We launch a public campaign and want to measure the effect. How to do it?

New technologies provide civil activists with unprecedented in their speed and scale the possibilities for communications, attracting supporters, and collecting funds.

#Metoo, environmental strikes, protests in Hong Kong - these examples of the fight against climate change, campaign for gender and racial equality are known to many. The growth of social movements indicates the expansion of the influence of people on the solution of social problems.

All this poses questions: how to measure the influence of people participating in a public campaign or movement; to what extent they achieve social changes; What can be achieved thanks to such mass initiatives?

The answers will allow the development of more successful public campaigns, effective strategies for attracting and retaining supporters, to offer optimal tools to achieve significant social changes.

An attempt to answer these questions is a report by Measurning People Power in 2020+ , prepared on the basis of a global study of current practices that use organizations that launch public campaigns and movements.

Three main approaches to measuring the influence of participants

Scale and volume of effort

We are talking about measuring the scale of the campaign - penetration through various forms of media, recognition of the campaign, the number of people involved and raised funds.

Examples: the number of participants, donors, addresses in an email newsletter, signatures under the petition, spectators of the video or TV transmission, publications about the action in the media and their audience; organized shares and their participants; likes and reposts; site visitors, new subscribers, etc.

Almost all efforts to assess the campaign are built around how effective the achievement of such reactions. How many sent letters have reached the addressees? What is the share of recipients of letters, readers of the post, spectators of the video told about this on social networks / joined the group / signed a petition? How did the amount and amount of donations increase?

Such metrics are used by most organizers of mass campaigns. This is due to the fact that they:

• Easy in measurement;
• visual and provide impressive, impressive results;
• They are easy to understand and conviction - for both supporters and persons who make decisions.

At the same time, these are "vanity metrics." They say almost nothing about the influence of a public campaign. What really changed thanks to the efforts made?

The organizers of public campaigns rarely measure external influence. For example, how has the attitude to a particular problem in society changed? How many legislative initiatives are supported on promoted topics? How many state funds have been allocated to solve the problem?

The basic assumption of the traditional approach is as follows. The more resources and activities (supporters, shares, views, etc.) in the campaign, the greater social changes it will achieve. However, small groups of consolidated and “loudly sounding” people are often able to achieve great changes than the less involved groups.

This approach considers supporters exclusively as a resource, as a “combat units” creating a penetration mass. And these are real people with unique opportunities, all together and each separately they contribute to social changes.

The depth of involvement and community force

The second approach is an attempt to measure the potential, quality and strength of the created communities, the depth of involvement of supporters in the organization’s activities and a promoted topic, the power of interpersonal ties, etc.

All this implies deep studies of supporters. What motivates them, what is the potential of leadership, with what probability and speed they will become more involved, how the base of supporters will change over time and so on.

The second approach is less common, but NPOs and public companies are increasingly introducing its individual elements into their activities.

• Psychographic characteristics of supporters, their preferences and expectations; Measurement of the level of happiness and “charging by the idea”.
• Changes in behavior / level of involvement of supporters: various “pyramids” and “stairs” of participation. Such tools allow you to track the dynamics of the supporter’s actions - from the signature of petitions to the leadership of the local cell, etc.
• Quality of relations: to what extent the measures taken contribute to the strengthening of social ties and the community itself.
• The development of leadership, decentralized networks and independent groups. For example, the share of supporters offering their help without reminder or organizing shares on their own initiative.

Unlike the traditional “resource” approach, the main assumption is strong communities and a deep involvement in the essence of the campaign will ensure the achievement of social changes.

Accordingly, the focus is no longer on measuring the reaction to the mobilizing stimuli of specific campaigns, but on the assessment of the organized organsal groups in the long term. On the nurture of a sufficient number of leaders with the necessary characteristics that can unite people around themselves, initiate independent campaigns, taking into account the local context, etc.

And again the same question. How is the depth of involvement of supporters or the breadth of participation, according to the traditional approach, ensure the achievement of the mission of the campaign or movement?

Of course, the choice of a particular strategy will depend on the specifics of the public campaign - whether the short -term goal is set (“to fight off” here and now) or long -term, which ensures stable functioning in the future.

Measurement of costs and results of a particular campaign

And finally, the most rare approach to measuring the influence of the masses is the selection of indicators for a specific mission of the campaign.

The finances are again a universal indicator. We are talking about the so -called return on investment (ROI, Return on Investment) - a value assessment of the invested time of supporters (costs) and the results achieved. How much time did supporters of the campaign “sacrificed”, whether they are paid by employees? How much does each of the results reach?

Each resource and result is subject to accounting and digitization. Likes in social networks, preparation of letters to deputies, organization of public events.

In general, such a detailed accounting is very useful for strategic planning. It allows you to predict how much time, effort and other resources will be required to conduct a campaign; Provides internal benchmarks to assess the effectiveness of campaigns. There is an opportunity to segment groups of supporters by the amount of time invested in the activities of the organization; calculation of costs for their attraction and retention.

At the same time, the ROI method is not perfect. There is also a skew towards finance. As in the previous approaches, a direct connection between invested resources and the achievement of the goal is not traced - along the way, a lot of other results and values ​​can be created, but the mission will not be achieved.

In addition, the selection of indicators for a specific campaign complicates the conduct of cross-sector comparisons, the identification and replication of successful practices. The difficult task is a detailed, centralized accounting for the actions of each supporter.

Metrics used by the organizers of the campaigns

The authors of the report offer to take a closer look at the approaches and metrics used, with which you can measure the influence of campaign participants. Perhaps some of them will be useful to you.

• Measurement of key metrics (number of participants, answers, etc.).
• Measurement of the level of involvement of supporters.
• The level of retention of supporters, taking into account constant, repeated actions (the number of volunteers participating on quarterly, etc.).
• Indicators that allow you to predict a more active participation in the organization’s activities in the future.
• Indicators of attracting new supporters as a supporter.
• Network analysis is the social connections of supporters (how many of them know each other, with whom they communicate the most, etc.).
• Analysis of relations in the organization (strength, diversity, etc.).
• Distribution / promotion supporters of the organization’s messages (on social networks, personally, etc.).
• Indicators for tracking the burnout of supporters.
• Feedback mechanisms with supporters (polls, etc.).
• The results of contacts established by supporters with persons making decisions.
• The amount of funds saved by supporters.
• The ranking of supporters in the degree of involvement in the organization.

Conclusions and recommendations

1. The measurement of what contribution to people in public campaigns makes to achieve social changes is a very difficult task.
2. Do not completely refuse to measure the influence of the participants in the campaigns. One of the practical strategies is to listen to the opinions of supporters, partners, representatives of their community. It is worth trusting their opinion if they are sure of achieving the results of the campaign. In addition, stories about how something works is very inspiring-they should not be neglected.
3. It is important to consider not only “incentives” and the invested resources, but also “reactions” - emotional, economic, political - various groups and organizations in response to mobilization; Evaluate all the results created on the way to achieve the mission.

More about the report

The authors of the report:

• MobileSational Lab - the organization helps in the launch of public campaigns aimed at social changes;
• The Climate Advocacy Lab - the company is involved in the study. Mission-to help environmental communities in building the lower initiatives and achieving results through evidence-based advocacy.

You can read the full version of the report by the link .

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