1. Preparation

🎯 Stage objective: set up everything needed for the workshops

Creating a powerful campaign together starts with good preparation! There are three things for organizations to tick off before starting to collaborate digitally on a campaign:

1. Have a plan! 📝
2. Set up communications! 🗣
3. Do your homework! 📓

📝

1. Have a plan!

A clear project plan will guide you all
the way through the campaign development.

It should include:

Overall objective for the project
Required steps to get there
Aims and contents for each online workshop

Having a clear objective is your starting point: determine what you want to achieve and why you are working together.

Our tip:

Share this plan early on with all participants!
This helps set expectations and builds a shared understanding of requirements (and timings).

Workshop plan — Here's an example we used!

🗣

2. Set up communications!

Collaborating in workshops is a great way to create a campaign together! But it’s just as important to set up effective communications channels in between each workshop.

This is especially important when working with a larger number of organizations in different countries and using multiple languages.

You should decide on:

🔒 Security: Especially for campaigns dealing with sensitive subjects, make sure to consider security aspects when collaborating online. Consider using online meetings that are invite-only; protect your documents with passwords; and make sure participants are comfortable with any information made public. Also think early on how you will deal with hate speech.

Who is responsible for organizational decisions, and how do they communicate?
How is information spread? e.g about dates, tasks, and developments? You could use regular project lead conference calls; a cascade system where one person in each organization shares information back internally; a news board; or a messaging service such as Slack.
How are materials shared? An online platform solution such as Sharepoint or Dropbox works well for working across multiple organizations. This way, documents can be shared in a central location. Especially for campaigns developing visual material, sending large files by email is not a practical solution.
Which platform to use for the digital workshops – such as Zoom, Teams, or Jitsi. Platforms with breakout room functions are ideal for larger workshops with smaller group works. Digital whiteboards are also a powerful tool for collaboration. Some platforms like Zoom have integrated functions for this, or you could use a separate tool (e.g. Google Jamboard, Miro).

📓

3. Do your homework!

A small amount of homework from participating organizations can help you kickstart the campaign development – and make sure you develop a focused and relevant campaign.

One way to do this: project posters. Ask organizations to fill in a simple template with information on:

⬆️ Next level: A more advanced option is using research into the topic or issue that you want the campaign to address. Often social organizations already have great information to draw on: interviews, surveys, media reviews, case studies, or data analysis.

the work of each organization
their cultural and social context (especially for transnational campaigns!)
expectations and aims
initial ideas for the campaign

Each organization and each participant brings a unique set of experiences and skills: Use this potential to design the workshops and help develop the campaign!

Take me to stage 2!