📜 Why hasn't your policy change happened?

Alison Griffin, Director of Politics, Participation and Campaigns at Save the Children, talks to Tom Hashemi.

Ask yourself why the change hasn’t happened already

Change makers often don't ask themselves “Why haven't I got the change I want?” I've worked in this sector for at least 10 years and in that time I've seen some amazingly crafted campaigns, with strong routes to influence, and creative tactics, but nobody asking why that change hadn’t already happened. You have to look at the opposing forces and what they are doing in the space to stop you from winning. You have to look at that wider ecosystem and really understand it in granular detail. 

Understand the barriers to change

We start with five barriers to change. 

  1. Decision-makers don't know about the problem you’re trying to fix. The response to that is to build your research and evidence base and support your advocates to advocate. So often we skip to tactics like developing a petition - where what is far more effective is building out an innovative, useful policy solution that’s built by people who have lived experience of the issue.

  2. Decision makers know, but they don't care. So build your political incentive for action. Maybe that’s constituency-based campaigning or it can be strategic political media. Whatever you do, it’s about creating pressure in the right places to force the issue.

  3. My favourite - that vested interests are too strong in the other direction. This is the hardest I think, and the one that can take years to realise, but the strategic response is to toxify those vested interests with PR and media.

  4. Maybe there’s just no bandwidth to make the change happen, like when the government was dealing with COVID. So the strategic response is to join coalitions and make your voice stronger together, and hit the target in loads of different directions with different kinds of arguments. 

  5. Or perhaps your analysis is wrong, and you need to go back to the start, do your evidence, your research, work with people who have lived experience, bring in think tanks and universities and policy makers and reevaluate.

Structure your communications as a political speech

Think of every piece of communication as a speech - even if it’s just a post on Facebook. Think about the audience, who are the multipliers who might share it on, or who in the media is going to look at it, how will that reach your target? This understanding of how a piece of communication is being socialised is so important. We talk about the ‘archaeology of a campaign’, that deep dive into whether or not your argument actually landed, and if it did, how that happened
 How was it amplified? How was it multiplied?

If you’re in the business of achieving policy impact, but you know you could be doing it more effectively, check out our online course ‘Aim for Impact'. You’ll learn the five dimensions of impact, how to attribute impact (/demonstrate value to your boss), and how to write a theory of change that is actually useful.

Sound interesting? Click here to find out more.

The four kinds of argument - which one are you making?

Take our campaign on ending weapons sales to countries who violate international law. What kind of argument is it we’re making? Is it a values argument, that the UK shouldn’t be complicit in bombing kids? Is it a policy argument because various treaties, political declarations and laws are being broken? Is it a comparative argument because the UK is not universal in its application of various facets of international humanitarian law? Or is it actually a proxy for a discussion about global security and UK jobs? Or is it a bit of all of them? Be clear on the argument you’re making to the audience you’re talking to - and understand when selecting your argument who agrees with you, who has already been lobbying on this point, what are the key points of contention you’ll hear back when you use this argument.

Read the online comments, don’t avoid them

Don't fuel the trolls for sure, but if you really want to get into the minds and spaces where your barriers to change are, you need to read the comment pages in press that you might not normally read. If you want to engage people around the importance of international development as a meta concept, you need to know what the context is that UK taxpayers - who pay for it - are living in and how it’s relevant to them. From there you can understand how to build out your common ground, to overcome the barriers we’ve talked about above. Unless you do the deep thinking in these spaces, find the common ground, come at your change from different perspectives it’s really hard to win your argument.  

Be strategic: it’s not about morality

A lot of the work I do is supporting children in conflict by calling out violations of international law and norms and urging governments to hold perpetrators to account. It’s easy to talk about how morally wrong it is to see children bombed or starved and deprived of their futures and too often NGOs use effusive language to speak to points of immorality. But actually there’s a huge role for more straightforward talking and strategic comms which resonates with people, particularly with decision-makers.

Individual stories from real people set the stage

I'm lucky to have worked with a number of young people in the UK who have powerful stories to tell about conflicts they’ve been caught up in. One of them, Arsenii from Ukraine, recently spoke to the Secretary of State for Defence. He talked about the future that he wants, the support that he's had from the UK and how he really hopes that support will continue. You could hear a pin drop in that room. He was looking at the Minister directly in the eye for five minutes and nobody moved a muscle. Ultimately, all of this should be about real people being able to share those experiences to the right people in the right way.

What did you think of this week's interview?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.