Ready, set, plan!

It would be foolish to go into battle without some kind of plan and it’s the same with a campaign. So once you’ve worked out what your objectives are, you now need to work out what you will do to achieve them.

You also need to work out a clear campaign proposition that you can use to enthuse others about your campaign.

The best way to work out your plan is to use what’s called backwards planning. Remember your picture of your objective being fulfilled. Work out when that’s
likely to happen.

If it’s a change in local Government policy or the opening of a service, these things will require money, so the most likely time for them to happen is the next time that the budget is reallocated.

The financial year runs from April to March and most local budgets are decided by January or February. So you need to start from that point and work backwards. You can find out the exact timetable for the budget process from your local council. Find out when the Council Executive meetings are, when the sign-off for the budget is. Health budgets are usually decided earlier in the financial year.

If what you’re looking for is some positive media coverage on mental illness, there are some obvious times of year when this is going to be easier. Whilst the
issue you are trying to raise might be continually relevant, for the press it needs to be newsworthy and topical, and these dates help to make it topical. Use our useful dates (see below).

So now you need to work backwards from the time your objective will be reached. The further away this time is, the better as you will be able to do more and
persuade more of your targets in more ways. Work out which of your targets you’re going to try and meet, how you can use the dates above as triggers for action
along the way.

At all points, make sure that you are realistic about how much time and energy you can put into this campaign. Think about who else might support you and might contribute their time. Sometimes you might have enough time and enough support to mount a fullscale campaign, as with the carers service example listed here. Other times, you might not have so much time. But the low-scale campaigns can be effective.

Example of backwards planning - campaign for a new carers' service (23 kb)

Mental Health Specific

• Mental Health Action Week –end of March.
• World Mental Health Day – October 10th.
• Carers’ Rights Day - December. 
  Visit Carers UK

Related areas

• No Smoking Day – March 8th.
• Carers Week – 2nd week in June.
  Visit Carers Week
• Ask About Medicines Week –usually 2nd week in November.
  Visit Ask about Medicines

General dates
You can use other dates in the year, like New Year or Christmas or Easter, but remember that other people will be doing this too with other causes, so there
will be more competition. Bank Holidays could be a good time to publicise the need for respite care. 
Visit BBC On This Day for other dates.

A campaign proposition states exactly what the purpose of your campaign is. It needs to be black and white, either/or.

Campaigning isn’t about educating people about an issue – often education leads to confusion. Campaigning is about enthusing people and getting solutions put into practice, not investigating every aspect of an issue in an academic fashion.

Strip everything back to basics. Work out precisely what the problem is – make this as striking as possible.

In a multi-media age, every problem is competing for attention. So you need to make sure that this is as attention-grabbing as possible and as easily understandable as possible.

A good way to do this is to speak to someone outside the mental health and charity world and explain your campaign to them. See what they say about it. How do they summarise your campaign? Steal their words – and thank them for their help.

There are many things that seem wrong with the world, but people won’t support a campaign to change them unless they think it’s possible to change them. So you
need to come up with a workable solution. Would you support a campaign against freak storms, for example? Probably not, because they seem impossible for us to
control. Would you support a campaign to get food and shelter to people made homeless through freak storms? You’re more likely to because this seems a possible goal.

To come up with a workable solution, read the Getting your facts straight page – look at the section on how to make change. And talk to people locally who work in the field – they will know what works.

Now you’ve worked out your key dates and proposition, add it to the Campaign Planning matrix.