How does it work?

“We’ve grown accustomed to setting targets in campaign planning without looking at constituencies – the targets’ and ours. It has to be a two-step process – we are now learning together how to make power maps and constituency maps. We need to look at whether we have a constituency that can influence our targets, and we need to decide if we want to mobilize them and whether they will really influence the targets. It’s thinking of our campaign strategies as something that we share with our supporters.”
– Francis de la Cruz, Philippines Mass Mobilization Manager

During the campaign planning process, the interdepartmental team dives into research to create a constituency map together. They answer a series of questions:

  1. Target: who are the decision makers and key influencers? How will we move them to make the right decision?
  2. Constituency: which audiences will influence the decision makers?
  3. Influencing Line: which constituency shifts which target?
  4. Shifting Line: where does the audience and target need to move to during the course of the project?

For each identified key audience, they then dive more deeply:

KEY AUDIENCE

Who are the groups of people within the general public do we need to shift to achieve our objectives?

PROFILE

What are the features of this group? E.g. Age; Religion; Employment Status; Position on political spectrum; Key values

MESSAGE

What do we want them to know? What is the compelling hook in the issue? What is the enabling hope that we as Greenpeace offer?

THE ASK

What are we asking them to do? How will their action help the win?

CHANNEL

What method will we use? E.g. Action Card, Social Media, DDC, Newspaper Articles

VOLUME

What is the general number of people in this group?

What is the impact?

Campaign teams are creating mobilization and communication strategies that are more focused on the key audiences needed to move the target. In phase 2 of the polar project, for example, GPSEA is focusing on talking about direct climate impacts like extreme weather in the region. Mobilization is planned to target specific voting blocks who are key constituents of institutions with UN influence.

“Change takes time because about it’s reorienting the way people think. Constituency mapping gives us a measuring stick on whether we are moving the strategically important audience… otherwise there is an assumption that we’re mobilizing the general public. We ask ourselves: who is the audience to reach the particular target? What media do they read? How active are they on which digital channels? What kind of organizing do we do to reach them or what institutions do we organize to reach them? This refined our approach.
– Rathana Chea, Mobilisation Director

“Critical pathways and powermaps in the past had lacked the specificity that we needed to identify WHO are the communities of influence and constituencies. This process made our powermaps stronger. If you haven’t done the work of constituency mapping, then how do you know who you want to mobilize? It’s one piece of how we get to a plan that makes sense.”
– Amanda Graupner, Senior Grassroots Specialist