Campaigning
Does campaigning work? What makes a campaign successful? How political should charities be? And how can you tell if you’re making a difference?
Influencing change through activism and advocacy has been the lifeblood of charities for centuries. But it isn’t easy. Advocacy is risky. There is no guarantee of success.
Charity campaigns can take years. The conditions are complex and changing.
We help charities plan their campaigns through developing a solid theory of change. We encourage focusing on the system as a whole and coordinating efforts around a place. We help charities measure and evaluate the impact of their campaigns, so they can capitalise on success and move on to the next stage. Find out more by coming to one of our training days.
We recently worked with the Evening Standard’s homelessness campaign to evaluate their impact. If your campaign would benefit from an evaluation partner, we’d love to hear from you.
Featured tools, resources and commentary on campaigning
Walking the Talk
Walking the Talk is our cross-sector partnership to help charities improve their diversity
How can you tell if your campaign is shifting the dial?
Now we have another general election around the corner, many charities will be gearing up to get their causes up the policy agenda. But in such a complex and ever-changing environment how can campaigners know if their efforts are having an impact?
Measuring your campaigning impact: An introduction
NPC’s briefing paper following our event on how charities can measure the impact of their campaigning work.
Shifting the dial: How to take an impact-focused approach to your policy change campaigns
A practical guide to focusing on impact while planning, delivering and evaluating a campaign.
Closing in on change
In this short guide, we highlight a number of readily available evaluation resources and explain how NPC’s four pillar approach can help you evaluate your campaign through a series of simple steps.
Recent updates
The voluntary sector’s relationship with government
Sarah Vibert, Interim CEO of NCVO, discusses the ways in which the voluntary sector can work with and influence government. Sarah will be speaking at NPC Ignites 2021.
Lessons learnt from working on the EU Settlement Scheme
Unanswered questions remain as EU settlement deadline looms.
Show The Salary: A campaign about power
Hiding salaries on job adverts deters applicants and it means that people often cannot access a fair wage. Here's how one campaign is combatting this inequity and helping to redress power imbalances within the charity sector.
Back to basics? Campaigning in a Tory majority Parliament
You’d need to be in your fifties to have any professional experience of operating in an environment where a Conservative government commands such a stable and substantive majority in Parliament. In this guest blog, Richard Darlington shares how to campaign in this new context.
Polarisation: Why Brexit and a hung Parliament need a different campaigning style
Richard Darlington shares what has been having an impact in the world of social sector policy influencing, despite the current challenging context.
Charities must collaborate or fail
Red Cross CEO Mike Adamson spoke at 2019's NPC Ignites, his speech examined the massive potential of the social sector to change the world, if it can work together and the new leaders who will put collaboration at the heart if achieving their mission. It is reproduced here as a blog.
One week ’till NPC Ignites 2019!
It's just one week till NPC Ignites 2019! Our CEO Dan Corry runs through the exciting programme.
Nothing is settled
EU citizens rights to remain in the UK after Brexit is being brought into a question by the government's apparent push towards hard Brexit and decision to end freedom of movement on deadline day. The Transition Advice Fund needs support to ensure everyone who is entitled to settled status gets it.
Snaphots of the sector
As part of our ongoing work to better understand the issues facing the social sector, we spoke to 18 charity leaders, foundations, charities, public sector organisations, cross-sector organisations and professional services firms from across the UK.
Who’s next?
It’s game on in the race to lead the Tory party. With odds changing daily and the race well underway, we take a look at the charity CVs of those applying for today’s top job in politics.
Settled status: What level of take-up can we expect?
As the UK prepares to leave the EU 3.5m EU citizens need to register for settled status to remain in the country. This report reviews a range of similar schemes from around the world looking at the level of coverage achieved, how take-up was encouraged and any lessons we can learn.
NPC welcomes new Minister for Sport and Civil Society, Mims Davies
On the 5th of November 2018 Mims Davies was made Minister for Sport and Civil Society. Here NPC CEO Dan Corry welcomes her to the role and suggests some priorities to make her time in the role a success.
