Tips and tricks for coordination

When organising a joint communication or advocacy campaign, planning and coordination are crucial: in order to amplify the message and reach more people, it is important to have many organisations onboard, sharing content in a consistent way.

Campaigns

To cooperate in an effective manner, good internal communication is the starting point for a successful campaign. Organisations that you want to partner with should ideally be contacted months in advance, with a draft plan proposal or a starting concept and then be involved in the co-creation from the beginning. Having a call for setting the main ideas can also be helpful. Try to understand how much time other organisations can and want to dedicate to the creation, and tailor your work accordingly by asking input and feedback at the appropriate stages of the preparation. Some organisations might be more active, and some only interested in the final product to share, and that’s ok.

Once all the content is ready, prepare a communication kit. The goal of a communication kit is to make it as easy as possible for others to join the campaign. The kit should contain everything necessary to understand the campaign and implement it. For example:

• A description of the main elements of the campaign: goal, message, audience, timing, platforms to use, hashtags to use.
• Texts ready to copy-paste for social media posts, website articles, press releases, …
• Material ready to use: designs/pictures/videos for social media posts, stories, reels; posters, flyers, presentations, …
• Easy to use templates of designs in case organisations need/want to personalise them, and visual identity guidelines if necessary
• Links to refer to
• Tags to use

Make sure you only include necessary information, so the kit is easy to use and not too long or confusing.

Share the kit with all the organisations that want to participate, with enough time in advance so people can schedule the social media content, print material if needed, or translate the content in their own language.

Tips:

• Try and create a kit with padlet, so you can organise all the content in a visual way, divided per days and platforms. Examples: workcamp launch, international day of peace.

• Create designs with Canva for NGO and share them as a template for personalisation.

• Send reminders for the campaign, e.g. one week before and one day before the launch date, and throughout, if the campaign lasts for long.