One of the most common questions for any organisation wanting to influence the policy agenda is how on earth do you make a start?
For smaller organisations in particular, it can be quite daunting. Resources are often tight, and there may not be specialist staff capacity to dedicate to the emergent influencing work.
This post is primarily directed at those organisations wanting to do more to influence the policy agenda, but not knowing quite where to start.
Influencing policy, and more importantly knowing the tactics that will be successful, rather than just visible (a topic for a future post), is a highly skilled function in any organisation. Afterall, commercial organisations pay many hundreds of thousands of pounds to ‘expert advisors’ to guide them.
But not every organisation needs to be spending huge sums of money recruiting policy influencing specialists – far from it. Your organisation may not be at the size or scale to realistically expect to need an in-house resource. But that doesn’t mean that your organisation, however small or local, doesn’t have a great deal to offer in the policy development process.
Here are my top tips for organisations keen to enter the policy influencing space, but not quite knowing where to start.
Tip 1: Set realistic ambitions
It’s so important to set realistic ambitions, and to walk before you run. If you’re starting from scratch, you’re unlikely to be out there shaping legislation, publishing policy research, or working with parliamentarians if the only capacity you have is 10% of somebody’s time on top of their (probably very busy) day job. Which leads me on to tip two.
Tip 2: Start small
There are lots of things that you can start to do that will be manageable and achievable, and that will help to build your confidence and experience in influencing policy. Writing letters to ministers and officials on topical issues that are important to your organisation, for example, can be a surprisingly effective way to start in the policy influencing space without huge investment of time or capacity.
Tip 3: Work with others
In a previous post, I talked about how important it is to work with others to influence the policy agenda. This holds true for all organisations seeking to shape the policy agenda, but perhaps even more so for those organisations who are just starting out on their influencing journey. You will know the other organisations who operate in a similar space to you, and probably already have good relationships with them. It’s a great idea to work with them to explore some opportunities for joint influencing work. You might, for example, work together to produce a joint briefing or report, or to host a briefing event for MPs. Working together can help share the workload and help you achieve much more than you could on your own.
Tip 4: You don’t necessarily need to recruit an in-house specialist
There can sometimes be a sense that the first thing that an organisation needs to do to move into the policy influencing space is to recruit an in-house specialist, such as a policy or public affairs officer. If you have the capacity and resources to do so, that is obviously a great thing to be able to do, although the point above still applies that you need to be clear about what your ambitions are. (In a future post, I’ll be taking a look at the skills and competencies that you should be looking out for when recruiting a policy specialist).
But there are lots of different ways that you can build and grow your capacity in policy influencing that don’t start with recruiting to a brand new role. For example, if your ambition is to do more parliamentary work, then a conversation with one of the many public affairs agencies could be a good option – whether you’re looking for one-off support for a specific piece of work (such as an engagement event with parliamentarians), or something a little longer term (such as helping to support an All-Party Parliamentary Group), they will have a range of options available to organisations of different shapes and sizes (and budgets).
Alternatively, you could look to partner with other organisations who are active in your space to pool some resources. That might allow you to do some specific activities or work, or even allow you to have a shared policy influencing role (this works particularly well at a local or regional level).
Tip 5: Aim for some early wins
When your organisation is starting out on its policy influencing journey, it’s going to be important to be able to demonstrate some early wins. This will not only boost your confidence but will also make it easier to make a future business case for investment to be able to go even further. This is where starting small, and having some clear objectives, is vital.
If your organisation is looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some pro bono advice, I’d be happy to have a chat. Get in touch via the comments box below.
thepolicycoach.co.uk 