Online advocacy & grassroots campaigns

At the heart of your campaign

Digging down to the roots of your campaign and determining a creative approach can be a powerful tool in successfully stewarding change. Since 2003, Phillip has been helping values-based advocacy organizations explore innovative ways to make their campaigns more accessible to new audiences and more successful overall. Through one-on-one consulting or facilitated work with your team, Phillip can help your organization unearth the cultural artifacts necessary to grow a viral online campaign. Deliverables often include new frames for core messaging, new ideas for imagery, or assistance with campaign design. Phillip draws on a history of culture jamming and creative approaches to issue-based advocacy that can help any organization bring new energy to a grassroots campaigning effort.

From online to offline and back again

Compelling people to take action and decision makers to take notice can be a long and difficult journey. The Internet changes some of the rules of traditional advocacy work, but a strong campaign plan and a compliment of offline activities are still required to achieve long-term wins. Phillip has helped some of Canada’s leading advocacy organizations integrate their online and offline efforts to create more successful and sustainable initiatives. Deliverables often include a campaign logic model, an online campaign strategy, and an integrated calendar that weaves together both online and offline activities.

Helping you navigate a sea of advocacy tools

There is a vast amount of new tools available to support the advocacy work that you do. Many of these tools make it a snap to achieve a variety of tasks using only a simple Web browser without any specialized knowledge or HTML experience. Additionally, several of these tools are available at a very low cost, thanks to the collective effort of hundreds of dedicated volunteers. This phenomenon is known as the open-source or free/libre software movement – it’s changing the world and the way that social justice organizations and not-for-profits use technology to effect change.

Phillip can work with your organization to evaluate which online advocacy tools will best meet the needs of your organization, your campaign, and your online community – from simple petitions and e-mail-based advocacy tools to complete campaign management systems that include membership databases, event organizing, targeted e-mail delivery, and online donation processing. He can also advise on what direction is best for your organization’s budget and long-term requirements, helping you choose between hosted solutions, open-source software, or custom development.

Campaign management

With campaign plan in hand and an online advocacy platform chosen, it’s time to put the wheels of your campaign in motion. Phillip guides you through the necessary steps to put it all together for a campaign launch and beyond: working to link your campaign into the larger progressive online community; helping to build buzz and to generate awareness; and evolving the campaign over time. Typically this involves an ongoing relationship for the period of the campaign, with deliverables like training, special initiatives, communications and mobilization support, and working with you to continue to expand your online strategy. Progressive political, peace, environment, and human-security campaigns are some of Phillip’s current focuses.

If you’d like to increase the performance and reporting of your next fundraising initiative, explore new ways to build membership and grassroots support, add a “viral” boost to your next campaign, or find out more about intelligent e-mail and advocacy tools, give Phillip a call to find out how he can help.