Campaigning in Collaboration
Change cannot happen without the active involvement, support and cooperation of others. Collaboration therfor often lies at the heart of successful campaigning and influencing and can be central to achieving lasting change.
Many of the challenges that campaigners face - from climate change to tackling poverty - can't be organisations acting alone. Strength in numbers can give better leverage and a coherent and coordinated voice to negotiate with.
Organisations can campaign together in a range of different ways from loose networks to more formal structured coalitions and alliances and often collaborative working evolves over time in order to respond to external factors.
Collaborative campaigning can:
- Bring together a range of expertise knowledge, and experiences
- Lead to the sharing of resources and workloads
- Allow access to a broader base of supporters and therefore reach a greater number of targets
- Enable you to apply pressure to decision makers at various levels
- Make a greater impact
Establishing a unified voice can offer unique opportunities to influence key decision makers and achieve change, but collaborative working can present particular challenges as well. We have a range of resources to support you in exploring the options of collaborative working and avoid some of the stumbling blocks.
Getting you started
Our free two page guide introducing the benefits of working with allies and outlines some ways to go about it.
Download the Collaboration fact sheet (PDF 93 KB)
Fine tuning your knowledge
In Focus guide Effecting change through collaboration
Change cannot happen without the active support and cooperation of others. Collaboration of some form therefore lies at the heart of successful campaigning and influencing. This free guide covers the principles of effective collaboration such as deciding on your approach, agreeing a share vision and processes for communication and coordination and indicators to evaluate if you are collaborating effectively.
With specific thanks to our speakers Sakthi Suriyaprakasam from NCVO, Simon Berry from Colalife and Semakeleng Moema from the Scouts Association who took part in the Forum for Change seminar this guide is based on.
Campaigning in Collaboration
For more detailed information our publication shares practical lessons drawn coalitions such as Make Poverty History, Smokefree Action Coalition, Every Disabled Child Matters, and Family Policy Alliance. It includes key lessons about agreeing shared objectives, structures and decision making, and leaving a campaign legacy.
More information and order the publication
The free Executive Summary provides an overview of the key findings from the publication, draws out the common themes and introduces the case studies.
Download the free summary (PDF 245KB)
Find out more about collaborative working more generally from NCVO's collaborative working resources
