1. Access to Information Network: legal framework masterclass

    If you’re trying to get the law changed, it can seem like a monumental task: where on earth do you start? 

    One organisation that knows the answer is Access Info Europe: they have a long record of tirelessly working for better rights to information across the continent, and have systematised their approach. This month, their Director Rachel Hanna shared insights with the Access to Information Network, in a legal framework masterclass.

    You can watch the video of this session for yourself, or read on for detailed notes.

    The benefits of Access to Information

    Rachel explained that Access Info are currently running a project to improve the right to information in four countries.

    Access to Information (ATI) is a fundamental right, and recognised globally as such — but it doesn’t always work in practice. Countries may have a legal framework, but how it works is often different on paper and in practice. For example, one of the best laws in the world is Afghanistan’s, but it’s worth nothing if it’s not implemented properly. 

    When ATI is in place but not functioning as it should, it can be extremely frustrating: it puts people off using it.

    Rachel pointed out that the benefits to society of a fully functioning ATI are clear, and to underline this, she cited the important findings of the three finalists of Access Info’s recent Impact awards:

    If ATI is not working does it still have benefits? Access Info carried out a campaign in Malta when a person was told they couldn’t submit an FOI request because they were not residents of Malta. They took the case to court, using pro bono lawyers; the court agreed with them and said that the way the law was being implemented was discriminatory.

    They also fought against a law in Montenegro that would have lowered standards.

    Groundwork

    Rachel described their ATI Network project to equip participants with three strategies:

    • Advocacy – the act of persuading or arguing in support of specific clause or policy. The audience here is the general public and policymakers. For example, Access Info published research highlighting gaps and areas of improvement in the implementation of the EU’s ATI.
    • Activism – this refers to physically active advocacy: getting out in the street, getting noticed. Here, the audience is public and communities. For example, in India a 40-day sit-in in a small town, demanding the creation of an ATI law, was successful.
    • Lobbying – this means persuading decision-makers to take a particular action. The audience is policymakers and lawmakers. For example, in Mexico a multi stakeholder group influenced legislators to pass an ATI Law.

    All three tactics can be used in combination. You can work systematically by first building the foundations, then creating visibility and finally converting the mobilisation into law.

    They are currently carrying out four national advocacy campaigns with the same initial approach for each country, then tailored activities depending on the specific state of the law, the skills the partner has, and how these can be adapted to the situation in the country. The steps are as follows:

    1. First they analyse the national context in which the ATI law is working: what are the strengths and the gaps; is it aligned with international standards? Is it Tromsø convention ratified? If so, has there been a recommendation from the Group of States Against Corruption, GRECO? Are they part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP)? Is there a promise to advance the ATI law under OGP?

      All of these factors can be used to hold governments to account. There might also be legislative considerations: for example in Spain, ATI did not fall under the fourth action plan as had been expected, and probably won’t be under the fifth now, either. While the will had been there, but the political context changed, making it very hard to pass laws right now.

    As part of this process you should perform some stakeholder mapping: do you have any good allies in the government? Are there civil society organisations, private sector, campaign groups, media that might support the cause? They performed this research and evidence building for each country.

    1. They then designed an advocacy plan, deciding what their goals were: would they push for better law, or higher use of the existing law? Better implementation? Making this decision helped them decide what sort of activity would be most effective: advocacy, activism or lobbying.
      You can build a coalition with lawyers, academics, journalists. Craft your message according to who you’re talking to. Always make your message about its recipient: why should they care about it?
    2. Finally, you need to anticipate and adapt to challenges. Obstacles might be resistance from stakeholders, your own limited resources or a lack of public interest, to name three. 

    National campaigns

    Access Info did baseline research on the legal frameworks within each country. They crafted their own methodology that goes a little further than the Tromsø convention itself does, because some areas, like Article 8, don’t go into much detail: this recommends a ‘quick and inexpensive review process’ but doesn’t g into any detail about a body overseeing this and what powers they should have — so Access Info have added what an ideal body would look like and the powers it would have.

    After examining all countries that run an Alavateli-based site, they decided to work in four countries, each with different states of legal framework:

    The Netherlands adopted a new law in 2022, and not signed or ratified Tromsø. The legislation is strong on paper, but weak in practice. There’s an opportunity in that certain aspects of the law will be under review at certain stages; and they would also like to push them to sign the Tromsø convention.

    Access Info partnered with Spoon, and they formed their plan in this context: their goal is to improve implementation and strengthen oversight.

    They plan to create guidelines for officials handling requests, alongside with the committee that has oversight over the law. There is a lack of guidance, so Spoon can step in, and Access Info will advise

    After five years there will be an evaluation of whether there should be a commissioner, and they will definitely say yes – this is the most popular model for oversight worldwide.

    They will also promote the use of Alaveteli at local level, with the aim of influencing those at the national level: they’re not keen because they’re concerned about data protection, especially the issue that the officials’ name are published on the request. So they’re going from the bottom up to show how local government is using it in a way that doesn’t encroach on personal data protection.

    You don’t always have to go to the national government:, see where you can have the most impact, which is usually not the ‘top top’ — the middle might be better. By working with the government to create guidelines, making material that will be useful for the five year review, there is a great opportunity for impact.

    Moldova has a strong law, but there are concerns: in 2023, an update broadened the scope of exceptions and lengthed the timeframe for responses; and the oversight body is not strong. It has been Tromsø ratified, however.

    Specific issues are a low usage of the law, and poor implementation compared to a strong law on paper.

    Here, Access Info partnered with Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) who manage the Alaveteli platform for Moldova.

    The goal is to bring the law into line with international standards: it’s a new law, but LHR are performing strategic litigation on issues around its implementation. For example, the Evaluation Committee is an independent body which evaluates the integrity of judges and prosecutors: they have ruled that they don’t fall under the ATI law, which is a bad interpretation, so LHR are taking the matter to court.

    They’re also litigating against the over-redaction of personal data in court documents.

    In Moldova a second goal is to increase use of Alaveteli platform, by highlighting success stories, partnering with journalists to highlight positive outcomes from requests, for example when requests showed that the level of bullying in schools was growing, they were able to get anti-bullying programmes implemented in schools. Other findings have been around gender based violence and malpractice by doctors: basically, “what can’t be measured can’t be improved”.

    LHR are providing legal support to requesters whose requests are refused, and fighting against the misinterpretation of the law, in the hope that all these approaches will combat the underuse of ATI in the country.

    France has a weak law: they have not signed the Tromsø agreement, and there’s a lack of awareness and implementation from both civil society and journalists.

    At this time there is no room for reform of the law, but they will push for signing the Tromsø  convention.

    As with Moldova, the main aims are to raise awareness of the law, and increase its use via the Alaveteli platform (Ma Dada). They’ll train French civil society organisations and journalists and create an FOI community to build the foundations for when there’s an opportunity for legal reform. They’ll create a practical guide so that individuals can understand what FOI can do for them.

    Greece has a very weak ATI legal regime: there’s no one law that covers everything. Rather, rights are scattered across different laws and it is a very confusing legal framework. When a request has been refused, the appeal needs to be sent to one of a range of different bodies. They are not signed up to the Tromsø agreement.

    Here, they have partnered with Vouliwatch at the national level, and are pushing for legal reform, better implementation and public awareness

    Their goal is for a new legal framework, and to get Greece Tromsø ratified.

    Vouliwatch has already lobbied the parliamentary committee to discuss the amendment of the law. They’re working to build a coalition to push the campaign forward, and have trained civil society organisations and journalists in a workshop. They’ll use this coalition to help them with joint statements, open letters, social media, media articles, et cetera.

    General advice

    Know your audience It’s about persuasion, advocacy and lobbying. Know who you’re talking to and why they should care. In messaging you can consider three types of argument, using Aristotle’s three types of persuasion:

    • Ethos: establish your credibility: why should they listen to you? For example, in the Netherlands, the government weren’t aware of Access InfoEurope, so they worked to create allies in government and got them to introduce them to the person they wanted to talk to.
    • Pathos: make your audience care emotionally, for example by storytelling  — showing how ATI can do good in society, and why we need it.
    • Logos : make logical arguments supported by facts. “You signed up to Tromsø, but your law is out of line with that”.

    Make your arguments valuable to the person you’re speaking to Public officials care about the levels of public trust in government, for example, so that’s a good angle to come in on.

    Policy briefs Keep them short. Use short paragraphs of less than 20 words per sentence, and four sentences per paragraph for maximum impact.  

    Make your brief persuasive and valuable to the reader: locate problems in their communities and offer the solutions.

    Common errors are to include too little evidence or research; and to use too much jargon – keep it simple.

    Be adaptable to change Impact can come in different shapes and forms — you might not have realised that what you’re seeing is impact, but for example, journalists getting access to new stories counts as impact.

    Be prepared Create networks that will be ready when there are legislative opportunities.

    And finally: don’t give up.

    Q&A

    There were then questions from the audience.

    Q: “Building a coalition” sounds great, but difficult. What is the least it can mean? 

    Rachel: Being reactive to a specific situation. For example, when the authorities were closing access to beneficial ownership registers, we could use that moment when there was outrage. We could gather different people and organisations who cared about the same issue — even though they were all coming from different angles.

    It’s very valuable to bring people in who have completely different angles: they help you to see, and prepare for, what the opposition would say. So for example we have some strong data protection advocates in our ranks, who might argue against disclosure on those grounds. Having this sort of discussion with your allies helps you to get the arguments clear in your head before taking the campaign public.

    Q: Could you go into more detail on who was running the campaign and who you communicated to when using public outreach, classic media, social media? Who was in the team for each country and what roles did you have?

    Rachel: Vouliwatch are really good at public outreach: so they already knew who to reach out to. On the other hand, in Moldova they haven’t done something like that before, so we are helping them. Basically it depends on the national context.

    Q: What heuristics are you using to know where you are? For example, if your aim is to ‘build credibility’, how do you know when you’ve ticked that box and are in a position to take the next step?

    Rachel: It’s very difficult. In some places we already have credibility with the national institutions, so for example in Greece Vouliwatch have already had conversations, and feedback says they’ve been taken on board. That sort of thing helps you see that you’re making progress.

    Q: Are there things we can do internationally to help national level organisations? Our connections are all in the UK, and they each have their own goals, constraints and focuses.

    Rachel: it can be helpful to bring in the  international angle: for example the Council of Europe has an oversight group that looks at the laws of all countries that have ratified Tromsø. Even the fact that they exist at all sends a strong message.

    It can be disheartening waiting for the moment to act. Your followers will get fatigued, so be strategic about when and how to use your voice. Channel your energies into activities that could have the most impact.

    Q: Is there a regular schedule for updating the country’s policy ratings (the global RTI rankings) or does it depend on when you get the funding to do so?

    Rachel: Yes, it is funding-dependent!

    Image: Tromsø by Harry Jaschhof

  2. Telling stories with FOI data

    In the second seminar of our Using Freedom of Information for Campaigning and Advocacy series, we learned how to use information from FOI requests to create stories and further your cause. 

    First, we heard the experience of two different campaign groups — Privacy International and Climate Emergency UK — in getting their stories into the public eye; this was followed by tips from freelance journalist Rosie Taylor about pitching to newspapers.

    You can watch the whole video over on YouTube, or read the summary below.

    Privacy International

    Ilia Siatitsa

    Privacy international is a UK-based organisation, working with partners around the world to research and advocate against governmental and corporate abuses of data and technology. 

    They’ve used FOI requests as a source of information that feeds into campaigns and advocacy for many years. Sometimes they use a preliminary round of FOI requests to help inform a subsequent, more focused one.

    Their Neighbourhood Watched campaign, which investigated the use of new surveillance technologies by the UK police, is a good example (we’ve written about it before here). Privacy International submitted fact-finding FOI requests to many police forces across the UK, asking which technologies were being used at a local level for law enforcement.

    The responses enabled them to identify several different types of tech, and that there was a massive regulatory gap around this area of law enforcement, with new, invasive technologies having been introduced before any guidance was put in place.

    The information they obtained via FOI has inspired a number of different actions within a wider, multi-year campaign. Privacy International first rallied their supporters to write to their local Police and Crime Commissioner to ask for more information and better regulation. 

    They later launched a similar campaign around police technologies being used at protests, producing a guide to inform people attending marches, so they knew what tech was being deployed by police, and how to mitigate some of the exposure.

    They also made follow-up FOI requests around the specific technologies that their first round had identified. In this second round of FOI requests, Privacy International found that the responses were all coming back as refusals, using very similar or identical language and stating that the authorities could not confirm or deny that the information was held. 

    Privacy International attempted to challenge these refusals via the ICO, but they were upheld; a subsequent appeal at the Information Rights Tribunal also upheld the decision and denied a request to appeal. Undaunted by this setback, Privacy International have moved back to advocacy, sending letters to police oversight bodies to point out that every other country that has introduced these technologies to their police forces has been more transparent about them. In 2020 they published a report criticising the way the police were using mobile phone extraction (where the contents of your phone are copied, no password required), calling for reform and safeguards.

    So, while Privacy International haven’t yet won the battle, they continue to fight — and this is a good example of how FOI can form the basis of a multi-year campaign with many outputs, audiences and facets.

    Here are Ilia’s top tips for submitting requests — also make sure you see our previous seminar, Getting the most from FOI, for lots more advice.

    Top tips for FOI requests from Privacy International

    Questions from the audience:

    Q: Can you make a rejection into the story?
    A: You can, but it depends how you want to play it: you might decide that you don’t want the refusal decision to be out in public, setting a precedent for how authorities reply to responses. Privacy International are also trying a new approach, sending a different set of questions to see if that gets them better results. 

    Q: One of your tips is “format matters”: any further advice here?
    A: Authorities might try to give the least information possible, using the way you’ve formatted your question to minimise what they share, so look carefully at how you’ve worded your request before sending it, and consider how it might be responded to with this mindset. 

    It can be very useful to use a yes/no question: this only takes the authority moments to answer. 

    Or, rather than asking for stats, try asking for the documents that those stats can be found within. Responding to this type of request takes less time for the authority, but their response will contain more information. 

    Authorities often come back and say that your request needs to be narrowed down, so that can be a strategy too: start with a broad request which you’ll be happy to whittle down, knowing that you actually want the narrower information.

    Climate Emergency UK

    Isaac Beevor 

    Climate Emergency UK (CE UK) was founded around five years ago, with the aim of collating data and information on UK councils’ climate emergency declarations. Since then they’ve worked with mySociety to create CAPE, which collates all UK councils’ Climate Action Plans, and the Council Climate Action Scorecards, which first assessed all the plans, and subsequently councils’ actual climate action.

    Isaac explained that in order to gather data for the latest iteration of the Scorecards, they’d sent around 4,000 FOI requests to UK local authorities: these were all asking for data which couldn’t be obtained by other means.

    These requests, which were worded very specifically, allowed CE UK to compile data on: 

    • Councils’ staffing levels for climate and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG);
    • The average energy efficiency (EPC) ratings of council homes and the enforcement of the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES);
    • Whether councillors and management were receiving carbon literacy training;
    • Whether the councils were lobbying their devolved national government, or the UK government, for further powers or funding.

    As well as giving vital information that fed into the Scorecards project, the request about EPC ratings resulted in an exclusive [paywalled] on page two of the Financial Times.

    Isaac shared how CE UK went about achieving this coverage, noting that any organisation could do the same: they are a small and relatively new charity, but followed some logical steps to pitch their story, and it paid off. 

    First of all, they identified three potential stories, analysing the data they’d received and looked for trends within it to see what stood out the most. They wrote the headline for each, to make it easy for a journalist to imagine the piece and the way the data could be framed. 

    CE UK also considered the stories’ relevance to what was in the news at the time. The cost of living crisis was very much in the zeitgeist, and that tied in well with their data around low energy efficiency standards in council housing.

    They identified which newspaper they wanted to target, and found a suitable journalist to approach, and then simply emailed them with both the headlines and the detail to back them up. Isaac advises that it is reasonable to pitch a few potential stories at one time, especially if you have such rich data that you can pull several angles out of it. 

    Finally, Isaac advises that having given your framing to the journalist, you must allow them the freedom to emphasise whichever parts of the story they want to, based on your clear explanation of the data and what it is saying.

    Questions from the audience:

    Q: Did CE UK use EIR (Environmental Information Regulations) requests? 

    A: The requests were sent with a note that the authorities should feel free to treat them as either EIR or FOI requests. In these cases, the responses would be much the same so the distinction wasn’t a great concern for CE UK.

    Q: How can one identify the right journalist to approach? 

    A: CE UK were guided by where they wanted the story to go, based on the reputation of the paper. Ideally you can then identify a journalist who has an interest in your subject matter. Clearly they won’t know your data as well as you do, so make sure they understand the context — be really clear in explaining what your data is about. And it’s fine to pitch to more than one journalist: give them a deadline to respond by and if they don’t, move on to another.

    Q: If the paper has a paywall how do you ensure as many people as possible see the story? 

    A: As well as the FT exclusive, which gave that paper the ability to print first, CE UK later sent a press release round to more general and sector press. This was also picked up by many.

    Rosie Taylor, freelance journalist

    Rosie specialises in health and consumer affairs, writing news and features across all national press, and she often uses FOI in work. She also works with organisations to improve their media coverage. 

    Rosie began by listing five key things to consider when pitching a story to the newspapers:

    1. Relevance Your story needs to be relevant to that publication’s readers. All publications have slightly different audiences with unique interests and concerns.
    2. Timeliness Can you hook into topics that are being talked a lot at the moment in the news? Make sure the journalist knows ‘why now?’.
    3. Ease How easy are you making it for the editor to say yes? Overworked journalists don’t have time to build up a story, so ideally you should provide a complete package. If you’re giving them data, it’s all the better if you can give them the top line but also attach the datasets. Line up experts, provide case studies and pictures — it all really helps. Look at what a finished article looks like on the page: that is everything you’re going to need.
    4. Targeting Make sure you’re sending your pitch to the right journalist in the right section of the right publication. Read the publication yourself and look at the stories; become familiar with which journalists are covering certain topics.
    5. Timing Pitch plenty of time ahead of when you want the story to be published, to allow time for the journalist to write it.

    When considering which news outlet you are targeting, you need to look at your ultimate aim: for example, the Financial Times is read by changemakers, so it fits the needs of many campaign or advocacy groups well. Perhaps you just want more people to know about your organisation, in which case a mass readership publication would suit you better.

    We tend to think of each newspaper as a single entity but in fact they can contain different sections, each with their own editor and journalists, and slightly different  interests, audiences and timescales.

    It pays to know which section you are targeting, and what you want it to look like on the page. Will the story be a few paragraphs or are you hoping for a double page spread?

    You might pitch your story to local papers rather than a national. In fact, many of these are syndicated across the whole country, so you can still effectively attain national coverage that way.

    If you are pitching to a daily newspaper with a Sunday edition: is it a seven-day operation, or are they two separate papers? For example, you shouldn’t pitch the Times and the Sunday Times simultaneously, as they run autonomously, while the Telegraph just runs seven days a week.

    Similarly, some papers have a different team producing online content, like the Daily Mail newspaper and Mail Online.

    Don’t feel that you have to write off a whole publication just because you’ve had a ‘no’ from one section – if the Sunday paper says no, you can still pitch the dailies; if the Health section says ‘no’, you can try another section.

    There are two ways of pitching: ‘all round’, which goes to several papers at once, or as an exclusive.

    All-rounds

    If you are sending your story to multiple outlets at the same time, always put an embargo on the press release (a date and time after which it can be published). This ensures that you have control over the moment of release, and journalists welcome it as it gives them the time to write the story up.

    Make your embargo clear: you can put it in big red capital letters, add it to the email title, et cetera. The general convention for print is an embargo of 00:01 (one minute past midnight) for the story to appear in the following day’s papers.

    Online outlets really like embargos in the middle of the day (but that timing is a nightmare for print, so pick one). For broadcast, you can time the embargo to their news bulletins.

    Make sure you’re available in the run-up to the embargo, including having your experts or case studies at hand, in case there are any extra questions. If you have embargoed the story for a Monday release, that means being available on the Sunday.

    An all-round is always a gamble, because it can be scuppered by a bigger news story arising; with an exclusive you can discuss timing with your journalist and they might have the flexibility to put it out at a later date if that is still appropriate. 

    Exclusives

    With an exclusive, you can work with one publication and focus on getting quality coverage. You can still set an embargo if the timing is important to you; you can also do a joint exclusive for print and broadcast, so long as you are transparent with all parties.

    As Isaac mentioned, if one paper declines your story, take it to another — you can pretend you’re still offering it to them first!

    Be very clear that you’re offering your story as an exclusive. Explain why it is relevant to them, their readers, and is timely. You should do this further ahead of time than with an all-round, especially bearing in mind that you may have to pitch to more than one outlet; also, they might want to examine your data and go into the story more deeply.

    As soon as your exclusive story has been published, you can send to all the other press and see if any of them pick it up — so an exclusive doesn’t tie your story to a single paper for good.

    Timing

    While Rosie says one shouldn’t be too hung up on timing — it is much more important to have a strong story — it does help to know the cycles to which newspapers work. 

    Sunday papers have a day off on a Monday; pool ideas on Tuesdays and most of the content has been written by the Thursday. Pitch a few weeks ahead.

    Daily papers work to rough weekly cycles. They have more space on Saturdays, when they like lighter stories with good human interest; while the Monday edition is smaller but also the most serious – a good time for dryer, data-driven stories.

    On Sundays, daily papers tend to have a skeleton staff, so they might be grateful of a fully-worked story. Pitch on the Wednesday of the previous week, with an embargo for Monday morning, and your story will be worked on by the Sunday staff who will be glad to have something easy to include.

    Supplements and weekly sections within daily papers all have their own cycles, so just pitch a couple of weeks ahead of when you need to run.

    Questions from the audience

    Q: Is it better to pitch to a freelancer like Rosie, or directly to a paper?

    A: There are plusses to both, but Rosie says there are several benefits to pitching to a freelancer: they can pitch to multiple publications, know all the editors and know instinctively which would be the best fit. Plus they have an incentive to get your story published, because they are paid on publication.

    On the other hand, staff journalists have more weight with the papers, so it’s easier for them to get stories in.

    Q: Is it best to phone or email?

    A: Don’t ever phone. The journalist will see your email – but they do get a lot, so you need to make sure it is eye-catching. If you are offering an exclusive, make it very clear that this is a personal email intended for its recipient, not a generic one.

    Q: What sort of case studies could we be providing?

    A: Even if your story is just based on data, there will still be a human impact in the story. For example, looking at the energy standards story, you could find someone who lives in an energy inefficient home or who hasn’t got money for their bills.

    Q: How do big investigations get funded? 

    A: Most are funded in-house, and developed internally. You might find yourself working with the newspaper’s own team. Complex stories take time, so you need a newspaper on board to pay for your time and any equipment you need. Sometimes, organisations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism apply for grants to help them with in-depth stories.

  3. The Climate and Ecology Bill is gaining traction – with the help of WriteToThem

    You might know our WriteToThem service as an easy way to contact your representatives – which it definitely is! But did you realise that it’s also doing heavier lifting, helping proposed legislation gain support in Parliament?

    We’ve already seen how Power for People have mobilised their supporters this way: and Zero Hour is also running a successful campaign around a draft Bill. 

    zero hour logoZero Hour’s campaign centres around the Climate and Ecology Bill, in which they lay out a comprehensive and joined-up approach to the climate and nature emergency. A cornerstone of their strategy relies on getting their supporters to contact their representatives and ask them for their backing. 

    We asked Amy McDonnell, co-Director of Zero Hour to give us a bit more background and to explain the thinking behind the Bill. 

    Amy explained, “It’s the only current or proposed legislation that tackles the interconnected nature-climate emergency together.

    “We formed the campaign to provide a pathway to getting cross-party support for a legislative solution that will ensure that the UK delivers a science-led, people-powered plan on biodiversity and climate.”

    We were interested to know more about how rallying individuals can pave the way to change. 

    Amy told us, “We’ve always depended on our grassroots movement. MPs really care about what their constituents think, and writing to them is incredibly impactful. Moving forwards, we know that we can only win with people on the ground by turbocharging our activity in Parliament.”

    So how did they make the decision to bring WriteToThem onto their website? 

    “We knew that we needed an integrated tool on our site. The WriteToThem tool was key, as we recognise that people’s priorities are stretched and time is precious. So we used WriteToThem to ensure that supporters could contact the MP where they live with the click of a button. 

    “This has been incredibly effective, with thousands of our supporters asking their MPs to support the Climate and Ecology Bill. Having the mechanism to write to MPs with ease has been crucial to the success of the campaign to date, providing insightful responses and opening opportunities for our team to have engaging conversations with members of all political parties on how we can all work together to create an integrated strategy to tackle nature-climate emergency together.”

    WriteToThem doesn’t allow for mass, identical messages from users, and we were curious to know whether that had created any kind of challenge. Quite the reverse, as it turns out:

    We’ve found that fewer, personalised messages are a lot more impactful than thousands of standard emails, which can easily be blocked and ignored.

    “Our approach has always been to maximise not just the action taken by our supporters, but critically the impact that our supporters can make. Through providing guidance on how to personalise messages, we can avoid emails being dismissed or reaching spam folders.”

    And that has a knock-on effect on the way campaigners feel about taking action. 

    “The effectiveness is leading to visible progress, and that’s critical in ensuring that subsequent supporters see there’s a point in taking action on the campaign. So, we created the tool in a way that allows them to craft a personal messages about why the CE Bill can deliver a prosperous, nature-rich UK, that benefits nature, jobs and health for all, in their own words — and it will go directly to the right representative.

    “We know this has proven fruitful, as we commonly get meaningful responses from MPs which move the campaign forward — they can create an opportunity for further conversation about meeting our shared objectives on climate and nature.” 

    And WriteToThem helps in other fundamental ways, too:

    “It reduces the barrier of users having to search for their MP’s details and contact them in a more manual way. It saves supporters time. 

    “We knew mySociety was a very reputable and trustworthy organisation that could deliver the reliability we required in providing functional tools to best engage with the political system and felt the tool was a perfect match to get the engagement we were seeking from the campaign. The choice to use WriteToThem has been instrumental in the success of our campaign.”

    So would they recommend it to other campaigns looking to follow a similar model?

    “Absolutely. We would wholeheartedly recommend campaigns utilise WriteToThem as it’s a reliable and convenient tool for ensuring your campaign is not only seen by a maximum number of representatives but also vitally providing engaged responses. 

    “We can say without question that the tool increased the frequency of our supporters contacting MPs. This has provided invaluable leverage; opened doors and raising the profile of the CE Bill for us to build support which now stretches across all major parties.”

    Indeed, support now comes from 132 MPs, 40 Peers, the Mayor of London, 240 local councils, 192 scientists and 500 organisations — you can find Zero Hour’s full list of supporters here.

    “Frequently when we call MPs’ offices about events, briefings and other matters, office staff mention they have received numerous emails on the Climate and Ecology Bill, and that is a testament to the power of the WriteToThem tool, as MP’s have a large number of competing campaigns and prioritises in their inboxes daily. So, if you are looking for a way to easily connect supporters with their MP to increase awareness and engagement on key campaigns, it’s very effective.”

    Well, we couldn’t hope for much more than that! We’re very glad to have helped underpin such an essential campaign.

    If you’d like to find out more, head to zerohour.uk. And if you feel inspired to write to your MP about the Climate & Ecology Bill, you can do so here

    For those who would like to be kept up to date with all Zero Hour’s activities, the best way is to sign up as a supporter.

     

     

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    Image: Nuno Vasco Rodrigues / Climate Visuals Countdown (CC by-nc-nd 4.0)