Sunday, 24 October 2010

Mercenary activism

Times are tight, the comprehensive spending review did no-one any favours and the NGO sector is shrinking as cuts hit the most generous segments of society, i.e. public sector workers.

As the spotlight descends of activism, we start to consider the challenges of getting feedback about what’s going on, measuring the impact of what happened and perhaps trying to value the contribution that activists and volunteers make to a campaign success.

So to some idle speculation on a Sunday morning, starting with some numbers in my head.

Baselines
  • Organising a good public meeting with a MP, a postal invitation letter, some local advertising, a reasonable venue and the details costs perhaps £1000
  • A decent photo op, with some good props that stays mainly within the law, with a professional camera person, costs maybe twice that, so perhaps £2000
  • A photo op / direct comms / small action, again with professional media, perhaps with activists staying over somewhere, costs more, perhaps somewhere between £5K and £10K
  • A medium action, with climbers, legal implications, a bigger pool of activists (maybe 30 ish), hired vehicles, support, sustenance and the like, maybe 25K to 30K
  • And a big job, with 60-100 people, well you’re looking to £50K or more, and lots more when ships and boats get involved, so perhaps worth ignoring for now.

Impact
Various MPs have, over the years, told me (as a yardstick) that they value an email / campaign postcard as about 1 votes worth of interest in an issue. A personal letter/email where the individual has spent time, perhaps 10 votes, and a face to face visit from a constituent as worth perhaps 50 votes.

By extension I’ve worked on the assumption that a piece in the local paper is worth 100 votes, and perhaps speaking in from of an audience (at a public meeting) is worth at least the votes of the people present so another 100 votes.

Throw in a bit of smoke and mirrors, the excitement of planted questions, the opportunity to record the answers and a bit of local capacity building then maybe a public meeting is worth 300 to 350 votes worth of impact.

So if one assumes this is an effective way of reaching a decision maker, then that works out at about £3/vote, and by extension, once could assume, a campaign postcard is worth much the same.

Lead generation
In the current climate, fundraisers are desperately keen to get their hands on data for sympathetic people, ideally with a phone number attached.

Oxfam ran that excruciating ‘I’m In’ campaign a few years ago, which looked like a petition used by paid street fundraisers, but which (as I understand it) was pure data capture. Based on your postcode (and the income level of the area), you would then receive a phone call asking for money.

Good campaign postcards IMO incorporate data capture because it is worth knowing who your friends are. You can then, for instance, invite them to a public meeting, or to email a decision maker or to generally make themselves useful and active.

The fundraisers might value a good piece of data, with a phone number at £6, so if 2/3 of campaign postcards have data attached, and half that data includes a phone number, then an average campaign postcard is with perhaps another £2 to the organisation.

Summary
After a bit more maths, this implies a campaign postcard, with data capture, is worth about £5 to an organisation.
That a small team of volunteers campaigning on a Saturday afternoon will generate £500 worth of such postcards.
That a local group campaigning 10 times a year, will generate £5000 worth, and that a network of 60 groups will generate about £300K’s worth. I like these sums

And a speculative end point. During the campaign for a climate change law, there was lots of data analysis, and a suggestion that when a MP receives 100-150 pieces of correspondence they then make a decision on an issue, and would generally show support if there was no reason not to.

If £750 worth of street campaigning reaches a decision maker then how does one justify a direct comms event costing £5K? Perhaps in the national media? Or in the value of the decision maker (1 minister = 5 backbenchers), or in the value of such events to change a decision makers mind?

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