We’re powerful together
The divestment campaign is truly incredible. It’s just five years old, and already there are thousands of campaigns all over the world – making this the fastest growing divestment campaign ever. Over 700 institutions have agreed to divest from fossil fuels, from huge faith organisations to local authorities, universities and many more besides.
The fossil fuel industry is feeling the pressure
The numbers are impressive, as we estimate that trillions of dollars have been divested. But the real point is not the money, it’s the impact that this has on the moral standing of the fossil fuel industry. We’re eroding public support bit by bit as more institutions publicly cut their ties, and building the strong people powered movement we need to tackle climate change.
We need to build people power to win
If we’re going to succeed in building the movement we need to tackle the climate crisis, we need to build a critical mass of people actively campaigning. Research by Dr Erica Chenoweth has shown that non violent mass public participation in campaigning is the most effective tool to bring about transformational change – for example, in movements which have overthrown dictators, these campaigns have always succeeded when 3.5% of the population are actively engaged in non violent protest.
Using the global divestment mobilisation to grow your group
If you’re one of the groups taking part in the global divestment mobilisation, can you use your action to bring in more people?
Check out our how to grow your campaign guide for step by step ideas for using public campaign events to grow your group – a few of the key points are:
- Think about your campaign in cycles, planning the next event in advance so you can advertise it at the one before.
- Use our petition, event and email tools to gather people’s details, update your campaign supporters, and encourage them to get further involved.
- Bring new members into your group through open meetings to absorb the new energy.
Keep some energy in reserve
It’s easy to put all your energy into organising a big action, and then find that although this has generated a lot of momentum you’ve not saved any energy for following up. This is how many groups burn out, or at least find themselves unable to build momentum and bring in new members from public actions. You can avoid this by planning in advance and making sure not to overstretch when preparing for a big event. Its a good idea to have a couple of people not engaged in event planning if possible, so they’re fresh for follow up.
Events to absorb new energy
By hosting open organising events after big actions, being sure to make these friendly to new members, you can bring lots more people on board and then channel that fresh energy into the next phase of your campaign. We’ve made a template presentation talking through the core building blocks (what we call ‘DNA’) of the Fossil Free campaign – you can add the history of your group to this and present to new members to make sure everyone shares a common understanding of what the campaign is, how it works, and why you’re running it. There are lots of tips in the guide on how to run such events, and links to further resources.