5. Evaluating your campaign

When your campaign is drawing to a close, it’s important to reflect on what went well, and consider what didn’t go quite to plan.

When evaluating your campaign, ask yourself and your team:

• Which tactic(s) in the campaign was/were the most successful and why?
• Which tactic(s) was/were less effective and why?
• Which part of campaigning was most fun or fulfilling?
• Which part of campaigning was least fun or fulfilling?
• When did you feel the campaign really started to gain momentum?
• What was the biggest win for you?
• Did we get the timing right on some of our key tactics? How can we learn from that going forward? 
• Did we get enough support from the right groups (i.e. specific student groups, students in general, staff?)
• Who were our biggest supporters?
• Where did we face the most opposition?
• What did we need to do more of? (Such as more research, more time engaging students in the campaign, more time lobbying officials, better preparation for protests/events.)
• What did we need to do less of?
• How effective were our communications and messaging?

Celebrate your wins with your team, and make sure to share successes on your campaign socials too so your followers are kept up to date and can share in them. For the things that went less well, what can you change or implement in future campaigns to minimise the same thing happening again?

Succession planning

If you’re leaving your role in a campaign team (especially if you’re graduating), and you want the campaign to continue after you leave, it’s important to ensure that the students who take over after you have the knowledge they need to be able to carry it on.

One way to do this is to build the skills of people in your team who are going to be sticking around after you leave. For example, if protesting is a big part of your campaign, you should make sure that people in the team are up to date on protest rights and safety, and that they know who to go to in the University, Students’ Association, and Fife Council when organising a protest. This ensures that knowledge isn’t completely lost when you leave. You can also see who would be a good fit to take over as a campaign lead from your existing team, and support them and build their confidence before you leave your role.

Another way to support this is by ensuring that you keep a good record of things like meeting minutes and actions, passwords for social media accounts, campaign materials, and notes of any reflections and evaluation. Information like this ensures that future campaign leaders and teams have a decent handover, with all the context they’d need so they’re not starting from scratch.

Finally, spend a significant amount of time when you campaign encouraging students to get involved in the campaign, even if it’s as simple as signing petitions and turning up to events. If you create a welcoming environment for these ‘smaller’ things, you will likely encourage people to get more involved in the campaign behind the scenes. Who knows, someone who came to one event might become highly invested, and next year they could be planning a protest for your campaign after you leave.