This edition of Rally Reads comes from Antonia May Cross.
It’s a good one. We first met Antonia on the internet and have subsequently met her in real life. We get inspired by people like Antonia because they give out massive get shit done vibes.
Thoughts on Digital Mobilisation in 2025 for charities and campaign groups in Romania.
Twitter is dead to us. We’ve moved on. We think we all should.
In this edition the always awesome Zoe Amar writes about the books that have had an impact on her and her career. Enjoy.
In this edition Ruby takes us through a reading list that explores strategy, anger, feminism and protest. Ruby describes herself as a fundraiser and feminist organiser. She’s raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for good causes in her career and is a fundamental believer in the art of protest. As are we.
If you’ve ever heard us talk out loud, you will have heard us talk about mobilisation.
What do we mean by mobilisation? Well, the dictionary defines it as…
‘The action of organising & encouraging a group of people to take collective action in pursuit of a particular objective’
And if you’ve heard us talk about mobilisation, it’s very likely that you’ve heard us talk a lot about the lessons we can learn from successful movements of the past and recent history.
We’ve summarised these lessons in the following 5 principles to consider when we’re talking to clients about mobilisation strategy and leadership.
A VISION TO BELIEVE IN: Your goal is inspiring, is important to society and feels believable.
A BELIEVABLE PLAN TO DELIVER THE VISION: Not only is the goal believable, but so is the plan to deliver it. The plan is well articulated and available for all to see. It’s easy for the public to see themselves playing an active role in success.
VALUES THAT ARE EASILY SUBSCRIBED TO: The values that underpin the mobilisation activity aren’t overly complex or intellectual, they have huge mass appeal and aren’t framed in a way that excludes participation.
USEFUL & VALUABLE THINGS TO DO: Those who participate are offered things to do that are rooted in the plan and connect to the values of the movement. Nothing is transactional - it’s clear every action moves the movement on towards its goal.
CHARISMATIC LEADERS OR LEADERSHIP: The leadership or individual leaders are inspiring and have the personal qualities that drive belief and loyalty. They speak with experience of the issue and can tell stories in a way that drives action and participation.
Let’s apply those principles to what we’ve seen Marcus Rashford do.
But first watch this video…
It’s hard not to be impressed by him. Back to those 5 principles and how Marcus exhibits the behaviours.
A VISION TO BELIEVE IN. Marcus believes that all children irrespective of their background should be able to fulfil their full potential. It’s hard to disagree with this.
A BELIEVABLE PLAN TO DELIVER THE VISION. He’s kept the plan simple, he uses his platform to call on the government to do the right thing. Whether it’s the provision of food in the short term or a review of how children are viewed by policy makers. He makes everything simple and easy to engage with.
VALUES THAT ARE EASILY SUBSCRIBED TO. Decency, equality, justice, compassion and fairness. It’s hard not to align with the core values that drive his efforts.
USEFUL & VALUABLE THINGS TO DO. He recognises that there is work he needs to do, which involves him using his power to get access to politicians and make direct asks of them. He asks the public to sit alongside his efforts and help by signing petitions, amplifying the campaign or in some cases providing food when the government wouldn’t.
CHARISMATIC LEADERS OR LEADERSHIP. We think he has this covered. He is a global star in his profession, speaks with direct experience of the issues he is campaigning about so he has authenticity baked in to everything he does and doesn’t fear any backlash. In a recent Guardian article it was reported that ‘he shrugs off criticism, saying he’s heard 10 times worse on the pitch. Setbacks make him redouble his efforts.’ Which is probably what makes him such a formidable activist.
There is a lot of talk about movement building in UK NGOs right now. This is a natural response to the new ways in which movements have formed and attracted public support and participation - think BLM, MeToo, TimesUp and the rise of XR. Charities need to learn from them because they are successful at attracting at scale and creating action, especially in the digital age.
If a movement is defined as ‘a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social or artistic ideas’, our view is that established charities cannot start one. They can harness the power of an existing movement, but can’t and shouldn’t think they can start one. This is a bold statement to make, but if you think of the environmental movement as an example, no one organisation can lay claim to owning it. There are a wide and diverse range of actors in that movement from charities like Greenpeace and the RSPB to campaign groups like XR, Green New Deal and Youth Climate strikers to brands like Lush and Patagonia - all are part of the movement, no single group can throw their logo on it and claim it.
Instead, charities should identify where they are in the movement ‘map’ that surrounds them and figure out what they can do to push the entire movement forward, as well as mobilise its power and energy to help them deliver on their specific goals. This could be as simple as providing resources and capacity to smaller groups in the movement.
We will leave you with this quote from that recent article in the Guardian.
“As global charities unsurprisingly clamour to hitch his star power to their causes, his response is always the same: “I need to fix what’s going on in my own backyard first.”
Link to that article: 'It is never about him': how Marcus Rashford became such a devastating activist. [The Guardian]
Main Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Matthew is one of the few Brits to make it in the USA - we could sit for hours and listen to him tell stories from Greenpeace. Those stories are one of the reasons Rally exists: it was those stories and his commitment to fusing comms, campaigning and fundraising that formed a major inspiration for the creation of Rally.
One of Rally’s founding principles is that we want to drive change at a scale that is bigger than our size. And that central to creating change is exposure to new ideas and partnerships. So we are always keen to be generous with our knowledge and network, helping make connections to spark change that otherwise wouldn’t happen. This is a story of one of those moments.
In January 2020 - back when being out and about was ‘A Thing’ - we spent three fantastic days touring the coffee shops, charity meeting rooms and lunch spots of London with one of our favourite people in the whole world.
Meet Adrian. Adrian is a Dublin based pal of ours, he’s a brilliant thinker and all round Facebook fundraising genius. We love him.
Adrian.
He’d been developing a new approach to virtual challenge events that was delivering mind blowing results with his clients in Ireland, achieving both scale and huge returns on investment. He does it all on Facebook and it’s transformational. Honestly. Transformational.
We could see the results and knew the UK needed what Adrian was doing. Thankfully Adrian also believes in being generous with knowledge and was keen to share the approach beyond Ireland.
Back to our tour of London.
Adrian was keen to meet people who were smart, agile, open to new ideas and able to make decisions quickly. So with that brief Rally set Adrian up with a load of meetings with the right people at the right organisations. And we accompanied Adrian to make the introductions and show these clients, who didn’t know Adrian, that we really believed in him and his model.
In those two days we generated a lot of inspiration, some excitement and a lot of enthusiasm to try new things. We had 8 meetings in three days. Adrian got back on the plane to Ireland with connections that turned into 6 charities testing his approaches. Over the next few weeks and months, as the pandemic hit, we set up Zoom sessions that turned into another 5 relationships.
And the point of this story?
Well it’s the impact our collaboration has had - especially at a time when events fundraising has been severely impacted by the pandemic and many charities have experienced huge challenges in income generation, just when their services are needed more than ever.
We’re delighted to have helped inspire charities with new ideas in the most challenging of fundraising and working environments. And to have enabled them to access expertise to test and roll out a new approach to virtual events.
One year on we are incredibly proud that those introductions have turned into millions of pounds raised for the charities who chose to partner with Adrian. When we checked at the end of January they’d made £4,611,084 from an investment of £550,301. Which blows our mind.
And we know there are already a couple more million (yes, MILLION) pounds to be added to the income total - as some of those organisations have virtual events live right now.
And it’s honestly more than the money. The clients who’ve worked with Adrian have started applying his methods to other elements of their digital programmes and are seeing incredible results. And the eyes of organisations have been opened to the true potential of creating, engaging and empowering digital communities, whose members share values and passions with each other and the charities themselves.
All of this means that in the course of a year - because of COVID which has forced charities to act quickly to innovate and diversify - those meetings back in January have helped change the way digital is done across the whole sector.
Main photo by Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash
When we say a digital mobilisation model, we mean an approach which engages the public at scale by elevating values over transactional ‘products’. And then using those values to attract people who share them and to inspire them to take actions to make change happen - all in a digital space.
"We loved working with Rally on this project. Their skill, expertise and collaborative way of working helped us at every stage of the process – from designing the approach and engaging our trustees to connecting us to the very best delivery partner in Forward Action and supporting us throughout the project’s execution to ensure we delivered against our strategic goals. Jasvir Kaur, Director of Fundraising & Communications at Brooke
Last week we released the names of the first UK charities to sign up to take part in the UK Digital Benchmarks Study we are launching in collaboration with our friends at US digital agency M+R Strategies.
We are absolutely delighted with this first wave of charities that have confirmed their participation! And we’re receiving really positive signals from many more UK charities. So we expect to be adding to this list very soon.
The study has been run in the US for over 14 years and in 2020 reviewed over 100 digital data points from over 200 US charities. So you can imagine how excited we are to partner with M+R to bring this incredible resource to the UK. You can read all about the study in this post.
And a huge thanks to UK Fundraising for helping us spread the word and for being so supportive of the project. You can see their article here.
Main photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
It was our second birthday recently.
To mark the passing of time we decided to send some post to all the people who inspire, support and work with us. And then this happened!
Which made us feel warm inside and very proud to be part of the community we are in.
We’ve got some stickers left if you want some.
If lockdown has taught us anything it’s that perspective is important - taking time out to pause, reflect and refocus. So at Rally, we’ve done just that with our first ever client, Peace Direct.
A partnership to build a new approach
When we set up Rally, we wanted to create a new way of working: one that is focused on collaboration and partnership, so clients are empowered to transform how they mobilise the public at scale. A movement, not a moment. Lasting change, not a one hit wonder.
We share these values with Peace Direct. Their approach to peacebuilding in the field is unique amongst INGOs and they wanted to carry on this non traditional approach to radically change how they engage the public at scale. All of this with a view to ultimately making their income - and with that their work - sustainable.
So we were both really excited to be able to form a partnership back in November 2018 to work together to create a Digital Engagement Strategy. A strategy to build an engaged community of digital supporters, joined by a desire to build long term peace - and so lay the foundation to create sustainability and lasting, impactful change.
As Gemma Britton, Head of Fundraising and Communications at Peace Direct said, ‘Our work together has felt very much like a partnership because Rally’s values and approach are so well aligned with our own work with peacebuilding partners around the world. Those of collaboration, learning, innovation, being honest about what’s not working, and always holding long-term success and sustainability at the heart of what we do.’
A joined up plan for lasting change
Key to our approach was establishing the levers that would drive us forward to deliver scale, sustainably and for the long term. This meant reviewing Peace Direct’s whole digital ecosystem - from search to social, content to conversion - so we could understand how everything works together and then identify opportunities to take co-ordinated action to transform performance.
From this we created a plan for radical change: a plan where our actions were always led by data and in service of a clear goal shared across fundraising and communications. Namely to deliver, more reach, more action, more money and more impact.
We made it easier for people to find us, overhauling our use of the Google Grant to transform the number and quality of visitors to our website.
And because there’s no point increasing web traffic if you make it hard for those visitors to take action, we focussed on improving our conversion in our priority areas for engagement - our email sign up and donation pages.
Alongside that, we updated our opt-in wording to help build Peace Direct’s community of digital supporters so we could have ongoing communication with as many supporters as possible.
And to make that communication more effective and responsive, we overhauled our email programme - its frequency, content and call to action - to make it geared towards inspiring ongoing action from the community we’re building.
And we didn’t just build a digital community through email, we radically improved our performance in social too, using a storytelling approach to transform reach and engagement.
Embedding new ways of working
All of this was underpinned by a focus on fundamentally changing how the Peace Direct team works forever. Firstly they busted through the old silos of fundraising and communications and put in place shared goals and plans to deliver them. And we adopted a long term view - that this was a never ending journey, where we would always be testing and learning from the data to refine our approach and keep moving forward and building success.
Most importantly Rally helped equip the Peace Direct team to be self sufficient to carry on this journey themselves by bringing in the right partners to share their expertise - Jon who helped us shape the strategy, Chris who trained us in how to use our Google grant more effectively, Rachel who helped us learn how to make our email programme more responsive and Jean who worked with us to build scale, response and engagement in Facebook.
Gemma says ‘After many years in the non-profit sector, it’s been a refreshing change to work with an agency partner which isn’t closed off to working with other experts and most importantly does not create a cycle of long-term over-reliance on their support. A core facet of our work together is that we identify the gaps in our knowledge and operations so as we deliver improvements, the team is also upskilled to do this work ourselves moving forward. This makes it much better value for Peace Direct, much more fulfilling for the team, and crucially we will be able to continue delivering really impactful digital engagement work in the long term’.
Seeing the cumulative impact
A year and a half down the line, with Rally’s help, Peace Direct have not only created the foundations for long term sustainability, but have already made tangible strides forward in their digital engagement approach.
The email file has grown by over 600% since January 2019 and it continues to grow at an extremely cost effective rate.
We’ve increased reach and engagement in Facebook by over 400% and successfully converted this engagement into action through more effective paid social strategies.
The quality of web traffic has significantly increased as we have focussed on our use of the Google Grant. Traffic from this source has increased by over 150%, with an incredible 1,000%+ increase in the conversion of this traffic to our engagement goals.
We’ve launched Facebook fundraising campaigns that have delivered significant income through the use of virtual events.
A new dynamic for the future
These are the first steps in a long journey to transform how Peace Direct engages the public at scale digitally, but we are all excited by the cumulative impact of our efforts so far. And based on what we’ve learnt to date we’ve set goals for the next 12 months to keep on growing scale and improving engagement.
And this success is sustainable because the Peace Direct team is empowered to keep evolving and refining the approach using the skills, confidence and knowledge they’ve acquired - all with an unrelenting focus on their shared goal and with the tools to measure their progress.
Gemma said, ‘Peace Direct’s work with Rally has been transformational. It’s provided us with knowledge, ambition and a real focus on delivering results which will ultimately allow us to shine more of a spotlight on people building peace around the world and give them the support which works for them. We no longer seek out small wins - in a niche sector which has struggled to cut through with the public, we are now seeing that with the right strategy people do believe in our cause and are willing to support us. Rally has given us the confidence to know we can and should be striving for growth and scale.’
So while Rally is still very much part of the next chapter, thanks to how we’ve worked together our dynamic has changed. The Peace Direct team is firmly in the driving seat. And we couldn’t be happier about that. Because that was the initial plan.
Photographs are supplied by Peace Direct and were taken by Greg Funnell.
