How does it work?

When Greenpeace Spain decides to engage on a specific campaign, the Senior Management Team (SMT) picks a Project Leader to head up the effort. Notably, that person can come from any department – not just from Campaigns.

“We find it really key to get integration right. This means we dont mind where the people are, which department they’re in. We have to try to break down all the barriers between departments, and bring them to work together.”
– Eva Saldaña Buenache, Mobilisation Director

That Project Leader then works on assembling the project team with people from multiple departments, requesting their time from their departmental manager. That project team must have representatives from each of four key areas:

  • Campaigns
  • Communications (offline and digital)
  • Mobilisation (actions and volunteers)
  • Fundraising

Depending on the campaign, others may be involved, as well – such as a database manager, or someone who can speak to celebrity engagement. Once assembled, the project team works together to create the overall campaign strategy and plan each department’s role.

“Our goal: break the walls between departments to work on projects as teams…I don’t want any department to totally control the strategy.”
– Mario Rodríguez Vargas, Executive Director

A guidelines document is also under development to help define project leader roles and team structure.

Significantly, after the planning process it may be agreed that only certain departments are needed for that particular campaign, in which case the project team may shrink to include only those departments. However it is a requirement that all departments are present during planning, which ensures that the expertise represented by all departments is brought to the table, and all parties stay in the loop about upcoming campaigns.

What’s the impact?

There are two main advantages to this model:

  • It ensures that each department’s voice, including Mobilisation’s, is involved in campaign planning from the very start, and that integration is happening between all departments.
  • It allows different departments, including Mobilisation, to serve as the Project Lead for different projects, which encourages fresh perspectives on the work and balances influence between departments.