Interview: online advocacy | Web Directions

Regular Web Directions attendee Priscilla Brice-Weller is the Online Campaigner for advocacy organisation, ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation). Priscilla also blogs about technology and activism at Solidariti.

It being NAIDOC week, I thought this might be a good occasion to hear about the work Priscilla does at ANTaR, and how grassroots organisations the world over are using the web (in particular social networking applications) to spread their word.

Did you start at ANTaR in your current role, or did you morph into it from a more traditional web role? I’m interested to know how much awareness there is in the non-profit sector of the potential in online campaigning, in going well beyond simply having a web site and maybe accepting donations online.

I started at ANTaR in my current role. ANTaR’s approach to the web is pretty unique for a nonprofit, in that the organisation employs a full-time staff member (me!) to manage online campaigns. Apart from the large activist organisations like Greenpeace, or those that focus specifically on web campaigns like GetUp!, online campaigners are pretty rare in Australia. It’s more common for somebody in a web manager or community campaigner role to do some online campaigning work as part of their role.

One of the primary roles of a campaigner, regardless of whether you campaign online or offline, is to raise awareness in the community about an issue. But awareness-raising isn’t enough: we also need to build relationships with people and encourage them to effect change where they can. Often this means we’re asking people to put pressure where it is needed (e.g. by getting in touch with their local MP) in order to get something to change for the better.

Generally, youth-run organisations, and those that focus on the environment and/or human rights seem to use the web more effectively for campaigning than other nonprofits. There are exceptions of course, such as Movember, and the Raise The Bar campaign in NSW.

My guess is that some organisations don’t use the web for campaigning because they don’t have much time or money, and so they put all their resources into providing core services in the organisation’s area of expertise. On the other hand, there are some organisations with plenty of resources, but conservative marketing policies mean that they hesitate to get involved in online campaigning because it might damage the organisation’s brand, or because they can’t see how they will get an adequate return on their investment. But as we all know, these problems aren’t unique to the non-profit sector :)

Which social networking platforms do you focus your energies on at ANTaR and how did you choose them?

Our main focus is on Facebook and MySpace at the moment, and we also use Flickr and YouTube a little. We use platforms that will enable us to reach a lot of people and build relationships with them. Tools have to be fairly mainstream among our target audience before we go there, so unfortunately Twitter hasn’t made it onto the list yet but we’re keeping a close eye on it :)

Last year I came up with a formula to help an organisation decide which online tools to use, based on how much time, money and knowledge is required. It’s meant to help an organisation decide whether the amount of effort they put into using a particular platform is worth the effect they’re likely to see, and the results are different for every organisation. You can see how it works in this blog post

How do you actually work these platforms?

In the early days, I was scanning blogs through Technorati to find people who were writing well-considered blog posts on MySpace about Indigenous issues, and then “friending” them. After a while, people started finding us because they were stumbling across our bulletin posts or comments on other friends’ pages, so we didn’t need to use Technorati any more to reach out to new people. Now my focus is on building relationships with our current friends. I find that if you have an ongoing friendship with people who are sympathetic to your cause, they are more likely to offer help than if you approach somebody from out of the blue. I put this theory to the test on MySpace a couple of months ago, and it worked because ANTaR won a MySpace Impact Award worth $10,000. We would not have won that award if our strategy had been different.

Facebook is completely different to MySpace. The ANTaR Facebook group is focussed on the Sea of Hands because I felt that people would be more likely to join a campaign than an organisation on Facebook. That group has grown partly by telling everyone I know about the group, and then those people forwarding it on to their friends. I also participate in discussions on related Facebook groups such as the Close the Gap campaign group (closing the life expectancy between Indigneous and non-Indigenous Australians), which leads some people to the Sea of Hands group too.

Check out ANTaR on MySpace and Facebook.

Any tips you’ve learned for working more efficiently and getting the best returns for time spent?

Yeah - don’t visit Facebook or MySpace more than twice a day!

What sort of returns can a non-profit expect to see from employing someone like you to engage with online communities in this way? Where can they expect to have successes? How long will it take?

This is still a reasonably new area, we’re working it out as we go along, same as everybody else. There’s a few of us who blog about online campaigning methods, return on investment, that kind of thing, so we share what we learn on our blogs and there’s a group of non-profit web people in Sydney and Melbourne (called Social Tech) that meets up once a month to chat about this kind of stuff.

I guess organisations can expect to have success if they are dedicated to building relationships with people. People are more likely to give your organisation favours, to get more involved, to donate, to want to find out more if they have a good relationship with somebody in the organisation. Relationship building takes a long time, and it doesn’t always translate into measurable returns, but it really is absolutely necessary, otherwise your efforts to get people involved are pretty random.

How long does it take? It’s a long-term thing! You should only campaign online because you’re passionate about an issue and enjoy talking to people about it … generally, most people have a pretty good bullshit meter so you have to be sincere. You also have to be patient … bringing about social change can and does take years, so don’t expect to see big results within the first six months (or maybe even the first six years)!

In your experience, what type of non-profit will a foray into online campaigning work best for?

Any non-profit that needs public support for an issue should consider campaigning online. It works best for campaigns that have a clear message, know where their target demographic is hanging out online, and has the resources not only to do the online work, but follow up with supporters that want to get more involved.

How can you evaluate the success of a project and when should you start doing it?

One of the most common ways of evaluating a campaign is counting the number of people who have taken action. This is a pretty good indication of whether (a) the public is interested in an issue and (b) enough pressure is being applied in the right places (i.e. on the person or group that has the power to change things).

Another way we can evaluate a campaign is to see what effect we’ve had in changing government policy. A good example of this is the Close The Gap campaign - made up of a coalition of organisations including ANTaR - which resulted in positive changes to government policy. There were several elements that made up this campaign, the primary public action was for people to sign a Close The Gap pledge on some of the coalition partners’ websites including ANTaR, Oxfam, GetUp and HREOC. ANTaR also asked supporters to email personalised letters to their state and federal politicians (through our online Sea of Hands) and we have had informal feedback from MPs and their staff that these emails contributed to the successful outcome of the campaign. If politicians feel they have the support of the community, they will take action.

We also monitor our website analytics pretty closely, looking for trends and working out why particular campaigns, media releases or search terms are more popular than others.

However there are some things that are very difficult to measure. If a person changes their attitude towards Indigenous Australians, how does ANTaR find out? And how do we know that it’s as a direct result of something that we have told them online, or as a result of something else?

We recently ran a campaign “Racism Makes Me Sick”, which focussed on the effects of racism on the health of Indigenous Australians. When the life expectancy for Indigenous Australians improves (currently an Indigenous Australian will live for 17 years less than a non-Indigenous Australian), then we’ll know that our work has been a success. In fact, when there is a fair representation of Indigenous Australians in parliament, and when 5% of attendees at Web Directions are Indigenous Australians, then we’ll know that our work has been a success.

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