Campaigns Support

You’re passionate about an issue, which is great! But before you create your petition, you need to think strategically about the goal of your petition and the decision maker to target.

What are you hoping to achieve? Your goal should be clear, concrete, and winnable. Instead of campaigning to “Stop climate change”, choose a more specific, solution-oriented goal such as more local investment in renewable energy or stopping the opening of a new coal mine.

Who has the most power to create change on your issue? Your decision maker is the person with the ultimate power to create change on your issue and could be anyone from your local MP through to a company CEO. Be as specific as you can when naming a decision maker. This will help hold the right person to account and make it harder for them to shift responsibility onto others.

Petition title
This is the first thing people will read so make sure it’s clear, short (under 7 words), and sums up your campaign. Great petition titles are solution-focused and start with a verb, e.g. “Ban logging koala habitats in Port Macquarie” or “Don’t shut down Bexley swimming pool”. They also include the place name if relevant.

Whom are you petitioning?
This is where you enter the specific decision maker who you researched and identified in the Think about your decision maker section above. Make sure you include their full title along with their name, e.g. “NSW Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard”.

What do you want them to do?
This is where you explain what you’re calling on the decision maker to do. It’s a clear and snappy explanation of the problem and what you’re calling on the decision maker to do (often this repeats your petition title). Try to keep this short at 1-2 paragraphs.

Why is this important?
In a few paragraphs, make your case for why other people should sign your petition. Describe the problem in more detail, why it matters, and why people signing this petition is important. It’s often really effective to include a personal story too, either about you or someone you know who’s been directly affected by the issue. If relevant, it may also help to include some statistics or choice quotes from research.

Remember: you don’t have to be an expert in order to create a compelling petition. Often what motivates people to join a campaign is empathising with how you’ve described the issue in your own words and why it means something to you.

Add a petition image
Never underestimate the power of a simple image. Adding an image will draw people into your petition and help it get shared on social media. Your petition image should be relevant to your campaign and sum up the issue as well as possible, e.g. if your petition is about banning plastic bags, add an image of a plastic bag! But make sure you have permission to use your image. There are lots of free images on the internet you could download and use too, including stock images on sites like Unsplash or Shutterstock.

Facebook and Twitter are great places to spread the word about your petition and make it really easy for people to share your petition. All you have to do is write a short message about what the petition is calling for, why it matters to you, and include a link to the petition. For every person that shares your petition, around 100 others on average will see it. That’s a lot of people reading your petition!

Email is a good way to reach people who might not use Facebook or Twitter regularly. Don’t be afraid to make your email personal and show how much you care about the campaign – people are more likely to take a look at your petition if they know it means a lot to you.

Can you think of any groups or organisations who also care about this issue? Reach out to them via email, social media, or phone and ask them to share your petition with their networks. As long as your petition is well-written and values-aligned, a lot of groups will be happy to give your petition a plug — they may even be interested in partnering with you!

Did you know you can collect signatures on paper in-person and then enter them into your Campaigns by Me petition? This is useful for petitions with a local issue focus — you could collect signatures by hosting a stall at a market or a busy pedestrian location.

To do this, just go to your petition, click Collect signatures on paper, and either print a blank form or enter your petition signatures once collected.

Once a decent number of people have signed your petition, it's a good idea to email your supporters and ask them to share your petition with their networks. You can do this by going to your petition, then clicking Email Supporters. Here you’ll also find a great template email you can use for this very purpose.

As your petition gains support, it’s a good idea to email your supporters a few times asking them to re-share your petition. Significant milestones and events in your campaign are a great opportunity to re-energise your supporters to share your petition again — whether that’s because you’re 100 signatures away from reaching 5,000, the campaign has been featured in the media, or you’ve booked a meeting with the decision maker.

Rallies, protests, and stunts are useful for drawing attention to your campaign and putting pressure on the decision maker to respond. All you have to do is create an event via your Campaigns by Me petition and invite your supporters to join you.

The kind of rally, protest, or stunt you organise depends on the issue you’re fighting for. If you’re campaigning for more mental health funding, then you might organise an evening candlelit vigil outside the relevant minister’s office. If you’re calling on a corporation to remove a dangerous ingredient from their product, you might opt for a noisy protest outside their main headquarters with megaphones, props, and handmade signs.

Events don’t have to take up a lot of time. Often 30 minutes is all you need to organise the participants who’ve turned up, make a small speech, take whatever action is relevant to the event, and capture some photos. You also don’t need a lot of people: in many cases 10-20 people is enough to make an impact.

Colourful events like this are a magnet for the media! They provide great photo opportunities, people on hand to interview, and a new angle for reporting on the issue. (You can find a media release template under Alert the media.)

💡Tips for organising an event:

• On Campaigns by Me, create an event linked to your petition to make it easy to manage and communicate with your attendees.
• Lock in as many basic event details as possible before inviting your supporters (e.g. time, date, place, what kind of action or event it is). This way people know what they are signing up to.
• Invite your supporters to attend the event 1-2 weeks in advance.
• If your event is well-communicated and organised, you should expect about 30% of the people who RSVP to turn up on the day.
• Share your event invite wider using social media and email and invite your attendees to do the same.

Many government bodies and NGOs seek community input when making decisions and preparing reports on important issues. Is there an opportunity to input on a decision or report that impacts the issue you’re campaigning on? Get your supporters involved by sending them an email with: an explanation of what you’re asking them to do, some tips on what to write, and a link to the submission form.

Does a group or organisation your campaign is trying to influence hold meetings that are open to constituents or the public? Local councils, for example, are one kind of institution that does. If this applies to your campaign, you could invite supporters to attend, ask questions, or even vote on decisions. Just make sure any responses are carefully recorded, as you never know what might be said!

This is especially useful for petitions with a local issue focus. A stall at a market or busy pedestrian location gives you the opportunity to talk to people about the issue and collect more signatures on paper. Just go to your petition, click Collect signatures on paper, and either print a blank form or enter your petition signatures once collected. Don’t forget to get your supporters involved! Invite them to volunteer with you at the stall, come down for a chat, or simply update them on how your stall went.

Organising to meet with a relevant elected representative is a useful pathway to having your issue raised at a local council meeting or in Parliament. The aim is for this elected representative to become a champion for your issue, and to use their profile to bring attention to it in the media. It’s important to do some research on which elected representative is most relevant to your issue, and to make sure they would be receptive to and likely supportive of your campaign.

*Note: This advice only applies if the elected representative is not your decision maker. If they are, find tips for holding this meeting in the section Deliver your petition to your decision maker.

💡 Tips for booking a meeting with an MP or Senator:

• Email their office requesting a 30 minute meeting.
• Make sure to state you’re a constituent.
• Include the reason you’d like a meeting, a summary of your campaign, and the community support behind it.
• Follow up their office with an email, and then a phone call if a few days have passed without hearing from them. Then follow up, follow up, follow up.
• Expect to be given a meeting date about 4-6 weeks away from the date you reached out.
• Request to take a photo of yourself with your MP or Senator at the end of the meeting.
• Email your supporters to update them about how it went, including the photo (which you can also share with the media).

Letters to the Editor are very short letters submitted by members of the public about an issue and published in the newspaper. Nearly all newspapers include this section, and most invite submissions on a weekly basis. Asking your supporters to submit Letters to the Editor can be a great way to get a message across to the relevant decision maker. Politicians are notorious for poring over this newspaper section because it provides a quick snapshot of community sentiment and a temperature check on topical issues.

💡 Tips for Letters to the Editor:

• Pick the newspaper or publication that is most relevant and strategic for your issue. If your issue is a local one, target your local paper. With the state and national newspapers, it’s much harder to get published — so make sure your issue is topical at the time and relevant to that readership. For a lot of issues, targeting a smaller newspaper with a more targeted readership may be more strategic.
• Check out their Letters to the Editor page for specific requirements, like word limit.
• Email your supporters and ask everyone to submit their own Letter to the Editor (quantity matters!).
• In your email, include a link to the page where supporters can submit their letters, the word limit, and tips for what to include, e.g.
  “Supporters, please include:
• Your name and suburb.
• The main message of the campaign, e.g. [Decision maker] must allocate more funding for Croydon Women’s Shelter.
• Why this issue is important to you.”