Policy for Campaigns: Introduction
What do we mean by policy, and campaigning organisations?
This article is reproduced from the main Policy Pulse channel, and introduces a series I’m planning to write over the second half of the year, on the theme of policy for campaigning organisations. These articles will look at policy practice more than at particular policy issues. Please subscribe to this newsletter, Policy for Campaigns, to get them direct to your inbox. There will be a bit of a gap before the new series starts, to allow for some planning and research plus also some client work, and they might be fortnightly rather than weekly.
Alternatively, articles delving into particular policy issues will continue here on the main Policy Pulse channel, on an ad hoc basis, as I find items of interest that I want to learn more about. Please subscribe there if you’d like to receive those instead or as well.
So, what exactly will the new series be about? Its starting point is that policy for campaigning ends is my stock in trade: I’ve spent all my career doing it, in the worlds of both charities and trade associations. It’s not quite the same as policy for delivery organisations, which is what most policy articles and books focus on: an organisation that campaigns for a change won’t usually be directly responsible for implementing that change. That said, it requires fundamentally the same set of skills in terms of understanding a problem and developing workable solutions (although I will be addressing the differences across the two types of organisation as part of the articles).
Before we go any further, we need to deal with the basic questions: what is policy, and what is a campaigning organisation? I’ve worked with people who find defining terminology rather tiresome, and struggle to engage with it: for some, this is because it doesn’t align with their own skillsets; for others, it can seem like mere pedantry. However, I’d argue that the risk of ending up dancing on the head of a pin about what this or that word means is exactly why it’s so important to get clarity about terminology at the outset. I once heard defining tour terms likened to a surgeon sharpening their tools before an operation: if you don’t do it, you will just end up butchering the patient. That’s because it is about more than language: if you aren’t clear about what a particular term means, then you aren’t clear about the concepts you are dealing with; and if you literally don’t know what you are talking about, you are bound to stray into error and confusion.
First things first, then: what is policy? Dictionaries offer a perhaps surprising range of framings:
a plan of action agreed or chosen by a political party, a business, etc.
a set of ideas or a plan of what to do in particular situations that has been agreed to officially by a group of people, a business organization, a government, or a political party
a course of action adopted and pursued by a government, ruler, political party, etc.
a set of ideas or plans that is used as a basis for making decisions, especially in politics, economics, or business
a definite course of action selected from among alternatives, esp in light of given conditions
an overall plan intended to guide and determine decisions
Key themes are that policy entails a course of action or set of ideas and plans, and that these are in some sense adopted or decided on, and then pursued or utilised. I found it interesting that even in these dictionary definitions, distinct elements of formulation (adopting the policy) and implementation (pursuing the policy) can be discerned: anyone working in policy will recognise that not only are these both important, but either or both can be done well or badly.
It also follows from these definitions that policy can be something that occurs in different contexts, and can look quite different depending on this. It can mean public policy, of the type developed and implemented by politicians, governments, public bodies and so on, which we’re principally concerned with here. Or it can mean an operational policy used by any organisation to carry out its work. The two should of course align: an organisation campaigning for tougher restrictions on smoking would probably wish to have an operational policy of not accepting donations from tobacco companies, to give a perhaps trite example. Or less obviously, an organisation raising funds so that it can provide a particular service would have to work out how to square that with a policy position that calls for someone else, such as a public body, to provide that service, or risk appearing incoherent.
Any such incoherence might only matter if the organisation is trying to persuade someone else to do something, which brings us to campaigning: what is it? This time, we don’t need to resort to the dictionary, as rather more heavy lifting has already been done in thinking this through and offering guidance. I’m a fan of NCVO’s definition:
Campaigning is about creating a change. You might call it influencing, voice, advocacy or campaigning, but all these activities are about creating change. […] The impact is the real world change created by a campaign: this is the difference it makes to people’s lives or environment.
When I work with organisations I actually prefer to use the term ‘achieving change’: it is descriptive, and doesn’t bundle up some of the preconceptions that can be attached to “campaigning” (waving placards, going on marches and so on). Not only does it describe what the organisation is trying to do – achieve a change – but it encompasses all the work involved in doing that. This includes both the policy part and the influencing and persuading part, but potentially also other work such as on-the-ground work to support local services to understand the needs of a particular group. Organisations can sometimes trip themselves up by not realising that all of this work is directed to the same end, with the result that the work is not done in a co-ordinated manner: different teams or departments can fail to collaborate with each other, or at worst directly cut across each other. However, as these articles are intended for a professional audience, I’m going to stick with the rather easier to use term “campaigning” and trust you to know what is meant by that.
As this suggests, campaigning has to be for something: in these articles we’re interesting in campaigning that aims to bring about a policy change, but campaigning might achieve other changes: in awareness of a particular issue, for instance; or in the distribution of funds (from donors’ bank accounts to the organisation’s bank account) in a fundraising campaign.
Campaigning for change can be done in different ways: 'quietly' through meetings and written documents; by making use of relationships, including in Parliament; or at a larger scale and more visibly, engaging a group of people in a positive and constructive public effort. Some people might stick other labels like “influencing” or “lobbying” on the quieter end of that, but it is all about achieving change, and therefore for our purposes it is all campaigning. Note this distinction with “protest”, which is not directed to achieving an aim, but is more about expressing unhappiness: many “protests” are nominally directed at changing something, usually stopping it somehow, but with little expectation that change will follow directly or immediately from the action being taken. In campaigning, the intention is that the desired change should be prompted directly by the campaign.
A further implication that flows from this is that campaigning is inherently political: the whole point of politics is to resolve and decide issues of public interest, so if you are campaigning for a change you are entering, in some form, into a political arena. It may be that your issue isn’t one that party politicians concern themselves with, but it very often will be, whether at a national, local or regional level. However, usually campaigning organisation will strive not to be partisan – that is, aligned with one particular political party. By law, charities must not be partisan, and in practice many other types of campaigning organisation will try to maintain an even-handedness, as good practice. That said, some people (including trustees or other senior leaders) can sometimes struggle with the distinction between being political and being partisan, and try to insist that their organisation is not or cannot be political.
The fact that this confusion often arises points towards the last item we need to define: what is a campaigning organisation? It’s any organisation that campaigns, as defined above, as part of its work – but what are those organisations, in practice? Certainly the term covers most trade association and trade unions, and many (but not all or even most) charities. We can also add pressure groups large and small to the list: they exist to exert pressure, which means campaigning. But are there others? Think tanks, for example, might recommend particular policy solutions or approaches, but they don’t necessarily act to bring them about (although some do); and certainly for these articles I don’t propose to focus on the ideological or partisan-aligned portion of the think tank spectrum, which are more like outsourcing houses for political parties. Elsewhere, regulators and other public bodies might want to bring about policy change; so too might individual businesses (as distinct from seeking influence in order to position themselves to win contracts, although some will do both). Should these be considered campaigning organisations? I’d be interested to hear readers’ views. I wouldn’t want to draw the scope of future articles so tightly as to exclude large numbers of readers or the organisations they work for, but at this stage I’m expecting these latter organisations probably won’t be the key focus.
However, identifying what a campaigning organisation is also brings is back to identifying what policy is. Anything that touches on the cause, members or beneficiaries of a campaigning organisation is a potential policy issue for it to pursue. Of course, many of these things might be absolutely fine and not need any change (although there can sometimes be a need to campaign to preserve a well-functioning status quo in the face of an external threat), but if it might be an area where change could be needed, then it’s a potential policy area. This points to another major pitfall for campaigning organisations, of siloing policy as “over there” and letting other departments or teams pick up and run with issues of importance that are also within the scope of its policy work. The scenarios given above of having messaging or work that cuts across an organisation’s overt policy work are essentially sub-varieties of this error, which is remarkably common.
This is the sort of thing future articles will get into in more detail: hopefully I will be able to provide helpful pointers to organisations in understanding what is policy, in the sense of their operational needs. So, future areas to look at will include:
Alignment of policy with organisation’s strategy
Identifying an organisation’s policy needs – both the issues it needs to address, and what it wants to see done
How to gather evidence, develop the policy, and agree it
How the policy feeds into campaigning
The situations and obstacles that can make it hard.
I hope you’ll find the articles interesting and sign up for them. If you think you will, please also share this with friends and colleagues who might be interested too, and let me know your thoughts. What would you say counts as a “campaigning organisation”? What are the key considerations for policy work in this context, in your experience? Do get in touch on Twitter or LinkedIn, or just hit reply. And I’ll see you a little later in the summer for the start of the series proper.