Creating a campaign budget

One of the most important aspects of running a successful adoption pledge campaign is setting the right budget. It is critical to know how much money you will need to execute your campaign.

To create a sufficient budget you have to consider some basic rules:

  1. At first ask yourself for which tactics/objectives you need funding for and when you should start fundraising.
  2. Set high and low estimates of how much money your campaign needs – and then add the odd one-third extra, just in case of unforeseen expenditures. Including:
    1. Actual project costs (labour expenses, storyboarding/scriptwriting, office space)
    2. Fees
    3. Unexpected expenses
  3. Select a responsible person – selecting a finance chair or treasurer can be very helpful by solely dealing with your financial issues.
  4. Use a range of fundraising techniques available e.g. membership donations, local organisations and businesses, online donations, crowd-funding, utilise your champions’ relations. Your previous mapping of stakeholders, power distribution etc. should help you to determine which techniques are most suitable for your campaign.
  5. Whatever your fundraising method, don’t forget to thank donors personally.

Some useful tips for creating your budget and raise funds:
http://www.conservationcampaign.org/what-we-do/toolkit/fundraising-budget/
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/what-you-can-do/do-your-own-thing
http://www.unicef.org.uk/fundraise/fundraising-ideas-toolkit/fundraising-ideas/

Recruit volunteers

It’s not always true, but very often more people means greater impact of a campaign. More people can more easily succeed in pressuring your target to pledge to 100% renewable energy.It isn’t always easy to recruit people for your cause – but it will benefit your campaign by making it more visible in the public, giving you additional sources of ‘power’ to influence your targets, brings new ideas, and builds a sense of community. There are many ways to scale-up your manpower, depending on your targets, if you want to find out more click here: http://workshops.350.org/toolkit/campaign/ .

Sometimes, shortcomings in resources can be overcome at a later point in your campaign, so you will also need a timeline for the life of your campaign (generally no more than 36 months, more often 12 months). In this timeline, you should include:

  • Key external opportunities such as events, and work programmes of other organisations which might start
  • Decision making dates
  • Key dates – what do you need and by when

Objective timeline template
Reality check template

If politics is the ‘art of the possible’, campaigning is the science and art of changing what is possible. Campaigning lowers the barriers and increases the incentives to take action.

Chris Rose

Director International Development at Canadian Red Cross