You have a problem you care about and you’re thinking about running a campaign. This path takes you from that first impulse to a plan ready to launch — seven pages, in order, each ~5 minutes to read. The seven-step indicator at the top of this page mirrors the journey below; use it (or the numbered list) to keep your place as you work. By the end you’ll have named your target, your demand, your audience, your allies, and your sequence; you’ll know how to learn from each cycle and improve the next.
This is the route most new organisers take. If your campaign is already running and you need to scale it fast, jump to the community-organising path instead.
What you’ll need before you start
This path is written for a small campaign team that has room to make decisions internally, not for a single volunteer and not for a group that needs sign-off at each step. None of the seven pages below carries its own prerequisites section — what’s listed here is the minimum each page already asks for in its body, lifted into one place so you can check your fit before you read.
- A small team with a named lead. Power mapping runs as a wall exercise with cards on butcher paper that the whole team can see and revise at every meeting; evaluation asks for indicators with a named owner, baseline and review cadence; after-action-review asks for a named owner of every change the debrief produces. Plan for two to five people, with at least one who can hold the campaign plan together across the cycle.
- Time set aside per step. power-mapping is run as a half-day workshop; campaign-planning is reviewed at every weekly meeting; after-action-review is a 30–60-minute debrief after each milestone. Plan ~5 hours of focused work per step and a recurring meeting slot to keep the living documents current.
- Decision authority inside the team. campaign-planning calls for one named owner per workstream and explicit decision rules (“if X happens, we will Y”) so the campaign can respond without escalating every call. Without that authority, the planning and AAR steps turn into debate rather than action.
- Some research available before kickoff. power-mapping needs an actor list; audience-segmentation needs at least rough size, position and current relationship for each group; evaluation asks for indicators and a baseline in place before the action runs. The research can be approximate; what the pages won’t do is substitute for it.
- A way to write things down. Power maps, theories of change and campaign plans are described across the seven pages as living documents — revised at every meeting, not produced once. You need somewhere the team keeps these between sessions (a shared doc, a wiki page, a wall that stays up).
Gaps the seven pages don’t cover and you won’t find here either: a budget envelope (none of the seven name a financial figure); legal cover for high-risk action (the nonviolent-action-101 path is the place for that); interpretation or translation logistics; or a host organisation / fiscal sponsor. Bring those alongside the path.
The journey
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Power mapping — why this next: before you can win anything you need a clear picture of who holds the power you want to shift, who can pressure them, and where your organisation sits in that web. This is the diagnostic: everything else builds on it.
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Theory of change — why this next: now name the change. If your campaign succeeds, what shifts? A good theory of change connects your tactics (rallies, lawsuits, boycotts) to a believable story about how they cause the outcome you want.
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Audience segmentation — why this next: not everyone is your audience. Segment by relationship to the issue (target, ally, opponent, neutral, bystander) and pick the messengers, frames, and channels that fit each slice. This is where strategic comms become sharp.
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Coalition building — why this next: no campaign wins alone. Map the groups already working on adjacent issues, identify the gaps only you can fill, and approach potential allies with a concrete offer — not a generic “join us.” Coalitions turn a campaign into a movement.
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Campaign planning — why this next: now sequence the work. A campaign plan turns your theory of change into a timeline of escalating tactics, each one ratcheting pressure on the target. This is where strategy meets calendar.
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Evaluation — why this next: the campaign hasn’t even launched and we want you thinking about learning already. Indicators, milestones, and feedback loops baked in before kickoff mean you’ll know whether each tactic worked — and you can adjust mid-campaign rather than discovering failures after the fact.
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After-action review — why this next: this is the post-campaign debrief that turns one campaign into the seed of the next. What worked, what didn’t, what surprised you, what would you do differently? Without this, every campaign starts from zero.
Where you’ll be at the end
By the time you’ve worked through the seven pages in order you should be able to tick each of these:
- ☐ A power map naming the decision-maker, those who influence them and where your group sits in that web.
- ☐ A theory of change with an if/then chain and a populated assumptions column — the one that disciplines the plan rather than decorating it.
- ☐ An audience segmentation with size, current position, and a per-segment message, channel and call to action.
- ☐ A coalition roster with at least one named partner per gap that only your group can fill.
- ☐ A sequenced campaign plan with named workstreams, decision rules, and an alignment check across strategy, structure, story and tactics.
- ☐ A set of indicators with owner, baseline and review cadence, agreed at planning time — not bolted on at the end.
- ☐ A repeatable AAR routine on the calendar at every milestone, with a named owner for each change the debrief produces.
Wrap-up
To see these pieces in action, browse case-studies — and when you’re ready to actually go door-knocking, follow the community-organising path for the people-side of the work.
If your campaign needs to be online first, jump to the digital-campaigning path; if you’re trying to shift policy, the lobbying and advocacy path; if you’re planning direct action, the nonviolent-action-101 path.