UK General Election 2024: action showcase
Impact Stack clients made use of a range of action types and approaches to engage supporters and candidates in the run up to the UK General Election in July 2024, and to start to build relationships with new MPs.
Building support with petitions
Some clients started their pre-election build up before the election was announced with handraisers like Dementia UK's Letter to party leaders, St Mungo's Open Letter, or Shelter's Vote for Home action.
Rewilding Britain's initial lead petition acted as a first step, with supporters reaching a higher-bar email to candidates action as a 'daisy chained' action. Supporters' name and email address were prefilled into the second action, allowing a smooth user experience as they called on candidates to commit to supporting nature's recovery.
Email to candidate actions
Many clients enabled their supporters to raise their issue directly with prospective parliamentary candidates using our PPC dataset and Impact Stack's email to target tool. We sourced data from the crowdsourced Democracy Club dataset, and contributed, as individual volunteers, to helping build the dataset too.
For example, the Ramblers' action told candidates why they should support Access to Nature legislation in the new Parliament. Safe Passage asked people to email candidates asking them to #RallyWithRefugees. The use of the 'accordion' formatting on this action allowed people to access background info in a manageable way, and without leaving the action page.
Personalised with tokens and filters
Actions from many organisations, such as Dementia UK, Sands and Transform Trade encouraged supporters to add a personal message to enhance the impact of their emails to the candidates.
Shelter Scotland's candidate action allowed supporters to pick the subject line for their email to ensure that the messages didn't all arrive with the same subject.
And Stop Sizewell C's action used Impact Stack's powerful filters and tailored message functionality to ensure that candidates in the area local to the planned new nuclear reactor got a different message to those in other parts of the UK. Messages also reflected known party positions on the plan.
Tailored messages with a bespoke dataset
We worked with Friends of the Earth to build a bespoke version of the PPC dataset with some additional custom data fields. This allowed them to create an action which dropped local data about pollution into the emails to candidates, along with the supporter's personal message about the need to take action for nature and the environment.
Supporting campaigners
Organisations supported their campaigners with resources and events. For example, Shelter supporters could order campaign materials online, and Debt Justice used Impact Stack forms to gather sign ups for their pre-election events.
Preparing to connect with new MPs
Some organisations chose to focus on being ready to connect with new MPs once they're elected. For example, single parent support charity Gingerbread's action used Impact Stack's Match to Target action type to collect messages from supporters ready to deliver them to new MPs after the election, along with a gingerbread man and information on how Gingerbread's resources can help with the MP's casework.
Similarly, Young Minds collected messages about young people's experience of mental health to deliver to new MPs. The action used webform conditionals to ask different questions according to the age of the person filling it in.
Data rights tool
As well as an email to candidates action, asking them to commit to their digital rights manifesto, Open Rights Group created an online action enabling people to opt out of political parties processing their data. This action used Impact Stack's personalised thank-you page redirects to 'daisy-chain' forms together and send supporters to an action tailored to where they lived in the UK, eg including the SNP for people in Scotland. It also allowed people to upload supporting identity documents to send with their message to parties, with custom functionality to ensure that document files were not retained in the Impact Stack system.
Would you like to see Impact Stack in action?
We'd be happy to show you around the platform and see how it can help you with your campaigning and fundraising.