Let’s bring it to life by mapping out exactly some of the ways in which OPEN’s work leads to change in the real world. For even more detail, you can read specific case studies here.

Boosting mobilisation capacity to influence political decision makers

OPEN helps our members in 17 countries to improve their platforms and strategies to better mobilise their membership on local and national levels around election time.

When members choose to focus on an issue like climate change using the high pressure moment of an election campaign, then we will see a growth in political will, building the groundwork to shift climate change policies.

Examples:

  • Leadnow in Canada supported a series of participatory Town Halls across the nation to discuss what Green New Deal could look like. Then they ran a climate-focussed election campaign to support candidates who championed climate action.

  • GetUp! in Australia have developed innovative tools to scale volunteer engagement in elections, putting the climate crisis and racial justice at the heart of deep organising campaigns and vote-shifting efforts.

Sharing smart strategies that are adopted in multiple countries with winning effect.

OPEN spotted a broader trend in the effectiveness of highly targeted local, citywide and regional campaigns. When we amplify these stories across the network and provide strategic support and training, then OPEN members launch winning campaigns deploying local strategies that impact significant numbers of people and build the foundation for wider scale change.

Example:

  • In the Netherlands our Dutch member organisation DeGeodeZaak has been changing culture and policy council-by-council in their effort to end the Dutch practice of blackface during Sinterklaas celebrations.

Transnational collaboration to multiple progressive wins

When OPEN supports our members to spot opportunities for transnational collaboration and we ensure they are trained in effective strategies then our member organisations will be able to successfully mobilise huge numbers of people to win campaigns.

Examples:

  • In Australia GetUp’s long-standing fight to save the Great Barrier Reef and stop the Adani coalmine development was super-charged by international collaboration with Campact in Germany and 38 Degrees in the United Kingdom. Australians united with Germans and Brits to fund advertisements and actions in Germany and London targeting Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank. As a result, both banks revoked their funding of the Adani coalmine project.

  • GetUp, ActionStation, Leadnow and MoveOn teamed up to fire up the grassroots around secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement trade deal, collectively funding an ad in a Hawaiian newspaper during the negotiations in Hawaii. Similar cross-border collaborations developed around TTIP, CETA and TISA, the result of OPEN acting as a global laboratory building the best tools to take bad traded deals down.

  • #aufstehn in Austria teamed up with Skiftet (Sweden), Declic (Romania) and Uplift (Ireland) to pressure the EU Commission to define ambitious goals for reducing the consumption and production of plastic. The petitions collected over 786,175 signatures from across Europe.

Bringing new activists into the climate movement

When OPEN supports our member organisations to incorporate climate change into their multi-issue campaigns packages then non-traditional activists join the climate movement, building political will across the overall population.

Example:

  • GetUp’s #LetThemStay campaign against the deportation of refugees in Australia created the first major shift -- 15 points -- in attitudes to refugees in the previous decade, by bringing supporters of environment, economic justice and other campaigns on a journey into the movement.

Cutting real world costs and accelerating innovation

When OPEN helps its members share technology, resources, lessons, and strategic innovations then their existing work is enriched, new work is accelerated, costs are cut and impact is multiplied.

Examples:

  • An anti-hate speech campaign by ActionStation in New Zealand in 2019 and introduced to the Network through our resource-sharing Library and Summit events has inspired a wave of energy across the Network as other organisations look into training volunteers to do everything from neutralise Islamophobia in France to countering the far-right in Australia and defending diversity in the United States.

  • OPEN’s investment in digital distortion work in 2019 through in-person meetings, external expertise and direct strategy support has rapidly skilled up the entire Network in analysis and campaigns strategies around fake news, far right online actors, and policy solutions at corporate and government levels. As a result, we have seen a growing number of aligned campaigns launched across the Network and a significant increase in in-country issue saliency.