Why hire a campaign strategist if winning isn’t on the table?
The truth is that many of the organizations I work with are pursuing changes that may take years or decades to achieve. Some won’t achieve them at all. So why should they go all in? Why hire a campaign strategist? Shouldn’t those resources be directed toward something that can be done right now?
Campaigns build power, and power is a necessary ingredient for achieving future policy change. Expanding our understanding of what “can be done right now” is a helpful first place for adjusting short term objectives and visualizing how to build toward bigger policy goals.
A good campaign strategist should do more than help you change a policy. Their job is to facilitate the design of campaigns that advance multiple objectives at the same time: advocating for policy changes, but also building relationships, strengthening coalitions, developing leaders and champions, expanding organizational influence, and educating decision-makers.
Campaign outcomes number far greater than the two we often think about: “win” or “lose.” Campaigns can change laws, yes, but they can also change what’s considered politically possible. They can grow your organization’s influence and the skills of your team members. They can leave you with stronger infrastructure and put you on the radar of funders who might be interested in supporting your work.
I like to think of campaign outcomes in these categories:
Power-Building Outcomes: Campaigns can leave organizations with more power than they had going into them. They can develop new leaders, expand your supporter base, and deepen supporter engagement. They can strengthen relationships with allied communities and build strong partnerships and coalitions. They can expand an organization’s credibility and influence.
Political Outcomes: Campaigns can deepen an organization’s understanding of the political landscape and grow their influence within it. They can clarify where decision-makers stand, point out champions and opponents, strengthen relationships with elected and appointed officials and their staff. They can elevate issues on the political agenda and demonstrate public support for change.
Narrative Outcomes: Campaigns can change how people think and talk about an issue. They can shift media coverage and develop new spokespeople. They can force opponents to defend unpopular opinions and increase the cost of political opposition. They can raise awareness and understanding in a community.
Institutional Outcomes: Campaigns can strengthen the organizations that run them. They can result in stronger advocacy systems, more effective communications infrastructure, deeper policy expertise, and increased fundraising capacity. They can grow your team’s confidence about engaging politically and leave staff more knowledgeable and skilled than they were before the campaign.
Policy Outcomes: This is the category that is the most straightforward. Campaigns can pass legislation, defeat harmful proposals, change regulations or agency practices, protect existing laws from being repealed, or otherwise change (or sustain) the rules that shape people’s lives and communities.
Building power in places where change seems unlikely is often slow, frustrating work. But abandoning those places doesn’t contribute to future progress. A lot of philanthropy and advocacy strategies are built to chase favorable terrain. When policy issues seem unwinnable, some funders argue that the advancement of their neighbors will make it politically untenable for systems of oppression to continue unchecked.
In my experience, progress elsewhere does not translate into progress at home. Communities facing hostile political conditions need their own sources of power, leadership, infrastructure, and political pressure if they hope to achieve change over the long term.
Campaigns can be that source of power. They aren’t the only way, and they definitely aren’t a shortcut. But for organizations committed to long-term change, they’re a good place to begin.
