“Maybe the single-issue campaign doesn’t work anymore because we’re not single-issue people.”
Since the publication of Common Cause, campaigners have been asking themselves, ‘what does this mean for us and our work?’.
This month, twenty seven campaigners got together at Development House to hear more about some of the case studies we’ve profiled, to build community, and start to think about what we’d like to be doing differently to align our campaigning with a values-based approach.
We heard from Morgan and his work with Waste Watch and from Guy and his work on advertising, then broke into smaller groups to dive into:
What do we campaign on? Can we choose more systemic targets?
How do we campaign? Is the way in which we’re working us preventing us from shifting power more successfully?
Values and Frames theory and research – an in-depth conversation.
A great deal of the research that we have brought together on this site points to the advantages, on aggregate, of appealing to intrinsic values in communicating to people about social and environmental problems – and the potential costs of appealing to extrinsic values.
But, of course, people aren’t all the same, and it may be that there are some people who are simply impervious to communications which appeal to intrinsic values. We’ve argued that this is unlikely, because we all express all these values at different times – life, afterall, is a ‘dance around the values circle’!
But the original group of people who supported the Common Cause report – from COIN, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and WWF – wanted to test this further. So we enlisted the help of some psychologists (at Cardiff University, and Knox College, Illinois) and linguists (at Lancaster University). Read more
This third Campaign Case Study is part of a series of stories sharing the experience of organisations that grasp the importance of cultural values in third sector campaigning. We hope that these real-life examples of transformation inspire and empower you to push organisational boundaries and improve how we campaign together.
If you’d like to discuss these stories, or find out more about them, come along to the Campaigning with Common Cause get-together every second Wednesday of the month.
“How do we actually know what’s working?”
Waste Watch inspires and helps people to live more whilst wasting less. Set up 24 years ago, it put recycling on the national agenda and led the country towards today’s improved waste policies. With 40 staff, it recently merged with Keep Britain Tidy. The team at Waste Watch have put values-thinking into the heart of the work they do, moving the idea of sustainability from windmills and recycling to a wider question of collective wellbeing and social justice. The video below gives a good sense of how they work with schools, businesses and communities.
I spoke to Tim Burns, Head of Waste Watch, and Morgan Phillips, who works on the Our Common Place project, about how redefining their work has allowed them to break free from a constraining focus, and how measuring broader impacts has improved the way they work.
What did they set out to do differently?
The team used to spend a lot of time making interventions, delivering a project and then walking away. Short-term funding projects meant that they’d run a campaign to share best practice, monitor the outputs and immediate environmental impacts without getting a good idea of what was really changing at a deeper level within the community.
Now, Waste Watch is measuring outcomes, rather than just outputs. This means monitoring the impact on the beneficiaries engaged in their projects as well as the wider community by looking at the;
Confidence and skills of the participants
Sense of connection between volunteers and their community
What cross-barrier relationships have been built
Practically speaking, by collecting this data, Waste Watch now has an evidence base from which to apply for new sources of funding. They’re connecting the dots between the environment, mental health and community development – and widening their scope to have maximum impact.
What does that look like in practice?
The Our Common Place project is bringing this values-thinking into the heart of Waste Watch’s work. Engaging with residents living in large blocks of flats across 23 communities in London, Morgan and his team are following the enthusiasm of the residents in deciding what projects they work on. In one case, sewing classes have been set up, in another, a ‘help your neighbour recycle’ scheme. One of the most surprising projects is working with a youth club to look at how sustainability flows through everyday life, in one session young people analysed their favourite song lyrics to see what values they espouse. Morgan explains,
“We found that the best way to start talking about what’s important to people, their values, is to start where people’s interests lie. We’re trying to allow for self-direction in how we work with local communities.”
Nobody in the sector has cracked how to create successful recycling schemes in deprived housing estates, so there is a need for innovative approaches. Morgan will be sharing the results in the summer later this year. A key ingredient to the success so far has been working with local authority partners, in some cases leading workshops on the thinking that the Common Cause report puts forward.
What have they learned?
Leadership on this new approach has come from every corner of the organisation. They’ve found that in order to start to articulate values-thinking in their external work, the Waste Watch team had to first start to transform the way they work internally. This started with a much more inclusive approach to leadership where ideas and contributions came from everyone, as Tim explains,
“At Waste Watch now, everyone has been contributing to our new strategic direction, for example through our business plan or our approach towards change – and as a result there’s a much more inclusive culture. Its not just formally but informally too – there’s a lot of sharing lunchtimes, baking cakes for each other – we’re actually building a community within the office as well as within our projects based upon the values we all live and work by.”
What does this mean for us as change-makers?
There is much to be learnt from how Waste Watch are applying an understanding of values in their work. Other case studies have picked up on the important implications for the culture of an organisation, and this is clearly something to which Waste Watch are responding. What is most exciting perhaps, is how values-thinking is infusing their project work, and opening up possibilities for new alliances with different sectors and organisations.
Importantly, the team understands that intrinsic values are already important in the lives of their audience – the question is how to engage with them, not to tell people how to live. Discussions about ‘sustainability’ aren’t likely to be the best starting point.
A new paper from DECC forms the basis of their Customer Insight Team’s capacity-building on behaviour change. Drawing on Common Cause, it reviews evidence from behavioural economics, social psychology and sociology on different ways of “changing energy behaviour”.
“It feels like there’s a locked door for which I don’t have the key, but this might be the map to help me find it.”
Since the publication of Common Cause, campaigners like me have been asking themselves, ‘what does this mean for us and our work?’.
Last week, eighteen campaigners got together at the Bank of Ideas to share stories of learning, build a community, and start to think about what we’d like to be doing differently to align our campaigning with a values-based approach.
Campaigners sharing stories of learning
What did we learn?
NGOs have an enormous role to play in supporting and legitimising movements that emerge – and cannot be orchestrated by NGOs.
Looking back at how we each got involved in social change work helps us think about how we invite other people in. A focus on personal relationships, meaningful actions, and personal growth keeps us engaged and will encourage others to join.
The current economic and environmental crises are opening space for us to talk about values and what kind of world we want to see.
We can learn more from each other when we’re able to be honest about what isn’t working.
Questions that we raised
How can NGOs start collaborating instead of competing?
Is it possible to lobby and work from a values-approach?
Thanks to everyone who came – Samantha, Gavin, James, Nic, Matt, Farida, Coralie, Sanda, Laurence, James, Mareme, Guppi, Clifford, Roy, Anna, Katrien, Nicolas and Paul.
The transition to a sustainable economy will require governments to understand how policy and rhetoric impact public concern about environment and development issues, according to a report from think tank ResPublica published today.
The 56-page report is being launched to coincide with soul-searching in the aftermath of the Durban Climate Change Conference. It addresses the crucial question: how can governments work to create greater political space for proportional responses to environmental problems?
Supported by WWF-UK and Oxfam, the report argues that past and present political objectives have not succeeded in deepening public concern about climate change and poverty. Without such concern, technical policy interventions will never enjoy the public support and momentum that they need.
The report, Different Politics, Same Planet: Values for sustainable development beyond left and right, written by David Boyle, Tom Crompton, Martin Kirk and Guy Shrubsole, is highly critical of current approaches to environmental policy, saying that these often crowded out ordinary people.
It calls for a radically different approach to policy making in the future, one that taps into the cultural values of people and their communities in determining responses to today’s profound social, humanitarian and environmental challenges.
Writing in the Foreword, Phillip Blond argues: “The left has vacated the space that previously valued the inherent beauty and intrinsic value of the natural order, prioritising instead extrinsic values such as material wealth or a utilitarian calculus of leisure and utility.
“The right similarly appealed to extrinsic values through its adoption of market-driven strategies. The natural became a commodity that was to be addressed in a purely instrumentalist manner, with some advocating its protection not in terms of inherent worth or transcendent value, but on purely economic grounds.”
The report dismisses criticisms that such values lack support and are the pursuit of a small minority. Rather, it points to evidence from psychology that these values are there in all of us – if politicians only found the courage to appeal to them.
Martin Kirk, Head of UK Campaigns at Oxfam, says: “The environment and development movements are energised by a concern for others, which psychologists have shown to be virtually universal. And yet, too often, governments have run scared of speaking to these values, preferring to ‘sell’ concern for the environment and poverty on the grounds of narrow self-interest. This is profoundly counterproductive.”
David Norman, Director of Campaigns at WWF-UK, says: “Public support for government action on the environment is built upon much the same values that underpin public concern for the NHS or universal education. We must begin to situate people’s natural concern for the environment on a bigger political canvas.”
The report seeks to shift the centre of gravity of political debate. It calls for a shift in the way that politicians frame international development and environment policy, advocating that they appeal to – and help strengthen – people’s inherent sense of what is right for future generations and the global poor.
This second Campaign Case Study is part of a series of stories that will share the experience of organisations that grasp the importance of cultural values in third sector campaigning. We hope that these real-life examples of transformation inspire and empower you to push organisational boundaries and improve how we campaign together.
If you’d like to discuss these stories, or find out more about them, come along to the Campaigning with Common Cause get-together every second Wednesday of the month.
“We’re not tied to what it looks like, we’re tied to what works.”
The Otesha Project UK mobilises young people to create social and environmental change through their everyday lives. They run cycle tours every summer – helping young people to live low-impact lives and inspire others using workshops and theatre in schools, youth clubs and communities. They also incubate youth-led Change Projects and anchor the East London Green Jobs Alliance.
Otesha has five permanent staff, and three interns who are paid a London living wage.
I spoke to Founder and Project Director Liz McDowell and Communications and Fundraising Director Gavin McGregor about their transition to a flat, shared-responsibility structure.
What did they set out to do differently?
Otesha staff have used consensus decision-making for a number of years, and there is a strong culture of facilitation and anti-oppression work. On paper, however, the charity had a CEO and a clear hierarchy. Because of this, it wasn’t always easy to work truly alongside each other; the CEO was responsible for staff appraisals, for example.
The team decided they wanted to move to a flat structure to bring consensus decision-making and shared responsibility to the core of how Otesha works. This would also be reflected in team wages, meaning a flat salary for the whole team.
They recognise that this is an experiment. They know that they probably won’t get it right the first time and are not tied to what it looks like, but are instead tied to what works. “This feels like it’s the way it should be run” explained Liz.
Why move to a flat structure?
Share the workload, and thus responsibility: Particularly in the early start-up phase, the workload fell disproportionately on Liz. This additional workload then also meant her voice carried more weight in communal decisions. Now, tasks such as HR, office management, and finance are distributed among the permanent staff, and rotate every two years so that everyone understands and can manage each of the administrative tasks.
Organisational resilience: As Liz, the founder, is moving back to her native Canada within the next twelve months, there was a clear need for organisational sustainability. From now on, new staff members are explicitly requested to stay for at least four years to ensure deep knowledge transfer.
Reflect their values in practice: As a youth-led education organisation, it was important to give interns more responsibility in the team – they are now part of the consensus decision-making process. Moreover, Otesha uses consensus when they lead trainings and on their cycle tours, so using it as a core team reflected how they trained other groups to work.
Focus on impact rather than growth: There is enormous pressure for new enterprises to scale up quickly, with a burst of new employees as fast as possible. A flat model would likely not work on a larger scale, though there are some examples. Otesha sees ‘reaching scale’ as having an impact on the wider sector, not as organisational growth. Their work on green jobs, collaborating with businesses, trade unions, educators and other NGOs is a good example of what this looks like in practice.
What did people think about it?
Internally: The team was excited and ready for the transition. Trustees have been supportive, though some apprehension remains. What brought a lot of support from the board was the focus on organisational sustainability.
Externally: There’s been a lot of interest from academics – a group of MBA students created the initial proposal for their new organisational structure, for example. Other social enterprises have questioned the model.
What surprised the team most?
For Liz, the transition felt like a huge weight off her shoulders, the job itself became much more enjoyable. Before the change, her leadership role could often become a lonely one, but the team feels much more like a community now. “Everyone is in everything together”.
Another surprise has been that this transition seems to be unique. “These are values that so many charities sign up to – to find out that we’re trailblazing is really surprising.”
This process doesn’t work well with freelancers joining for short amounts of time. A stable core team is fundamental.
Have patience. This is a slow process, and if it is sped up unnaturally, it will fail.
Otesha has embedded its organisational values into the every-day decision making processes, meaning that a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility will endure beyond any individual staff members. By weaving together ways of working that encourage equality and friendship, Otesha is building a network where intrinsic values are prioritised.
What does this mean for us as change-makers?
If we want to work with values, it is clear that Common Cause has implications not just for what we do in the ‘outside world’, but also how we run our organisations internally. Organisational structures in the third sector – including management structures, decision-making processes, pay-structures and incentive schemes – will all have an impact on the values that third sector employees come to hold as important.
When we start to incorporate an awareness of cultural values into our activities, we will need to also begin to examine the values embedded in our own internal processes.
Tim Kasser is professor of psychology at Knox College, Illinois, and author of The High Price of Materialism. He has been of great help in developing the Common Cause work.
In this animation, produced for The Center for a New American Dream, Tim discusses how America’s culture of consumerism undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present marketing messages that “the good life” is “the goods life,” they not only use up Earth’s limited resources, but they are less happy and less inclined toward helping others. The animation both lays out the problems of excess materialism and points toward solutions that promise a healthier, more just, and more sustainable life.
This first Campaign Case Study is part of a series of stories that will share the experience of organisations that grasp the importance of cultural values in third sector campaigning. We hope that these real-life examples of transformation inspire and empower you to push organisational boundaries and improve how we campaign together.
If you’d like to discuss these stories, or find out more about them, come along to the Campaigning with Common Cause get-together every second Wednesday of the month.
“Creating spaces of safety and a culture of welcome”
City of Sanctuary seeks to build a culture of hospitality for people seeking sanctuary in the UK. Over the last six years, they have created a network of towns and cities throughout the UK where asylum seekers and refugees can contribute and participate fully in the life of their communities. Have a look at this video to get a sense of what City of Sanctuary are all about:
I spoke to Sarah Eldridge, one of two part-time staff in Sheffield, about building community, changing attitudes and engaging values in her work.
What did City of Sanctuary set out to do differently?
Sheffield had a number of organisations providing services for asylum seekers and refugees – everything from volunteers who give up spare rooms to legal assistance. What City of Sanctuary wanted was to bring about a cultural change within the city – to appreciate the situations asylum seekers and refugees find themselves in, and to welcome them into active participation in community life.
The aim of City of Sanctuary is that those seeking sanctuary can easily build relationships with local people as neighbours, friends and colleagues. Through these relationships, local people come to understand the injustices refugees face, and become motivated to support and defend them.
How are the organisational values expressed in the way they work?
Inclusion: Much like Transition Towns, the network grew out of one initial hub. Now that there are more than 20 towns and cities, a new national governance structure was needed. The new National Committee of seven people includes representatives from local government, human rights law and faith organisations – but most importantly two refugees.
Empowerment: Resources created are shared on a public hub for any group to use. Logos, posters, checklists, and a handbook are all available. Although the logo is kept as a standard theme among different groups, local City of Sanctuary groups can choose their own colour combinations.
Independence: Each town and city focuses on fulfilling a local need, rather than rolling out a uniform project. The accreditation process has also changed over time to represent the on-the-ground reality.
What has most surprised the team?
As well as becoming a valuable community for those seeking sanctuary, City of Sanctuary has also become a center of social contact for people who have lived in Sheffield for a longer time but who have felt socially isolated.
Local ‘conversation clubs’, events where everyone shares their traditional food (including Yorkshire puddings), have been central to building bridges amongst communities – especially once the music and dancing starts! Young families and elderly people have especially benefited.
They’ve also heard back from destitute asylum seekers who have been supported by partner organisation Assist that it makes an extra difference to know that the individuals coming to help them are doing so as a volunteer – because they want to, rather than because they’re being paid to do it.
What would they do differently if they were doing it again?
At the beginning, there was a real focus on scale – especially the number of organisations involved in each new City of Sanctuary. Now, the emphasis is on what signed-up organisations will actively do to create a welcoming city.
What does this mean for us as change-makers?
City of Sanctuary’s approach is rooted in community feeling – which we know is part of a constellation of values that underpin systemic expressions of concern about a wider range of social and environmental issues. By building stronger communities and enabling people to be kind to one another, City of Sanctuary is also encouraging values of equality, freedom and social justice.
We’ve suggested elsewhere that there are two broad categories of response to Common Cause.
The first is to focus on the implications for the campaigns and communications that we are already producing: how might we campaign on biodiversity conservation, or disability rights, or cancer research, while simultaneously helping to strengthen those values upon which systemic concern about these issues must come to be built?
The second is to ask: what might we begin to do collectively, across the third sector, to strengthen the cultural importance of intrinsic values and reduce the pervasiveness of extrinsic values? Here there are many opportunities for new joint campaigns. One of the most obvious – but it is only one – is on advertising.
There is persuasive evidence that advertising serves to reinforce the cultural importance of extrinsic values – and to undermine the importance that we place on intrinsic values. As such, it will operate to reduce public concern about a wide range of social and environmental issues. This is an effect which is likely to be further strengthened by the fact that advertising is so pervasive – we literally can’t avoid it; and by the fact that much of it is targeted at children – people who are likely to be more vulnerable to its influence on values.
PIRC and WWF-UK have today launched a report highlighting the evidence for the cultural impacts of advertising. George Monbiot has written about it here. And you can download the report below.
We’ll now be hosting a conversation – with people from the third sector and business alike – on the cultural impacts of advertising and possible responses. Do get in touch if you would like to be involved in this!
Published by Public Interest Research Centre and WWF-UK, this report examines the evidence that commercial advertising could exacerbate the social and environmental problems that we collectively confront.
Think Of Me As Evil? presents evidence that advertising may increase overall consumption; that it could promote and normalise a range of behaviours, attitudes and values, many of which are socially and environmentally damaging; that it manipulates individuals on a subconscious level, both children and adults; and that it is so pervasive in modern society as to make the choice of opting-out from exposure virtually impossible.
The report calls on the advertising industry and its clients to take responsibility for demonstrating that the impacts of commercial advertising are benign, and to support precautionary measures until such time as this is demonstrated. It also calls upon civil society organisations to pay much greater attention to commercial advertising and its possible impacts in frustrating delivery on a wide range of social and environmental outcomes.
