So you have prepared and launched your grassroots campaign—now what? Previously we have covered how to develop a successful campaign strategy and how to set up an effective campaign communication. However, focusing on those two steps is not enough to ensure organizational success with your campaign. It’s equally important to invest in monitoring and evaluating the performance of your campaign. This way you can deepen their impact and ensure that you learn from mistakes and implement changes in your next campaigns.
Qela’s unique campaign-oriented methodology allows campaign managers to easily plan, create, and evaluate their campaigns. Whether you’ve been working as an organization manager for years or are just starting, these tips will help you improve your monitoring and evaluation efforts and make sure your campaigns get more and more effective with each iteration!
Evaluating the Success of Your Campaign Strategy
Step 1: Monitor & Evaluate
Set Up Milestones for Data Collection
When planning your campaign, make sure to set it up in steps or milestones. Each of them needs to have its own objectives and goals. This way it will be easier for you to track the success of your program.
Additionally, set up regular interim reviews (preferably weekly or bi-weekly) with your team to analyze the data. Together look for trends and patterns and figure out if there are areas that aren’t performing as well as you hoped.
Collect Both Data & Feedback
It’s essential to analyze data about the success of your campaign — i.e digital KPIs, a number of signatures collected, the amount of money fundraised, etc. But it’s equally important to regularly collect feedback from your supporters on your campaign events and other efforts.
In Qela, we offer a simple feedback-collecting solution that allows your volunteers to easily send you feedback about any activities you organize for them. Look into our product: https://www.qela.app/
Step 2: Adapt And Optimize
Be Flexible
Sometimes campaigns don’t work as planned — and that is absolutely part of the norm. Don’t wait until the end of your campaign to figure out why some objectives were not reached. If there is a negative trend, try to analyze the reason behind it and find a solution to fix it. Maybe the status quo has changed and this goal is not relevant anymore. Or maybe there’s a need to change some of your approaches?
For example, if you see that your campaign events don’t attract as many attendees as you wished for, consider changing your communication channels.
Are you reaching out to the right audience? You may need to change keynote speakers or the location of events to make them more attractive to your key demographic. Or you bet on the wrong horse and your campaign should focus on a different social group. Stay flexible and be open to change.
Experiment
Don’t be scared to try new unconventional approaches. A/B testing is a great tool to find the best way to achieve your campaign’s goals. Playing around with different communication channels, techniques, and even messaging can help you find out what makes your community click.
Step 3: Maintain Volunteer Engagement
Investing in creating prolonged engagement with the audience you’ve gathered during your campaign ensures your volunteer retention levels stay high.
Communicate the Results
Share the results of your campaign with all your stakeholders. Include data on funds raised, people involved, and other objectives you have managed to achieve. Create easy-to-read reports and infographics to share on social media.
It might also be useful to share the results of your campaign with the press in the form of a press release. Share stories of people or communities you were able to help during your campaign, social justice issues you focused on or highlight volunteers’ favorite moments to add a human touch to your results report.
Follow-up with the Volunteers
Send shout-outs or thank-you notes to the stakeholders of your campaign, but especially to the most active volunteers. Share updates on your following campaigns or events with them to ensure that they stay engaged with your organization in the long run.
Qela’s volunteer management software allows you to effortlessly keep your supporters in the loop of what’s happening with your organization and lets them easily get involved with your activities. We are offering free access to our volunteer management tool for organizations that have less than 100 community members. Learn more about it here: https://www.qela.app/
Monitoring and evaluating your campaign's performance is crucial for learning from your experiences and making necessary adjustments for future success. Discover more about how we can support your organization with our volunteer management tools at Qela.