Resource Library

You’ve likely heard all the hubbub recently, from a Dutch court holding Shell liable for climate change, to an activist investor group securing 3 seats on the board of Exxon, Chevron shareholders voting in favor of emission cuts, and BlackRock backing a BP climate resolution. While there’s plenty of discussion around how the moves could have gone further beyond “net zero“, it’s still energizing to see these powerful corporations are not immune to push back.
So it’s a great moment to dive into what we know about best practices around corporate advocacy and shareholder campaigns, so we can continue to put the pressure on! This is a topic personally close to me as I cut my teeth as an activist fighting Citibank and the Weyerhaeuser logging corporation.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including polling on infrastructure policy, conservative clean energy beliefs, and conservation as a bipartisan priority.

Every year M+R Strategies, a digital services firm for progressive non-profits, releases its Benchmarks Study. The 2021 version analyzes the nonprofit digital advocacy and fundraising field using data from over 220 participating organizations. The Study covers these areas:

Digital advertising
Email messaging
Mobile/SMS messaging
Social media
Fundraising
Membership
Website traffic and useage

In this blog post from January 2021, Brittany Bennett, the Data Director for Sunrise Movement, argues that in order to become a data-driven organization, the people in charge of the data and data management need to be oriented towards serving the organizers as their first priority. “[W]when you cannot deliver accurate results quick to organizers, you lose their buy in to your system. And when your organizers do not use your systems, your organizations becomes less data driven.”