Integrated Outcomes Planning

In the past, Greenpeace Netherlands outcomes were created by the campaigners, and reflected only the primary campaign goals being pursued (i.e. what victory meant for the campaign). However this left out many of the complementary goals and metrics that were important to other departments, including Mobilisation, and to the organization’s long-term goals.

“The thing we [are trying to accomplish] is how do we get campaign planning integrated in a clever way. We have environmental goals, mobilisation goals, action goals, fundraising goals, communications goals. How can we get those into the best possible win-win-win-win strategy?”
– Sylvia Borren, Executive Director

So Greenpeace Netherlands began explicitly including “integrated outcomes” in the planning for each campaign. Those may include:

• How many new subscribers to GreenWire would make this a win for Mobilisation? Or how many offline activities done by how many volunteers would make this a win for Mobilisation?
• How many press hits — in what forms — would mean a win for Communications?
• How many new leads would this campaign generate for Fundraising?

“When we do an action we have this form that the Programmatic Team has to fill out. It asks them to very specificially define when they will consider an action to be a success. Everyone does it for their own work. So a press person says, ‘I will be happy if I make the 8:00 News, this newspaper, and get x hits on the online news sites.’ It makes for integrated outcomes in that we try to design the action to be as effective as possible for both campaigns and for public leverage.”
– Meike Baretta, Director of Actions & Outreach

A specific form is used to facilitate this sort of planning. That form, once completed, spells out the specific campaign goals for each department. It also breaks out when the team expects to see certain results. The Digital team, for instance, might indicate that they expect a given campaign to help them recruit 1,000 new digital activists by the second quarter of the year. This form is required in order to receive SMT approval for the campaign.

This process is still relatively new, and many kinks are still being worked out. However it is clear that this direction is an improvement in the planning process, and that it promotes strong cross-team integration. And since organizations tend to prioritize those functions that they measure, focusing on specific outcomes for Mobilisation and other departments helps emphasize the importance of that work to the organization overall.

“It’s definitely an improvement on last year. I’m not confident we’ve got it right yet. But this year it’s not just campaigners filling in those goals, there are integrated groups filling them in. It’s definitely a step forward. But it’s also very hard work to think up good integrated campaigns.”
– Sylvia Borren, Executive Director

“We still need to get a lot better at it. But yes, it’s definitely a promising direction. Before this it was very ad hoc, and not connected to the long term strategy. So there is a real desire to come together and figure this out, and it’s definitely been an improvement. The challenge is to provide people with the maximum clarity on where to go and the maximum freedom to get there. Easier said than done.”
– Meike Baretta, Director of Actions & Outreach