Top tips for engaging with politicians
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•573 views
Presentation slides from an NCVO webinar, presented by Chris Walker, senior external relations officer at NCVO, which took place on 31 July 2018. View the full webinar recording here: https://youtu.be/wYKBSTc3n_o
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
More from NCVO - National Council for Voluntary Organisations
More from NCVO - National Council for Voluntary Organisations (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Top tips for engaging with politicians
- 1. TOP TIPS FOR ENGAGING WITH POLITICIANS JULY 2018
- 2. INTRODUCTIONS • Chris Walker Senior External Relations Officer, NCVO • Rosie Walworth Trainee External Relations Officer, NCVO 2
- 3. ABOUT THE WEBINAR • 30 minute presentation • 15 minutes Q & A Please type your questions into the questions panel at any time (at the bottom of your webinar dashboard) • Please complete the short follow-up survey upon exiting the webinar. 3
- 4. AIMS OF THIS WEBINAR By the end of this webinar you will: • have received tips and advice on how to make the most of your meetings • have been introduced to some tools to make sure your engagement is well-informed • understand how to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships 4
- 5. VALUE OF LONG-TERM ENGAGEMENT Long-term engagement allows charities to: • Effectively influence • Build cross-party coalitions • Pick up intelligence • Quickly canvass political opinion on issues
- 6. DO YOU THINK IT HAS BECOME MORE DIFFICULT TO ENGAGE WITH MPS IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS?
- 7. 9 TIPS FOR ENGAGEMENT WITH POLITICIANS
- 8. 1. START WITH WHAT YOU DO, NOT WHAT YOU WANT • How do you support your beneficiaries? • What is your impact?
- 9. TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF • NCVO website has info on defining your impact • How Charities Work website will help you to talk about some of the more difficult issues charities are facing on public and political perception
- 10. 2. THINK ABOUT CONSTITUENCIES Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
- 11. CONSTITUENCY MATTERS • Employment sectors/famous industries • High rates of a problem • Local charities/branches
- 12. 3. THINK ABOUT WHAT WILL APPEAL TO THEM PERSONALLY
- 13. HOW DO YOU FIND OUT WHO’S INTERESTED? • Monitoring – detailed biographies • Theyworkforyou – searching by word used • Polimonitor – monitor tweets
- 14. THEYWORKFORYOU
- 15. WHAT DO YOU FIND MOST USEFUL WHEN TARGETING POLITICIANS?
- 16. 4. THINK ABOUT HOW YOU CAN FIT WITH THEIR AGENDA • What do they want to do? • What does their party want to do? • Use their language if possible
- 17. 5. MATCH THE RIGHT TACTICS TO THE RIGHT PERSON
- 18. 6. PROVIDE SEVERAL OPTIONS FOR CONCRETE ACTION
- 19. 7. ASK FOR THEIR ADVICE (AND TAKE IT) • MPs and peers like talking about campaign tactics • Good sense for what will happen in parliament
- 20. 8. SHARE INTELLIGENCE/YOUR WORK
- 21. DO YOU HAVE A SYSTEM FOR ENSURING YOU ARE IN REGULAR CONTACT WITH POLITICIANS YOU ARE TARGETING?
- 22. 9. FIND WAYS TO INVOLVE ENGAGED PARLIAMENTARIANS IN YOUR WORK • Ask what they think about you • Involve them in specific work • Involve them in working groups/committees etc
- 23. USEFUL RESOURCES/READING NCVO Good Guide to Campaigning and Influencing https://www.ncvo.org.uk/component/redshop/themes/5- campaigning/P43-good-guide-to-campaigning-and-influencing • Stakeholder analysis advice • Blog on alternatives to emailing MPs
- 24. UPCOMING TRAINING/EVENTS • Campaigning conference – 10 Sept • Certificate in campaigning – starts 19 October • Influencing parliament – 14 Sept • Influencing select committees – 23 Nov https://www.ncvo.org.uk/training-and- events/events-listing
- 25. Q&A
- 26. THANK YOU Please complete the short feedback survey which appears when you exit the webinar. Chris Walker chris.walker@ncvo.org.uk 020 7520 3167 Twitter: @_c_walker 26
Editor's Notes
- You probably know why this stuff is important, but…
- If you work in public affairs or policy, it’s very tempting to get straight into policy questions when you first meet an MP, but for them to understand and trust you, they need to be clear about the impact you make. When you see politicians talking about charities in parliament, it’s very rarely to talk about their excellent policy team or their persuasive public affairs staff, it’s always about the difference we make
- Some of you will probably be pretty good at talking about what you do, but not always easy, so thought I’d share a couple of resources we’ve put together that might help – impact (CES), How Charities Work has some of the basics
- For most MPs their primary goal will be to get reelected – so they will want to demonstrate to their constituents that they are doing a job, so if you can identify issues that matter to an MP’s constituents, you will have identified an issue that matters to the MP. Peers? https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/open-parliament-licence/
- But don’t make the mistake of thinking MPs are only guided by their constituency. Being able to appeal to their personal interests can help – the Kennel Club run a Westminster Dog of the Year competition, so they can effectively bring MPs in with something fun that they like, and I’m sure they then can take advantage with their policy asks. I don’t know if there’s anyone from Guide Dogs watching, but I’m sure they could also confirm that dogs help them to open a few doors too. And more seriously, this is also something you need to think about in terms of politician’s individual political views. Think about Kate Hoey for example – I would guess that a majority of her voters in Vauxhall are not pro-hunting eurosceptics – but she cares enough about those issues to continue to take those positions (possibly insulated by having a traditionally safe seat – you may find that MPs in marginals are a bit more reticent on this sort of thing) But most MPs will have personal interests or areas of expertise that they want to pursue – so for NCVO, we know people who’ve worked for charities are likely to be more responsive to us, and my old boss when I worked in parliament was previously a teacher, so he always wanted to do things on education.
- But how do you find out what MP’s interests actually are? Sadly we can’t sit and watch BBC Parliament all day, so we need other resources – most monitoring companies will provide more detailed biographies than you can find for free, but I’m conscious that not everyone can afford. A couple of things I do – Theyworkforyou allows you not just to search by word, but also by who has used a word the most. You can also set up alerts for when particular words are used. There’s also another free service called Polimonitor that allows you to track where MPs and Peers have tweeted a particular word or phrase – again you can create alerts (it’s a freemium model, so they also offer paid stuff beyond basic searches) And sometimes it’s about making sure if you do find something out that might help you, make sure you note it down and use to build broader intelligence on the people you’re targeting.
- Personal/party
- Everyone knows that you always need the right tools for any job, so in the same way you should never drive nails with a machinist’s hammer, you should never ask an influential backbencher with the ear of government to table an EDM – they can do much more useful things for you. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22USE_PROPER_TOOLS_FOR_THE_JOB_-_TAKE_CARE_OF_THEM%22_-_NARA_-_515954.jpg Currently with a Conservative government, the best way to change things initially might be quietly, and so we would seek out Conservative MPs to use their personal influence. If we are not getting traction, the Labour frontbench might be better placed to get an issue up the agenda quickly, but will want to be more strongly critical
- Particularly those on government side will not be able to do everything you want to do, so worth providing plenty of options so for example if they’re not able to speak out, they may be prepared to write privately or lobby behind closed doors. https://pixabay.com/en/options-directory-many-selection-396266/
- Once you have developed a relationship with an MP or a peer, and you know they are interested in your work, keep them up to date with what you’re doing. Whenever you publish something you should be, and probably are, thinking about which stakeholders need to see and when, and you should do this with MPs. Sometimes this might be ad hoc depending on the issue, sometimes organisations will develop of who should get what, and when they should get it. But do think about it. This could include sending embargoed press releases – but think carefully about this, eg if you’re sending to opposition spokesperson something which is critical of the government and they have an embargo it could affect the way the story is covered, and may mean it doesn’t match the tone or the careful wording you have spent hours crafting. And if you know a politician well, and know they’re interested in an issue – drop them a line when you’ve picked up something from civil servants or elsewhere. They’ll appreciate it, and they may well pass on things they’ve picked up too. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/6357759479
- And once you’ve built some really strong relationships it makes sense to involve people more directly in your work – you’ll benefit from their political expertise, and they’ll feel closer to what you’re doing. Thinking about NCVO we have an advisory council which includes parliamentarians
- Fill in evaluation forms