Hello All,
Just a few thoughts about strategy-specifically about fund raising. It seems to me that advertising future events is going to be absolutely key to increased turnout. I entirely agree with Johnathan that marches change the people who attend them, on this basis, apart from just encouraging people involved in charities with a noted interest to attend, i believe we should try and get as many lay people as possible involved, once someones been to a march they are far more likely to get further involved in orchestrating the next event and becoming active in local groups. People not already involved in environmental issues will, by definition, not be reachable through green networking, such as Greenpeace/foe/wwf... newsletters.
WE NEED AND ADVERTISING BUDGET
But perhaps this is already clear, my suggestion that you may not have been considered is fund raising using the Marathon running, not on an individual basis, but in a co-ordinated manner. I have no idea how an organisation is allocated tickets, but i thought it was worth mentioning, give it a go. Clearly local groups will have to be self sustaining and will surely carry out there own initiatives but on a national level, for the group as a whole, i feel one or two co-ordinated schemes such as this would be usefull.
Calvin Jones
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com
p.s it would be great to have an audio recording of the next strategy meeting...very simple to do and save as an mp3, then everyone who is outwith London can have an idea of the groups direction; and send comments in based on the meeting.
if we advertise, can we target?
Calvin, before we ran the Guardian and Independent ads the week before the demo, George Marshall from COIN told us that results might disappoint. And the results in terms of web stats were mixed. I think far more people read the Bennett article than saw the ads.
If we did have money for advertising, perhaps it should be better focussed, for example on radio stations that target the 18-35 group (I wish i was in it) and broadcast in cities where there is a main line station with London connections. Actually given that politicians worry most about the over 60s now - because they always vote - perhaps we should target them - I've got it - an advert in saga magazine.
If anybody knows about advertising please do comment.
p.s. very sympathetic about getting audio out but it is not very interactive, at least we publish the minutes of the London branch meetings now irrespective of how boring they are (click on info above).
Future Publicity
Just a quick comment to say that a local sympathiser who couldn't come on the March but funded my coach by £50 for D3, has now offered to pay for advertising in our local newspaper for the next Climate March. He said this is because of the success of D3 and because of an article printed yesterday in the local paper. Local newspaper ads are the best way of reaching people in local areas and also getting people to write into the 'Letters' page is a good way of getting free local press coverage.
Cathy Green, Cheltenham.