Mobilise support

Regardless of how passionately you might feel about your campaign, if it has little or no support how do you know you’re campaigning on something that actually really matters? Looking at it another way, if there are lots of individuals or groups that support you, and are actively involved in your campaign, it provides validation for your campaign, and makes it harder for those you are trying to influence to ignore you.

While one person can lead a campaign, without the galvanising support of others, they are highly unlikely to meet their campaign goals. According to the activist and designer Ann Thorpe, campaigners try to make injustices unavoidably public so that they provoke us (Governments, corporations, the public) to make a choice between accepting it or helping to do something about it. However, as discussed in mobilising support, you do need to carefully consider the specifics of why you want to increase your profile.

In this section we will look at a few different aspects of building and mobilising support.

Further information

The Battlefront website has a range of tips and advice.

See chapter 6 of NCVO’s ‘The Good Campaigns Guide’ for a range of information about how to mobilise support.

Also, read the ‘Citizen Action’ chapter in Des Wilson’s ‘Campaigning: The A-Z of Public Advocacy’ for how to go about building coalitions and using committees effectively.