Campaigns are rarely won without a smart goal, a clear strategy and great tactics. We want to empower you – and people in communities right across Australia – to run strategic campaigns in your local communities that add up to something huge. We’ve broken down our national strategy into a local strategy for the network of ACF Community groups across the country. Now, with the tools in this kit, you can create a plan to roll out in your community. When we work together and collaborate across our local communities we can win!
Simply put, strategy is turning what you have into what you need to get what you want. (Marshall Ganz)
Adani is our line in the sand when it comes to climate change. If this coal mine goes ahead, it will pump billions of tonnes of pollution into our air, wreck our climate and destroy our reef. Australians don’t want more dirty coal. And the rest of the world is rapidly moving out of the dirty energy past and into a clean energy future.
Across the world, people are rapidly moving out of the dirty coal era and into a future powered by sun, wind and waves. The only thing holding us back is a handful of big polluters and the politicians in their back pockets who want to keep us shackled to the dirty energy of the past.
Already millions of people have taken action to stop Adani’s dangerous mine. But the coal lobby has stepped up their game, pumping millions into advertising and lobbying the government. Right now, the government is set to give Adani $1billion of public money to help build their mine.
Let’s make sure the Australian Government doesn’t lend Adani a cent for their giant polluting mega mine. They might have the money, but we have the power. In collaboration with a huge number of groups in the movement representing over 1.5 million Australians, we are creating the biggest movement in Australia to stop this mine and push our governments and businesses to get out of coal and into clean energy.
Only a huge movement with a shared strategy can stop this mine. A national network of local groups is growing rapidly across the country. Local groups are targeting political representatives locally, so they are feeling the heat nationally. We are calling on them to turn their backs on Adani and get out of dirty power and into clean energy.
Together, we will stop this mine and create a future powered by sun, win and waves! This is the biggest environmental challenge since we saved the Franklin River, and the most coordinated the movement has ever been. We are working closely with other groups like 350, GetUp!, AYCC, in a huge collaboration representing over 1.5 million Australians to stop this mine. You can be a part of it. Let’s make history!
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TERM |
DEFINITION |
ACF STRATEGY |
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Long-term vision |
Sometimes we get so focused on achieving a campaign goal, that we miss the forest for the trees. It’s important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture – How would you like the world to look? How will it look if your goal is achieved? |
A world powered by sun, wind and waves where our reefs, communities, wildlife and forests thrive. |
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Goal |
A campaign goal is the tangible outcome your campaign is seeking to achieve. What needs to happen for your long-term vision to be realised? Is it the federal government implementing a specific policy? The protection of a particular forest? Your goal should always be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced and Timely. |
Ultimate goal: Adani is stopped and Australia transitions fairly from dirty energy to 100% renewable energy by 2035. Your local goal: Your local MP is speaking out publicly and pressuring their organisations to get out of coal and into clean energy. |
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Targets |
Who can make your goal a reality? Who are you going to pressure to get the outcome you need? Is it Prime Minister Turnbull? Is it your local state MP? It’s good practice to narrow down your target. For example, ‘the government’ isn’t a target because it is a body which contains too many different individual actors. Try and narrow it down to a specific minister or company representative. |
National targets:
Your local targets:
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Theory of change |
Theory of change is a way of expressing your strategy succinctly – a sentence that summarises how you turn what you have into what you need to get what you want. |
By creating a huge network of local groups working on a shared strategy to pressure political representatives, we’ll create a national wave of pressure that stops the funding for Adani and pushes government and business to get out of coal and into clean energy. |
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Tactics |
Tactics shouldn’t be confused with strategy. Tactics are the activities you will engage in at each stage of your campaign to achieve an outcome. This could be anything from a petition to letter-writing to picketing outside your MP’s office. Planning tactics is where you can get really creative and add colour, light and movement to your campaign. |
Later in this toolkit we’ve outlined some core tactics to help you achieve your campaign goal:
When you develop your local plan, you can get creative in how you deliver those tactics - i.e. will you dress up as solar panels and picket outside your MPs office. Don’t feel limited by these tactics either. You can come up with your own creative tactics for applying pressure to your targets. |
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Measures of success |
Measures of success are measures you put in place to check whether you are on the way to achieving your goal. This could be the number of petition signatures you collect over a certain period of time or number of stories you have had placed in local media for example. This helps you to track your campaign as you go along and give you some tangible, smaller goals to achieve along the way. |
When you create your local plan, set your group some measures of success. This could be along the lines of:
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A critical path is series of outcomes you need to happen in order to achieve your end goal. It’s a really useful tool to use to develop your strategy. Here’s a suggested critical path for your local campaign to stop Adani and create a future powered by sun, wind and waves:
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There is a small, core group of people locally who are organising others to speak out and show up. |
A broad group of people in your community are speaking out and showing up to local events and actions. |
There is strong support in your community to get out of dirty coal and into clean energy. |
The local MP sees visible community opposition to funding for dirty coal and support for clean energy. |
Your MP is worried escalating local opposition won’t go away unless they act. |
Your local MP is speaking out publicly and pressuring their organisations to get out of coal and into clean energy. |
Now that you have the shared strategy, you can develop a plan to deliver it locally. Once you have set up your local group, and familiarised yourself with the campaign tools in this kit, you can start thinking through the activities your group will engage in to achieve your local goal.
Have a campaign planning meeting with your group. Get your group together to talk through the strategy and develop a local plan of activities to roll it out.
Create a timeline for 6-12 months to plot out your activities and outcomes. It’s no use planning a whole bunch of activities if no one has the time to do them. What can your group realistically achieve in the next 6-12 months?
Use the critical path as a guide – plan activities under each outcome. What activities can your group engage in to achieve those wins along the way? How will you grow your group? Will you hold an event to recruit people in your community to your group or sign them up to the campaign? When you are doing this stage, stay topline with your activities – e.g. an event to recruit new people – when you’ve done this you can plan each activity in more detail. You might not have time to do this for the whole critical path, so perhaps focus on the first couple of steps.
Plan your activities in more detail. Once you’ve worked out the type of activities you will engage in for each critical step, you can start planning your activities in more detail. You might want to create working groups for this. E.g. you could have a working group develop the activities related to pressuring your MP and a creative working group who will develop the props and design for public actions. Or you can do it all together as one group, if that works best for you.
Assign roles and get people to commit. You might have already assigned clear roles for people in your group. When you’re planning, make sure there are people responsible for each activity being developed and delivered. There’s no use planning activities if no one has committed to doing them. Get people in your group to take ownership of specific activities.
Set yourself some measures of success. Set yourself some small tangible goals so you know as your campaign unfolds, how you are tracking on achieving your outcomes. Set yourself some measures for each activity e.g. how many people need to turn up to your event for it to be successful? How many petition signatures do you need to make an impact on your local MP?
Evaluate and plan ahead. Make sure you check in regularly to see if you’re on track with your plan. If the activities you’re engaging in aren’t working or helping you achieve your outcomes, this is where you can change tack.