lang: en
Start your first campaign
You have a problem you care about and you’re thinking about running a campaign. This path takes you from that first impulse to a plan ready to launch — seven pages, in order, each ~5 minutes to read. By the end you’ll have named your target, your demand, your audience, your allies, and your sequence; you’ll know how to learn from each cycle and improve the next.
This is the route most new organisers take. If your campaign is already running and you need to scale it fast, jump to [[paths/community-organising|the community-organising path]] instead.
The journey
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Power mapping — why this next: before you can win anything you need a clear picture of who holds the power you want to shift, who can pressure them, and where your organisation sits in that web. This is the diagnostic: everything else builds on it.
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Theory of change — why this next: now name the change. If your campaign succeeds, what shifts? A good theory of change connects your tactics (rallies, lawsuits, boycotts) to a believable story about how they cause the outcome you want.
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Audience segmentation — why this next: not everyone is your audience. Segment by relationship to the issue (target, ally, opponent, neutral, bystander) and pick the messengers, frames, and channels that fit each slice. This is where strategic comms become sharp.
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Coalition building — why this next: no campaign wins alone. Map the groups already working on adjacent issues, identify the gaps only you can fill, and approach potential allies with a concrete offer — not a generic “join us.” Coalitions turn a campaign into a movement.
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Campaign planning — why this next: now sequence the work. A campaign plan turns your theory of change into a timeline of escalating tactics, each one ratcheting pressure on the target. This is where strategy meets calendar.
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Evaluation — why this next: the campaign hasn’t even launched and we want you thinking about learning already. Indicators, milestones, and feedback loops baked in before kickoff mean you’ll know whether each tactic worked — and you can adjust mid-campaign rather than discovering failures after the fact.
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After-action review — why this next: this is the post-campaign debrief that turns one campaign into the seed of the next. What worked, what didn’t, what surprised you, what would you do differently? Without this, every campaign starts from zero.
Wrap-up
When you finish this path you’ll have the bones of a campaign plan. To see how these pieces fit together in the real world, browse case-studies — and when you’re ready to actually go door-knocking, follow the community-organising path for the people-side of the work.
If your campaign needs to be online first, jump to the digital-campaigning path; if you’re trying to shift policy, the lobbying and advocacy path; if you’re planning direct action, the nonviolent-action-101 path.