Was the Stansted protest a missed opportunity?
Howard Lake | 10 December 2008 | Blogs
This week’s climate change protest at Stansted airport generated a lot of media coverage across most channels. It could be argued that the organisation responsible, Plane Stupid, were anything but responsible in their direct action and I, for one, sympathise with the people stuck at the airport with no flight home.
However, there is a now general international consensus that climate change is not an imaginary threat. It is also felt by many groups that governments are doing a lot of talking and not much by way of acting to deal with the potential problems. The coverage around the Stansted protest therefore presented a great opportunity for environmental charities to crank up their PR machines and add positively and responsibly to the debate.
There must have been dozens of journalists looking for comment and at least some of those will have been looking for grown-up and well-informed views and spokespeople to counter-balance the Stansted coverage. But where were all the ‘eco’ charities?
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I’m sure there must have been some coverage generated but I just haven’t seen it. I expected to see key individuals from Friends of The Earth, WWF, The Carbon Trust etc. all vying for media space to support the message around climate change. (but probably falling short of openly supporting Plane Stupid)
Effective PR is an absolute must to promote the cause and is practically the lowest cost means of reaching significant, sizeable audiences.
This means thinking about various topics and issues in advance and being prepared for when an opportunity presents itself. It’s not difficult, it just requires some scenario planning behind the scenes and considered preparation of key spokespeople to be able to offer journalists and editors timely, credible and balanced comment on such a high profile story.
There is nothing within Institute of Fundraising, Charity Commission or NVCO scripture that I can find which suggests charities can’t comment on such direct action (although taking part is not always favoured). So why not leverage such media coverage in support of good causes?
If I were directly involved with an eco charity, I might consider this a missed opportunity!
Kevin Baughen is founder of Bottom Line Ideas, a speaker for Cancer Research UK and a long-time advocate of blurring the lines between best practice from both the commercial and charity sectors.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.