger and well-funded, those in green zone countries are more likely to have budgets under €10K.
As noted in the Methodology section, we have analysed the survey data in three subgroups: Those with no external budget up to those with budgets of €10,000, those between €10,000 and 100,000, and those with budgets over €100,000.
The under €10K organisations tend to be largely volunteer run, those in the middle segment reflect organisations that have one or a few full-time employees as well as much volunteer support. The largest organisations tend to be those that are running many social service or mental/physical health programs.
Similarly, per the below chart, the vast majority of organisations have no paid staff and rely entirely on volunteer support. The subgroup analysis found that green zone countries were significantly less likely to have fulltime staff. This included, for example, the main LGBTI Community Centre in a large French city as well as the umbrella organisation the same city that coordinates the Pride event there and lobbies at the federal level. Again, these findings tend to be contrary to popular assumptions about LGBTI organisations in larger, wealthier nations.
29
Organisations with fulltime communications staff are the exception; It is typically a mix of others from within and outside organisations who support communications We recognize the existence of a full-time comms person (25% of sample) as being a differentiator among LGBTI organisations and have used this data point to analyse the survey results accordingly, as part of the subgroup analysis.
Per the below chart, only a quarter of organisations surveyed have fulltime staff working on communications. In most cases, it is a mix of volunteers (47%), program staff (41%), and executive directors (31%) who work on comms in a variety of ways. Even within those organizations that have a fulltime comms person, interviewees described a range of ways that the comms function is managed – having the executive director or program staff also manage communications, having it managed by volunteers, or some combination of these. More often than not, these were reported as ad-hoc rather than strategic decisions.
We have a multi-tiered way of communicating. I am the one who mainly replies (to media requests). However, we produce our texts and messages with the working team all together. (Russia)
Support services like communications didn't grow with the organisation, which meant that I was running from one deadline to another without ever having the time to strategically plan a lot of things. (Belgium)
Volunteers are significantly more likely to do communications in green and yellow zone countries, in those without a fulltime comms person and in those with a budget under €10K. While volunteers can bring additional expertise to an organisation, they often require a lot of management by internal staff.
For example, our Instagram profile is completely run by a volunteer throughout the whole year or we have a volunteer for writing newspaper articles. (Czech Republic)
Staff working on programs are significantly more likely to do comms in red zone countries and in those organisations with budgets between €10K and €100K. Executive Directors are more
30 likely to being doing comms work in organisations without a fulltime comms person, and in those organisations with budgets between €10K and €100K. A reliance on non-comms staff to help with communications means that resources are further compromised as they are being pulled from their key work.
Per the following chart, in organisations where either the dedicated communications person(s), executive director or other program staff work on communications, it is typically 2-3 people supporting the comms work at most.
Implications/Initial Recommendations As per the impetus of this project, one can easily say that LGBTI organisations in Europe and Central Asia do in fact have a tremendous need for improved communications capacity. Populist attacks on LGBTI and other minorities continue to grow in many countries, even in socially and politically progressive Northern European states where LGBTI legislation is generally favourable, making the need for stronger LGBTI organisations more accentuated.
31 Needs vary widely from country to country and organisation to organisation. Learning methods also seem to vary, although those experts who support LGBTI organisations and other interviewees suggested that some sort of initial in-person training can often spark the kind of behaviour change needed to make significant capacity improvements in an organisation.
In terms of specific skills that activists need in this environment, both from their assessment of their organisational capacities and from their interest in potential new IE offerings, it appears that a focus on improving websites and social media use is a priority, as well as a more strategic coordination of the two activities. Social media is also seen as a critical as it is where the battle for hearts and minds around LGBTI issues is often fought. Similarly, developing persuasive videos and podcasts are areas where they would also like to improve. As these media and tools reflect how most people get their news and information these days, it makes sense to focus on them.
In addition to being more strategic about their comms efforts overall, activists also recognize that they need to learn how to better assess their comms efforts as well, which is their number one desired area of support from ILGA-Europe. This will ultimately help them be more strategic and effective in the long run and create more of a continual learning environment within their organisations.
Lastly, there is also an opportunity to help organisations, especially smaller and newer ones, understand how to set up an effective and efficient communications function, regardless of whether there are dedicated communications staffers or not.
Learnings from the subgroup analysis The subgroup analysis provides a deeper understanding of the survey data based on organisation size, presence of a comms person or not, and its grouped ranking based on the Rainbow Europe data. Some of the findings were in line with the qualitative research, and others were not.
Overall, and not surprisingly, we see that those organisations that have a fulltime comms person and that are larger in size, tend to be able to do more and have greater capacity for conducting strategic communications activities. There were a number of correlations between having a fulltime comms person and the ability to work better with outside agencies, handle crises, and have a communications strategy in place, for example.
The implication here is that much needs to be done at a structural/governance level to build stronger organisations so that strategic communications will be better supported. Many smaller organisations that don’t have a fulltime comms person currently do a variety of communications activities. If it is not feasible to hire a part- or fulltime comms person, it may mean that more needs to be done at a Board or advisory level to help bring these skills to the organisation.
There were also some notable differences between country tiers. Those organisations in yellow and red zone countries are more likely to provide legal services to their stakeholders and are more interested in learning more about topics like marriage equality and how to do audience research and testing. In addition, they get more help from volunteers and external audiences for
32 communications and were more likely to have received grants from IE or other organisations for communications.
Those in red zone countries faced more challenges and pushback from populist governments and are more likely to use evaluation tools like focus groups, surveys and case studies. Organisations in yellow zone countries rated their communications capacity better than the others and were most interested in learning about message testing.
Organisations in green zone countries worked more in schools and with LGBTI people with disabilities, as well as other more diverse audiences such as older LGBTI people, refugees, and intersex people, but tended to be less aware of the services and support IE provides. And, contrary to expectation, they were statistically more likely to have budgets under €10K and less likely to have fulltime staff.
Lastly, those under €100K+ in budget were interested in more of the “basic” communications tools, such as managing social media accounts, writing press releases and creating videos.
This data will be useful in planning new programs and activities to support the LGBTI activist community.
Per the study refenced below from Cause Communication’s comms needs assessment project (initially identified during the desk research phase), the six indicators of organisations that are highly effective at using communications are a reasonable starting point for defining the implications of the research. We use the term “reasonable” as their study was a US-based sample of mostly larger organisations and it is a few years old. As we move forward in this project, IE and the Advisory Group will need to identify those areas where they as funders and facilitators can have the most impact in addressing these areas. Following the initial implications and recommendations based on these six indicators, I raise a few additional questions and points about how and in what ways IE can support these groups.
From Assessing Nonprofits’ Communications Capacity: An Online Self-Assessment Tool in the Peer-Reviewed Journal of Philanthropy:
Based on a detailed analysis of a survey of 529 foundations, universities and nonprofits, the authors created a six-point index that identifies the characteristics and practices of organisations that are ranked as highly effective at using communications to advance their goals. The six indicators are: Involvement of organisation leadership in communications, communications planning and organisation-wide planning, staffing and the use of outside expertise, donor understanding and support for communications, managing the communications basics, and the role of evaluation in communications.
Communications planning and organisation-wide planning As only about a quarter of survey respondents reported having an actual communications plan, there is great opportunity for support here. And it appears that one major reason for not having or
33 sticking with a plan is due to time being diverted to deal with crises or attacks from populist detractors. Organisations that have a plan in place, and also are prepared for crises by regularly communicating with internal staff and/or with boards/volunteers seem to be best positioned to handle the current challenging environment.
Potential Recommendation: Provide webinars, templates and other tools that will help organisations develop and stick to a comms plan. Ideally, a plan that is seen as agile and not burdensome. This could be a peer-based system from other successful LGBTI organisations and could be segmented by size of organisation. Include planning for crisis communications as a key part of this capacity building process.
Staffing and the use of outside expertise As the survey suggests that in many organisations program staff and volunteers are more likely than a dedicated communications staff to do work on communications, IE, funders and other supporting the community need to think about how to address this reality. Those leading comms efforts at activist organizations also need support as they often feel isolated in their activities.
Potential Recommendation: More basic training materials and resources may be needed to address the mishmash of solutions that organisations are currently using. Similarly, providing communications mentors to help organisations may be a way to build capacity at all levels. And creating a network of comms leads across the region could provide needed professional and moral support to this important group of activists.
Donor understanding and support for communications The funders supporting this needs assessment project obviously understand and support the need for effective comms from LGBTI organisations. Interviewees typically were very grateful for funder support on campaigns for trainings, etc., although some reported that government money often came with irrelevant KPIs, or that foundation grants had assessment reporting requirements that were challenging or not covered by the received funds. The key question for us is how to get more funders engaged.
Potential Recommendation: Sharing this research with other funders, as well as their own colleagues who might be providing more general support to organisations could be a strategy to encourage more funding on communications. Also reaching EU and national government funders could be a high-level activity to raise awareness and push for more giving in this area, as well as making sure that grant reporting requirements were realistic and covered all organisational costs.
Managing the communications basics Given the relatively good self-ratings that organisations gave themselves in the survey, which were echoed in the interviews, as well as their reported use of comms basics like maintaining a website, managing social media channels, basic social media campaigns and media outreach, the implication here is that these orgs are getting by, but could be doing a better job. As the survey data suggests, those in organisations with budgets under €100K+ might particularly benefit from this support.
34 Potential Recommendation: Consider development of materials/webinars on a broad range of topics that could be potentially developed in partnership with organisations that have had particular success in specific areas, i.e., creating a fundraising campaign, press outreach in restrictive countries, etc. Make sure to include the key topics that were requested: assessing communications impact, managing social media accounts, creating videos and audience research/message testing.
The role of evaluation in communications While 1 in 6 organisations report using no assessment tools for their comms work, a significant number report using web and social media metrics, observation and some sort of media clipping service to understand the impact of their work. There is definitely opportunity to help those currently doing nothing in this area, and it’s a good sign that (per the above) assessing comms impact and audience research/message testing are topics that have been requested by organisations as ones they would like support on from IE.
Involvement of organisation leadership in communications Nearly 30% of organisations report that their executive directors directly handle communications, although as the research suggests, this is often in circumstances where there is no fulltime comms person. Given that so many organisations do not have boards of directors and the level of involvement from them and other advisors is extremely low, more support for and use of external resources needs to be encouraged.
Potential Recommendation: Guidelines for staffing and supporting an effective communications program including the role of external boards and/or advisory groups.
Potential Recommendation: Create or find relevant materials from other sources or from LGBTI organisations currently doing good work in this area. Include as part of an overall “how to set up an effective comms effort in your organisation” platform.
Some additional thoughts/questions as we move from research into action • Vision: What is IE and funders’ vision of what increased communications capacity can look like? • Focus: Is it better to focus on providing services and support for organisations in countries where LGBTI rights are most oppressed or with organisations that have the fewest resources? Or to provide a menu of opportunities based on Rainbow Europe tiers or other criteria, based on current comms capacity? • Peer-to-Peer: Overall, there was great interest in more opportunities to create a platform or network of those working in communications for peer support, sharing of best practices or relevant LGBTI news/content, reaching out with questions, etc. Some have also asked for language-specific networks (DE, FR, RU). Can IE or another group set this up and have capacity to manage it? • How do organisations learn and change? Interviews suggest that there are different ways that organisations learn and absorb information. Some prefer more hands-on trainings, others like having resources they can turn to when needed.
35 Demographics of Survey What follows are charts from the key additional demographic questions from the survey, as well as questions about receipt of funding from IE and other organisations.
Country Per the chart below, a breakdown of participants by country follows. Russia by far tops the list with over 12% of the participants. Notable larger countries with zero or only one response include Norway, Poland, and Romania.
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37 Audiences Served LGBT and to a lesser extent “I” people are those that organisations serve mostly. Among sub- groups, youth and students were also mentioned often.
Those organisations with a fulltime comms person were more likely to serve trans, lesbian, gay and bisexual audiences, as well as non-LGBTI service providers/stakeholders and those living in poverty. Organisations in green and yellow zone countries were more likely to serve intersex, migrant and older LGBTI adults. Those in green zone countries were also more likely to serve those from racial minority backgrounds, while those in yellow zone countries were more likely to serve youth and students, and those in red zone countries to serve trans audiences. Those with budgets of €10K+ were more likely to serve LGBTI youth, while those with €100K+ budgets were more likely to serve gay men and people with disabilities.
38 Grants from ILGA-Europe Roughly a third have received grants from IE in the past.
Those organisations in red and yellow zones, as well as those with a fulltime comms person and those with budgets of €10K+ were more likely to receive an ILGA grant.
Support for Comms Campaigns Only a quarter of those surveyed have received a grant from IE or another organisation for comms support. Per the above chart, about a third of those received funding from IE.
Those in organisations in red and yellow zones, those that have a fulltime comms person and budgets over €10K are more likely to have received funding from IE and/or others for communications.
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Utilization of Funds The majority of funds received were put towards communications campaigns followed by training/coaching or other capacity building support.
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