What does it take to foster fresh thinking on advocacy campaigns at your nonprofit? Mobilisation Lab, or MobLab, a year-old group that began in 2011 as a project of Greenpeace, helps organizations around the world collaborate with their supporters on advocacy efforts by decentralizing control of those campaigns. Michael Silberman, who heads up MobLab, offers the following advice to nonprofits that want to get more volunteers involved and excited about advancing their cause.
Look for allies. Take inventory of other organizations and activists who are working on the same issues as your group and offer to work together. Identify your most ardent supporters who want to do more for the cause and ask them to be your first recruits.
Work outside the organizational chart. Advocacy work is often sprinkled across multiple departments — policy, communications, marketing, fundraising, digital engagement, and more. Allow employees at all levels of the organization who are interested in advocacy work to participate in an independent, cross-discipline team.
Include fundraisers at all stages. “Fundraisers often get cut out of advocacy planning and then are expected to create a fundraising campaign on top of the campaign,” Silberman says. Work together from the start and save everyone time — and hassles.
Spotlight your in-house innovators. “We all have within our organizations creative types and all kinds of expertise that people are willing to contribute if the organization gets creative enough to invite that and engage that,” Silberman says.
Innovation within an organization often happens at the margins, he says, where it’s underappreciated or hidden.
At Greenpeace, which hosted annual events where employees shared skills with one another, MobLab began spotlighting innovations at the organization that could help modernize its advocacy efforts. The sessions led to widespread use of some advocacy tools that were developed in-house, more interdepartmental networking, and greater investment in digital advocacy efforts and staff throughout Greenpeace.
Put people at the center of the process. No more top-down campaign creation; seek creative input from supporters and test the ideas with representatives of the intended audience.
At Greenpeace, Silberman says, advocacy leaders “can’t get a campaign plan approved now without creating clear roles for people [outside the organization] for mobilization and engagement.”
