Library
Deepen your knowledge about change
SMK Reports
SMK Reports
Forces for good: Vision for a new partnership between charities, government, and businesses
Leading charity CEOs have published a series of essays calling for a fundamental reset in how charities work with government and business to tackle urgent social challenges.Â
Navigating charity campaigning: a brief guide for trustees
Support your charity to campaign with confidence, within the law, and within regulatory requirements. This short guide is built around five key questions to help you do just that.
Defending our Democratic SpaceÂ
This report documents the problem, asks why it is happening, and shares strategies we can use to counter the threats.
Speak up, we need you!
Why are charity CEOs relatively under-represented in the national conversation? This report offers perspectives, raises questions, and offers challenges to charity leaders.
General Election 2024: Charity Campaigning
What can charities say or do in the run-up to the election? Does the so-called ‘Lobbying Act’ apply to you? How involved does your board need to be? Bates Wells and SMK help guide you through it all.
The Social Power ReportÂ
How civil society can unleash ‘Social Power’ by being bolder and braver, and new tools to help you think differently.
The Chilling Reality Report
Is the Lobbying Act affecting civil society’s ability to campaign? The evidence says ‘yes’.
It’s all about power
The Power Project calls for a new way of thinking about power, and action to build solidarity in social change. This is a guide to thinking differently about power for solidarity in social change.
We don’t do politics, we give people a voice
Research by NFP Research (foreword by SMK) demonstrates how people are clearly willing to support charities campaigning if they get the right information in the right way.
Books
Duncan Green. How Change Happens helps us to understand the events, individuals & systems that have changed the world.
Rules for Revolutionaries
Bond and Exley. Lessons from the groundbreaking grassroots campaign that helped launch a new political revolution.
How Organisations Develop Activists
Hanrie Han. An in-depth look at the models and strategies civic associations use for engaging activists in the Internet Age.
Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinsky. The bible for change-makers. Written in the 1970’s as an organiser’s manual. Still a great read today.
How to Win Campaigns
Chris Rose. A practical guide for creating and running successful campaigns
Lobbying for Change
Alberto Alemanno. By using our skills and talents and mobilizing others, we can bring about social and political change.
How To Resist
Matthew Bolton. This book offers encouragement to would-be activists everywhere to get involved and offers seven practical principles that can help people effect change.
How To Be A Craftivist
Sarah Corbett. How to tackle issues not with shouting and aggression but with gentle protest.
Engagement Organizing
Matt Price. This book is written for grassroots organizers, NGOs, civil society organizations, unions, political parties, and anyone seeking to mobilize people politically.
Now We Have Your Attention
Seven stories of seven communities and the campaigns and political upheavals they were grappling with before the pandemic.
No Shortcuts
Jane F. McAlevey. Organising for power in the new gilded age.
Parkland
Dave Cullen (the story of #MarchforOurLives)
Me and White Supremacy
Layla F Saad. How to recognise your privilege, combat racism and change the world.
New Power
Henry Timms & Jeremy Heimans
Be the Change
Gina Martin;Â
Be More Pirate
Sam Conniff Allende.
The UK Race Class Narrative Report
Building solidarity across race and class to win progressive change and inolculate against the powerful few that seek to divide us.
Why Civil Resistance Works
Successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war
Civil Resistance
Explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance.
The Purpose of Power
An essential guide to building transformative movements to address the challenges of our time.
Dream
‘Dream’ makes the case for a progressive political strategy that embraces a new set of tools.Â
A Gift of Love
A Gift of Love illustrates King’s vision of love and peaceful action as social and political forces for change.
The Future We Choose
A passionate call to arms from former UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and Tom Rivett-Carnac, senior political strategist for the Paris Agreement.
Protest Public Relations
Using a range of examples, this book explores the changing nature of protest and its relationship with PR and provides an analysis of the communication strategies and tactics of social movements and activist groups and their campaigns.Â
In Defense of Troublemakers
An eminent psychologist explains why dissent should be cherished, not feared. Psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong.
The Gift of Anger
Discover ten vital and extraordinary life lessons from one of the most important and influential philosophers and peace activists of the twentieth century—Mahatma Gandhi.
Public Relations, Activism, and Social Change
This book draws significant new meaning to the inter-relationships of public relations and social change through a number of activist case studies
Hope In The Dark
Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.
How To Win Campaigns
How to Win Campaigns is a practical guide for creating and running successful campaigns.
The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism
Offers a reliable and informed guide to understanding how media and activism influence one another.
Beautiful Trouble
Brings together ten grassroots groups and dozens of seasoned artists and activists from around the world to distill their best practices into a toolbox for creative action.Â
Beautiful Rising
Showcases some of the most innovative tactics used in struggles against autocracy and austerity across the Global South.Â
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse.
Do Good, Get Paid
Natalie Fée shares experience of setting up and running City to Sea. And provides practical, easy-to-follow advice you need to develop and fund an impactful campaign or fulfilling career
Other reports
The Law Family Commission on Civil Society looks into how we can unleash the potential of civil society, to harness and enhance the powerful community bonds that exist in our nation.
Counter Culture
Our political and media debate is increasingly dominated by talk of culture wars. How should progressives navigate their way through these wars?
Small charities and social change
Explore the role and contribution of small charities in more depth.
A guide to campaign planning
To ensure that all government communications are effective, efficient and evaluated.
Charity campaigning: where next?
Shares lesson learnt from campaigners and social media experts about finding the right message, campaigning on social media, utilising the media and campaigning collaboratively.
Civil Action
The Commission’s aim is to achieve both concrete change and a broader shift in attitudes about civil society – all with a view to removing the constraints that hold the sector back and promoting the approaches that help to push it forward.
MAKING CHANGE: WHAT WORKS?
IPPR and the Runnymede Trust have sought to understand what we can learn from movements that have made change – as well as those who have fallen short – for our efforts to create change today.
The Value of People Power
This report includes an economic analysis of the value of people power and explores how public services can better value the contribution of citizens.
STATE OF CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT
This report draws on the voices of civil society around the world.
Building a Bigger We
Sets out the change a Better Way wants to see and includes 36 remarkable essays written by network members.
A great resource for anyone struggling to communicate accurately, but persuasively, about climate change. There are some great lessons that can be applied to any issue.
Navigating Uncertainty in an Exhausted Europe
A 6-country comparative study on the impacts of COVID on trust, climate action, social cohesion, and our uncertain future.
CREATIVE COALITIONS: A HANDBOOK FOR CHANGE
A handbook to help unlock effective collective action and secure the systems change that’s needed.
Podcasts
Podcasts
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Examining social and political campaigns that have made an impact.
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Podcast about campaigning and advocacy – going under the surface to explore how social and political change happens and the ways advocacy can contribute to it. Interview based, with a different theme each podcast. Hosted by Jim Coe.
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Words To Win By* takes listeners on a journey around the globe with renowned communications researcher and campaign advisor Anat Shenker-Osorio as she unpacks real-world narrative shifts that led to real-world victories.
*Formerly called Brave New Words
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There are 140 million people engaged in social change work across the globe. The ChangeMakers podcast is short series podcast that tells stories about people who are striving for social change across the world.
To create each story, we travel across the globe to meet with people who have been making change. Story by story, lessons about what works and what doesn’t work in the world of social change are teased out.
The show is intended to inspire. In a world where it feels like it’s hard to make a difference, this podcast demonstrates just how change is possible.
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The show that’s about how we can become a larger us rather than a them-and-us, by working at the places where our states of mind and the state of the world meet.
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Scientists are activists too, and we can all learn from them. Here scientists talk about how science is done (and not done well) and how it connects with, impacts and shapes global society.
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What are the real stories behind the most misunderstood and abused ideas in politics? From Conspiracy Theory to Woke to Centrism and beyond, dig into the astonishing secret histories of concepts you thought you knew.
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Websites
WebsitesGood practice
Campaigning Strategy website: Information to help you think strategically about your campaign.Â
ActBuildChange – full of books that might change lives reading lists especially ’10 books every community organiser needs in their toolkit’Â
Commons Social Change Library: includes 1000+Â resources. Topics include campaign strategy, community organising, working effectively in groups, and much more.
Blue prints for change: network of anti-oppressive organizers from around the world, that share their skills and knowledge to support the work of fellow activists. See their guides here.
The Rules have developed a method and toolkit to help social movements bring about narrative and structural change. They call it Culture Hacking Toolkit.
Bond’s Theory of change for advocacy and campaigns. Jenny Ross introduces the four simple questions that could transform your advocacy strategy and increase your impact.
Reports and papers
Good Guide to Campaigning and Influencing: The Good Guide to Campaigning and Influencing is a guide to effective campaigning, NCVOÂ
Stop Raising Awareness Already – Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). Too many organizations concentrate on raising awareness about anissuewithoutknowing how to translate that awareness into action, by getting people to change their behavior or act on their beliefs.Â
New Philanthropy Capital: Theory of Change: A theory of change is a tool that sets out a clear path from your day-to-day activities to the outcomes you achieve to the change you want to create.Â
New Philanthropy Capital: Measuring the effectiveness of your campaign: A short guide highlighting a number of evaluation resources and techniques to help you evaluate your campaign through a series of simple steps.Â
Government guidance
Charity Commission – Speaking Out – Guidance on Campaigning and Political Activity by Charities: Charity Commission’s guidance on rights and restrictions of charities to undertake campaigning.Â
Electoral Commission: Guidance for campaigners: Detailed guidance from the Electoral Commission on campaigning in the run up to elections and referendumsÂ
Funding sources
Grant finder: Details of more than 8,000 funding opportunities, including grants, loans and awards from local, regional and national UK government, European funding, charitable trusts and corporate sponsors.Â
Funding Central: Government funded website with information on grants from the European Union, UK Government, the Lottery and Grant Making Trusts.Â
Comment and analysis
Seven things we’ve learnt about social change in 2021 (and what it means for 2022) by Kirsty McNeill, Dec, 2021
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