By Peter Gilheany, director at Forster Communications.
It feels like the global order, consensus and approach to what you might group together as progressive issues is going through a shock and reset akin to what happened to the global financial system in 2008. Accepted norms, a shared commitment to making progress against agreed frameworks like the SDGs, even a shared understanding of what making progress actually entails – all feel like they have been scattered to the winds.
The reality isn’t quite that stark, but it really feels that serious. We are roughly a week on from the German election where a far-right party got the second highest share of the vote and only just over a month into a Trump administration hellbent on destroying anything that might broadly be deemed a progressive issue. As a result, we have an emboldened right wing and populist media, influencers and politicians with their sights firmly set on organisations they deem guilty of that most modern of vices – being woke. In the UK, it is depressing but not surprising that it’s often charities and foundations they’re fulminating about.
It’s enough to send those committed to campaigning for progressive change scampering for the nearest duvet to hide under. But that’s not an option for UK charity leaders so from a communications perspective how can organisations navigate this much more combative and hostile environment?
Prioritise those who matter most
If you’re a UK charity leader and the current situation has knocked you off kilter, imagine how your staff, supporters, volunteers or beneficiaries are feeling. Morale is low and its your job to raise it by engaging with the audiences who are closest to you, letting them know you are there for them and continue to be committed to making progress on the causes they care about.
It’s the right thing to do but it is also the smart thing to do as people and organisations are the engines for driving any progress you are seeking to make. These ‘friends and family’ audiences will also include peers and competitors and in challenging circumstances, it’s important to explore greater collaboration on campaigning and influencing, to really increase reach and impact on the issues.
Be prepared
The speed of change over the last month has caught most of us off-guard. We knew a second Trump presidency might accelerate the increased prominence of populism and the far right in the UK and elsewhere but not to the degree that it is, seemingly reshaping the global order and leaving liberal democracies like ours struggling to respond.
What’s happening on a macro level is also happening at an organisational one. Many charities are in holding pattern, waiting for clearer skies before committing to campaigns, but what if this general turbulence is now the norm? The reputational risks for charities and their leaders are heightened. Now more than ever, you need to prepare for attacks and criticism, whether justified and not, get on the front foot, neutralise the impact, reduce the risk of being distracted and keep going. Wait and see is not a sustainable strategy. That means dusting off and updating the reputational risk register so you can campaign and communicate with your eyes open to and prepared for the potential risks.
Reframe and choose your battles
The battle on progressive language has been comprehensively lost. The narrative has been hijacked and weaponised by populist and far right voices, used as a stick to beat the organisations and movements that originally created it. Unpalatable as it might feel, it’s time to change approach.
Take a step back and develop different and new ways to frame issues for the audiences that matter to you, prioritising people and their experiences over concepts and labels. It’s messier and less succinct but also more likely to create real engagement and much harder to be twisted out of context by those acting in bad faith.
And those bad faith merchants have proliferated and grown in confidence and influence. You can’t win an argument with an entity acting in bad faith, so don’t try. In an attention economy like ours, doing so simply makes them stronger and being right on an issue is of absolutely no consequence. So, double down on creating spaces and channels where you can engage directly with your friends and family audiences and those are adjacent to them because they are reachable and persuadable.
Invest in spaces where people and organisations are acting in good faith, where there is an overlap in basic values even if their world view or approach to making progress is very different from yours. You are less and less likely to find those spaces in the media or on social media, but they are accessible through partnerships and collaborations, through face to face and remote events and discussions, through direct engagement on email and messaging platforms.
As we watch a populist US government re-write the global order in real time and with seemingly little push-back, UK charity leaders need to help their organisations re-write the rules that underpin their communications and campaigning or risk getting swept away in the chaos and noise.
