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Why
Summary
Use this play to begin to develop an advocacy campaign strategy when you have identified and agreed on a time-limited and achievable campaign goal.
Some examples of suitable campaign goals:
- Create a community food waste rescue program in six months.
- Implement a school lunch composting program by the start of next academic year.
- Establish a community food bank in 90 days.
Objectives of the play
- Identify individuals and groups with power and influence related to your goal
- List ideas about how to engage these parties in your campaign
- Build power for interested parties who don’t have it.
Outcomes
You will develop an advocacy strategy, including …
Original Purpose & Source
Some sources that have informed development of this play include:
- Fabriders’ Advocacy Strategy and Exercise with Power Analysis and Stakeholder Mapping and The Half Wheel and the Pyramid
- The Change Agency’s training resources on Campaign Strategy
- ACE’s Power Analysis exercise
The play can trace its origins to the Stakeholder Support Versus Opposition Grid presented in Nutt, P. &. Backoff, R. (1992). Strategic Management of Public and Third Sector Organizations: A Handbook for Leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. This and several related techniques are discussed in Bryson, J. M. (2004). What to do when Stakeholders matter: Stakeholder Identification and Analysis Techniques. Public Management Review, 6(1), 21–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719030410001675722 . An open access version of the paper is available from ResearchGate.
You can see the play applied to a case study in Bryson, J. M., Cunningham, G. L., & Lokkesmoe, K. J. (2002). What to Do When Stakeholders Matter: The Case of Problem Formulation for the African American Men Project of Hennepin County, Minnesota. Public Administration Review, 62(5), 568–584. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3110017 . An open access preprint is available at academia.edu.
The term stakeholder is being used less frequently. Issues with the term are discussed in the open-access article Reed, M.S., Merkle, B.G., Cook, E.J. et al. Reimagining the language of engagement in a post-stakeholder world. Sustainability Science 19, 1481–1490 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01496-4 and summarized in this blog post.
How
Time needed for the play
75-90 minutes
If you have an additional 45 minutes and interest for a more extended session, consider using the Spectrogram as a warm-up before this play.
Number of participants
You need enough participants with enough variety of perspective to identify all interested parties. With a single facilitator, five to seven well-chosen participants can work well. With a larger group, consider planning for additional facilitation support. Pay as much attention to representation and variety of perspective as you do to the number of participants.
Where it happens
This play can be run in person or online, and could be adapted for hybrid with at least two facilitators.
Preparation
The participants
This play is intended for participants who accept the premise of the campaign goal. This session won’t be the place to debate or adjust the campaign goal. Resolve questions and conflicts around the campaign goal before the session.
If multiple participants seem to come from the same perspective, consider whether there is value in having multiple people with that similar perspective.
Consider which perspectives seem to be missing and how they might be introduced in the session. In particular, consider how to represent the perspectives of any invitees who do not attend.
Especially if the participants don’t know each other well and are likely to continue working together, consider allowing extra time for them to get acquainted and become comfortable speaking in the group.
Accessibility
It’s always good to know if there are any accessibility requirements to consider e.g. language and the need for interpreters, people with different learning styles and abilities, communication abilities, physical abilities.
In person, the activity involves writing on and placing sticky notes on a flipchart or whiteboard.
Online, the activity involves virtual sticky notes and a whiteboard. Carefully organize and explain the online whiteboard process, keeping in mind that facilitators often become experts in the whiteboard software they use regularly, and participants may be using it for the first time.
Materials
In person, the play can be run with one flip chart for the analysis and two or more flip charts for advocacy strategy next steps. A similar setup can be used online. Using a single color of sticky notes will result in contributions not being identified with any individual participant. A single color of flip chart marker is sufficient (recommend dark blue or black for legibility).
Setup
For the analysis, participants will place sticky notes on a flip chart with a line across the middle, with the left end labeled Supports and the right end labeled Opposes. Having the participants create the chart themselves fosters ownership. If that will be difficult or distracting in your context, you can create the chart in advance.
Have additional charts ready for participants to make lists of ideas for actions from the following steps: Mobilise – Educate – Counter, Who doesn’t have power?, Data, and Social Media.
Online tools
TLDraw is a free, instant collaborative online whiteboard. The Diagram feature of CryptPad could also be used.
What
| Time | The What | The Why | The How |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 mins | State the campaign goal. Have a leader from the group give a brief statement of the campaign goal. Can it be stated in a single sentence? Can its time-limited and feasible nature be emphasized? | To get everyone on the same page around the campaign goal. | It would be good for this statement to be made by the client/ participant leader, but it could also be made by the facilitator. |
| 10 mins. | Introduce the concept of interested parties (stakeholders). A definition from fabriders is “all the people who are involved or impacted by the change they seek; for example, members of the communities concerned, the press and media, government officials, etc.” Emphasize that this is not limited to those with a formal decision-making role or official standing. Have participants list as many different interested parties as possible, one person or group per sticky note. | To identify the parties they will need to engage to achieve the campaign goal. | There are two ways to do this: Have people say out loud the interested parties they think of and have one person write them on the sticky notes, one party per note. Give everyone some sticky notes and have them write notes separately, then consolidate duplicates. Use whichever seems best for your group, taking into account whether they might be more comfortable speaking out loud or writing. |
| 10 mins. | Place the sticky notes along the line on the chart. | To identify support and opposition for the campaign goal. | Divide sticky notes approximately evenly among participants and have them place them along the line. Allow time for discussion. To wrap up, read the list from one end to the other to check if the group is in general agreement about the order. |
| 10 mins. | Engage the participants in a discussion about each type of stakeholder, and about activities that can be undertaken with each.Allies are the people they need to mobilise.Neutral Parties are the people they need to educate (to transform them into Allies).Opponents are the people whose arguments and actions they need to counter.Parties on the line between Neutral Parties and Allies are the people they need to motivate, to make them into Allies.Those who are between Opponents and Neutral Parties are the people that they need to persuade to reconsider their positions. | To identify the right tactic to use for each party. | Have participants label the left end of the line Allies, the middle Neutral Parties, and the right end Opponents. Have participants list their ideas for engagement on a flip chart or whiteboard. Ideas could be more specific versions of these tactics: Allies – Mobilise!Call on them to attend a protest, rally or meetingGet them to put information out through their own networksGet them to engage Neutral Parties and OpponentsNeutral Parties – Educate!Give them the information they need.Engage them in crowdsourcing dataEngage them in getting information that is needed for the campaign. Actively engaging neutral parties in data gathering is a great way of educating them and turning them into active AlliesOpponents – Counter!Engage Opponents in face-to-face meetings and Forums. Counter the arguments that they present in debate.Use Allies to engage OpponentsUse Neutral Parties to educate and to engage Opponents. |
| 5 mins. | Identify the key decision maker. This is the person or entity who has the authority to make the change you want happen. | To introduce the concept of power into the analysis. | If the decision maker already has a sticky note, identify where it falls on the line. If not, have participants create a sticky note and place it on the line. |
| 10 mins. | Compare the amounts of power available to the interested parties. | To understand power available to mobilise to achieve the campaign goal and to identify key areas of opposition to overcome. | Have participants draw a vertical line down the middle of the flip-chart paper. At the top of the line they should write ‘most power’ and at the bottom of the line they should write ‘least power.’ Without moving their stakeholders from their positions on the horizontal line – they should move them vertically according to the amount of power they have in making the change. |
| 10 mins. | Examine relationships among the parties. | To understand which parties can influence other parties, especially those with power. | Have participants draw arrows between parties showing relationships and influence. |
| To save time, the next 3 steps could be done in parallel in breakout sections. | |||
| 5 mins. | Identify allies who lack power, and develop tactics to help them build power. | To create more power among supporters. | Need a toolkit for this. Write next steps on flip chart. |
| 5 mins. | Identify a data-driven statement to support the campaign. | Identify the statement, then the role of data in supporting the statement. Write next steps on flipchart. Create simple sketches of an infographic or data visualization. | |
| 5 mins. | Plan to use social media to learn about interested parties and to influence those with power. | Use resources from The Listening Cycle. Write next steps on flip chart. | |
| 5 mins. | Summarize key elements of strategy. | To create an outline for development of more formal strategy, or a simple list of action items for a less formal group. | Recap the key advocacy elements participants have developed throughout the session: ways to mobilise, educate and counter; help allies build power; use data; use social media. |
Credit
- Edited by Jennifer Miller