Skip to content

What charities can learn from right-wing populism

Lucy Caldicott
Lucy Caldicott
— 4 min read

Let's be honest, talking about right-wing populism in charity circles feels deeply uncomfortable. It should. We fundamentally oppose the division, the scapegoating, the deliberate exclusion of vulnerable people. But we can't ignore something else: it's been devastatingly effective at building movements and mobilising people.

This isn't about adopting their messages so much as understanding how they deliver them. Because while we've been crafting careful, nuanced communications, right-wing populist movements have been building passionate, committed communities ready to act. If we want to compete for attention, hearts and minds, we need to understand what we're up against.

Related Posts

Members Public

Just because we can

A few newsletters ago I promised to share some of my ponderings about the ethics of AI. A historical parallel I've kept coming back to is the technological progress brought by the advent of steam power and the upheaval that followed. If we hadn't dug all

Members Public

A conversation that matters

The very process of developing a strategy, done well, can create more than a plan for future activities. Strategic planning provides space and time for important conversations. When people hear the words strategy development, they picture slide decks with whizzy diagrams, away days with sticky notes, flip charts covered in

Members Public

Finding your purpose

If you're interested in lots of things, it can be a bit hard to focus. At school I envied the single-minded people who'd always known they wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. I never knew what I wanted to be when I

Mastodon