About us

About our work

Campaigning Effectiveness supports and empowers people and organisations to change their world through campaigning and influencing policy. We believe that campaigning is critical, not optional, to a healthy civil and democratic society. We bring together experience and expertise and drive excellence in campaigning and policy work across civil society by providing support, knowledge, tools and resources.

We have a range of resources and services which can help you in your campaigning and influencing work, including:

• Free guides and case studies - We have a range of resources to support you influencing policy and campaigning for change.
• Certificate in Campaigning - This 7 module course is the only campaigning course in the UK, covering all theoretical and practical aspects of campaigning and influencing.
• Consultancy - From bespoke training to support on strategy, planning, tactics and evaluation.

What is campaigning?

We found that people were often getting stuck defining and explaining campaigning so we came up with this definition.

You might call it influencing, voice, advocacy or campaigning, but all these activities are about creating change.  At NCVO we use the word campaigning and define this as the mobilising of forces by organisations or individuals to influence others in order to effect an identified and desired social, economic, environmental or political change.

Whatever you call it and whether you are trying to save a local community centre from closing or lobbying government, campaigning is about creating a change. The impact is the real change created by a campaign – the difference it makes to people’s lives.

About our previous funding

The Campaigning Effectiveness project was set up in 2006 initially funded by the Big Lottery Fund to:  

• Establish a coordinated programme of training and capacity building for Voluntary and Community Organisations.
• Devise and deliver a coherent programme of research and development to promoting and enhancing learning in the sector.

In 2008 we gained additional funding for three years to continue and expand support for those campaigning for change and influencing policy. This funding ended in March 2011.

Improving Support 

In 2007 through the Third Sector Review the Government recognised the importance of its role in enabling campaigning and voice of the sector to achieve social change. Campaigning Effectiveness was selected to lead the Improving Support programme for Campaigning and Advocacy. Working with partners across the sector, including NAVCA, Bassac, British Institute of Human Rights, Sitewriters and Roehampton University, we received funding from Capacitybuilders to provide support in enhancing effectiveness and impact of campaigning to infrastructure organisations. 

Find out what we did read the NCVO Campaigning and Advocacy workstream Impact report (PDF 569 KB) 

Forum for Change 

Following the success of the Policy Forum NCVO was awarded a grant from the Big Lottery Fund to deliver a three-year policy skills development programme in 2008. The Policy Skills Development Programme supported those campaigning for change and influencing policy across the sector by identifying areas of need and providing training, seminars, good practice guides and online resources.

Find out what we did in our prezi: