Capture contact details!

Wherever you’re campaigning, always have a sign-up sheet to hand (attached below).

The standard WDM sign-up sheet has tick boxes for people to say whether they are happy to be contacted by their WDM local group, or by the WDM national office, or both.

If people tick both boxes, add them to your contact list and then send the forms to the office so we can add details to our database.

If people just tick the local WDM box, then just add them to your contact list.

Ideas for managing your contact lists

It is ideal to have two separate contact lists:

1) Wider/information list – anyone who signs up at an event gets added to this list. It is used for circulating details about events and group activities (probably once or twice a month).

2) Group member/organising list – this is for people who regularly attend group meetings and is used for frequent emails discussions.

Naturally those on the first list should receive information about when and where group meetings are taking place. If they decide to attend meetings regularly then they will move to the second list.

Gathering signatures against RBS’s tar sands involvement - Cambridge WDM

The best people to ask for petition signatures are those who aren't on the move. This means people who are leaning against a pillar, or window-shopping, or lighting up, or between mobile phone conversations, or tethering a bike, or turning an honest penny as a living statue. The living statue's signature was the high point of the morning, eclipsing even the monikers of the parliamentary candidates, and we wished we'd had a camera with us when he signed.

Get in Touch - Cambridge WDM

Once you've captured interested people's contact details (using our simple sign up form below), it's good practice to contact them straightaway whilst WDM is fresh in their minds and they're amenable to putting your next meeting date in their diary immediately!  Take a look at the email Cambridge WDM sent out the day after they held a stall at a screening of the film CRUDE...

Many thanks for leaving your name on our Cambridge WDM list at the showing of CRUDE, the film about oil on Tuesday 26 Jan.

Glad you want to hear more about WDM.

Here are the minutes from our last meeting which gives you a feel for the campaigning that we do. Also a letter you might want to send off to the Minister for Energy & Climate Change about the Climate Change fund that the UK is offering Bangladesh. We want to support our partners in Bangladesh by asking that this fund is not managed by the World Bank.

If you want to catch up with the national campaigns please see www.wdm.org.uk

Or see www.cambridgewdm.org.uk for news of our local group

You can see pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdm/

We meet monthly on the third Wednesday and you would be welcome to join us. Please let me know.

Best wishes

Sue Woodsford

sue.woodsford@ntlworld.com
Cambridge WDM
Branch Secretary

Got everything for a stall? Oxford WDM

Oxford WDM have put together a handy checklist for stalls, including a rundown of materials; the key actions which will be on the stall, plus key messages.

This is a great way of dividing up responsibility within a group. One person can put together the checklist and ensure that all materials are ready, and then others can run the stall on the day, feeling very well prepared! Oxford WDM have kindly let us put one of their checklists up on the website, so feel free to use this as a template. You can find the checklist in the network resources section of our website.

Making an event participatory- Bristol WDM

Next time you organise a speaker event, instead of arranging the usual ‘rows of chairs to face a panel’ format, try putting the chairs into groups of small semi circles. Then instead of having a question and answer session at the end of the talk, ask each group to discuss the main points brought out by the speaker and arrive at one question/point to feedback.

This was the method used at a recent speaker event in Bristol. What was so effective was that it made the atmosphere far more informal than it might otherwise have been. Attendees that were unfamiliar with the group were allowed to freely participate with others and it was a great way of breaking the ice. The traditional format of a panel addressing an audience with time for fleeting questions at the end fails to engage the often highly experienced and enthusiastic audience that come to an event. This type of event format might not work for every speaker (the traditional questions and answer format might better suit more technical presentations), but it is highly recommended for experienced and campaign based speakers.

Making stalls interactive (use the kids to get to the parents...) - Glasgow WDM

One of the hardest things with a stall is how to get people to engage with you long enough. Most WDM campaigns are not easy to communicate in 2 seconds, so it helps if you can hold on to people for a minute to explain what the campaign is about and then try to persuade them to sign an action card. And it also helps if you can have something on the stall which will attract people's attention in the first place. We've tried a few methods of making stalls more interactive and entertaining, but our most successful so far was the free lucky dip that we ran at a festival in Glasgow. By offering something that attracted children, we also drew their parents to the stall and could have a conversation with them whilst their kids were happily engaged. And there were a surprising number of adults who were also very keen to try out a lucky dip!

We made the lucky dip climate-related by using model polar bears (made of polystyrene and card - just 2 dimensional, so not too complicated) as the objects to be found - we used 'Rescue the Polar Bears' as part of the branding for the stall. Once a participant had found a polar bear, they received a sweet as a prize and we returned the bear to the lucky dip. We used shredded paper in the lucky dip and wrote simple 'climate facts' on the polar bears to add an extra layer of interest. By having one person running the lucky dip and attracting people's attention (shouting 'free lucky dip' works very well!), whilst another talks to them about the campaign and asks them to sign a campaign card, we were able to run the stall very effectively with just two people (though it helped when we had more than two). The festival we were at always works well for stalls, but even so we thought 161 signed cards was not a bad return for a few hours work.

Contact Glasgow WDM for more information about how they put together their lucky dip stall, including the model polar bears and posters: wdmglasgow@gmail.com

Meal or No Meal game for food campaign stalls - Shropshire WDM

We had 6 numbered boxes with No Meal written in the lids except for one saying One Meal and One saying 3 Meals. Those boxes had some toffees in!
All the box lids were covered with the food derivatives poster ( 'this is how banks see your money'). We also had a home made Noel Edmonds mask

We asked people if they wanted to play and most knew deal or no deal so knew the format.
You choose the boxes you don’t want and are left with one you do plus the one that has been put aside earlier
You then choose between the final two

If they won No Meal then it clearly showed how gambling on food could end up with people hungry. And throughout the message was that food was far too important to life to be gambled with. Reregulation of food prices was needed.

If they won 1 meal or 3 meals – well they’ve been fed for up to a day but what about tomorrow and then as above.

It was an easy and fun way to engage people – children and adults - and most at least left with the idea that gambling on food wasn’t a good thing.

RBS stunt - Manchester & Warrington WDM groups

Inspired by Sheffield WDM's Tar Sands film the Manchester & Warrington groups decided to attempt something similar outside RBS's iconic offices on Deansgate in Manchester's "High Street".  Here are a few tips from them:

1. Get your regional journalist on board. When s/he gives you the brush off keep trying and accept that you may have to feed him/her more for a long time before s/he comes out of the comfort zone.
2. Get a photographer and get to know your camera! Have another activist taking quotes from passers-by.
3. Don't spread yourselves out too much along the street.
4. Watch the wind (placards can be blown away very easily).
5. Visual placards which can be secured (round neck as sandwich board) or at strategic angles facing oncomers in both directions work well.
6. Mildly quirky gear (bowler, 3 piece suit, and brolly, or boiler suit and hard hat with "RBS 'oyal Bank of Scotland" logo cut from a poster can work.
8. Have a young mum and baby - i.e. range of activists- not all wearing woolly hats!
9. If you are going to give out flyers, have LOTS - we ran out and were giving out cards, many of which won't be posted back.
10. When the regional press don't turn up, despite the action being about 75 yards from their offices (!) and you were blanked by the target, make a new story about that blanking for that paper and other stories for other local (commercial) and community (non-commercial) papers.  In addition take different photos for different papers, eg "Mum and Baby", "Local activist dresses up" .

Stunt tips - Brighton & Hove WDM

Here are some stunt tips from Brighton and Hove WDM.

1. Use a megaphone

Using a megaphone worked really well in "advertising" the stunt; it's a busy high street and we could have been overlooked otherwise.

2. Wear WDM t-shirts

We all wore WDM t-shirts (we bought them for the group and one person looks after them) which made us look much more cohesive (if you buy large or extra large you can put them on over your regular clothes)

3. Put a banner up high

Having the banner up somewhere high meant it attracted people's attention; we had people holding it because we couldn't attach it to the stall without it blowing the stall over.

4. Choose your day carefully

We did the stall on a Friday as that was the most convenient day - it seemed to work better than a Saturday when there are a lot of day-trippers around; Friday seemed to be more people who lived in Brighton which worked better for us.

5. Think about coordination

One person needs to co-ordinate the stunt, even if all that means is emailing people to check everybody is bringing all the bits they need to bring.

6. Take photos

If the press photographer doesn't turn up, take photos yourself, then go home and email the best ones to the picture desk at the paper along with an updated press release to the newsdesk (quote on how the day went, etc), and phone them to make sure they've received it. This has worked for us quite a few times.

Tips from September 2011 skillshare in Nottingham

A skillshare session was held with WDM groups members in Nottingham in September 2011. Here are write-ups of some of the discussion sessions.

Discussion 1: organising events

Different events that groups have done included:

Simple Stall: Put up a table with leaflets outside different banks, 2 or 3 times a month.

Stunt: Put up a big banner on a landmark, e.g multi-storey Car Park, during e.g. Political Party Conferences.

Public Meeting: Held on topics of particular interest of group members, once every 2 years or so.  Audience ranged from 25 to 100.  Publicity was helped by a web-site that posted the events on other local 'what's on' sites and local newspapers.

Festival Stall: It can take a few tries to find the right local festivals, but other stall holders can tell you about other festivals that they go to. Having activities for children and/or adults helps attract people to the stall. Activities have included free cups of Fairtrade tea, Who should we cheer for quiz & name the World Cup country from the flag, match the food item to the country, both shown on a map of the world and draw your favourite food.

Event funding:  1) Done informally with members covering cost of stall  2) Covered by an annual group subs  3) Let over from an event that asked for donations.

Discussion 2: gaining new members

From the discussion, it became clear that most of the groups struggle to get new members. One exception appears to be Sheffield where they have an active group meeting twice a month. It was apparent that the Sheffield group was thriving because of a few energetic people. It was reassuring to find that if you put in the work, you get the results!

The following ideas/thoughts emerged from the discussion about gaining new members:

• Have a social (eg BBQ) and invite all the active and inactive members of WDM. Use the address stickers of donating members from HQ to contact inactive members (NB these can only be used once)
• Have two sets of meetings, one totally business to decide events etc and one in a pub to thrash out the details of an event and be more of a social event
• Have a local newsletter
• Contact not very active members by phone to get them to help at events when numbers are important. It was felt that contacting by phone is a much more effective way of building a relationship with inactive members than e mail
• Link up with other groups such as FOE, Unions, Justice and Peace, Oxfam, Christian Aid, Fairtrade, People & Planet at local university. Support each other’s events 
• Link up with other WDM groups in the vicinity - if there are any! Perhaps have joint public meetings
• he importance of making meetings fun and bonding with other members particularly new members
• If have a stall and someone shows real interest, ask for a phone number or e-mail address so that can contact person direct.
• Have two emailing lists that you use appropriately ie have a restricted list of people who are active and a larger list for occasional use
• Have a good website that is easy to access and well laid out
• Talk to young people and ask them how the WDM group can be improved

Discussion 3: lobbying your MEP about food speculation

• Local groups need to know more details about MiFID as soon as the report comes out. 
• Nottingham group needs to contact Bill Newton Dunn soon – before his diary is all booked up, to get a date to talk with him when the report is out. 
• There is a World Bank report on food speculation that was released prior to WDM’s report. 
• Those local group members that are meeting with their MEP’s could meet as a group before the appointment, to make sure everyone is confident on the issue.
• What are the European party positions on food speculation? Can we influence other countries?
• The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee are looking at the issue, but shouldn’t the Development Committee be looking at it? There are human, not just economic effects.