Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

2.
For each risk that is probable and likely to produce medium to strong impact, conduct
contingency planning – i.e. define ways of reducing the likeliness the risk occurs, and
of reducing the likely impact on attaining the campaign goal. That may include
increasing or limiting certain activities – e.g., if donors do not respond to your
institutional fundraising strategy, decide whether to submit funding proposals to other
donors, or to reduce activities to match existing resources.
If risks are identified that are highly likely, extremely grave and unmanageable, consider
adjusting the campaign strategy.
“Prospective hindsight” (Coffmann, 2007:14) is another way of assessing the risks
and obstacles that need to be taken into account when designing a campaign.
Practical instructions for “prospective hindsight”
When you have completed the steps of planning outlined in this section—issue setting,
stakeholder analysis, situation analysis, developing a theory of change—, get together
as a campaign team and with members of the target audience for the following exercise
(adapted from Klugman, B., 2009. Less is More :Thoughts on Evaluating Social Justice
Advocacy).
Assume that the effort has failed. Advocates and any other stakeholders involved in the
effort are asked to identify possible reasons for failure. Do it individually. Each person
then shares one reason from their list until all reasons have been recorded. The result
is a comprehensive list of risks that you should be cognizant of and monitor. This
process uses everybody’s insights and “mitigates the overconfidence” that campaigners
might feel. If it feels overly demoralizing, then the team should carefully explore why.
Note that this is similar to the ‘risks/assumptions’ column of a logical framework. That
column tends to focus on external factors, whereas this exercise can pick up a wide
range of things that could go wrong and should be addressed in advance.
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Campaigns December 2011