How To Write A Petition

Launching a Successful Petitioning Campaign: 

There are a number of differing reasons why an individual may feel the need to launch a petitioning campaign, but more often than not, they are unable to identify a starting point in the process. Given the right resources and knowledge, a petition can be an excellent tool for change. The successfulness of such a campaign is dependant on three key steps, those being the planning and development stage, implementation stage, and the execution stage. In this article we will focus on each of these three steps to develop a plan which, if followed, will help to ensure the success of your campaigning. 

As is essential with most formal tasks these days, petitioning requires a certain amount of planning to account for all of the aspects of a petition that need to be brought together to complete a successful operation. In the diagram below, we show you the three components of the planning stage – the three things you will need to make a decision on before proceeding to step two, as well as the possible choices for each.  
 

What we see here are three crucial factors that will affect the effectiveness of the petition. Your planning and preparation should focus on each of these. If you have more than one organiser or volunteer working on this campaign, be sure to form a solid plan for each of these people to refer to, should any confusions or questions arise in due course. By thinking ahead, you wont be left having to reflect on hindsight should something go wrong unexpectedly. Generally, the same planning stages you would employ when creating a corporate report or publication, formal presentation, or official document, can also be applied to a petition. That’s because a petition technically is an official document. 

Moving on to the second of our three necessary considerations any petition should be given. The implementation stage is all about getting the results of your planning into some type of physical form. Assuming that you have decided on a manual type of petition, you will need to create forms for respondents to fill in – allowing them to acknowledge their support of your cause. Below, we have included a basic, potential layout for these forms, utilising the functionality of Microsoft Excel. 

As you can see, taking a simplistic approach to this task can be just as effective as an advanced, time-consuming approach. One of the most important things to remember when you create these forms is to include ALL the necessary data fields. A recent petition in New Zealand failed due to an insufficient selection of data being collected from the 200,000 respondents. If only the organisers had spent a bit more time contemplating the specific details they were going to collect, the petition would most likely have been successful. 

Having drafted, published, and printed the completed forms; they should be distributed to organizers and volunteers in order to move on to the final stage in the petitioning process. As well as this, signature gatherers should be briefed on the pending campaign, and the finer details, which have now been decided. When this is complete, and all the relevant parties know their roles and their importance to the overall campaign, we are ready to move on to the execution stage. 

All of your preparation work has now been done. You have planned the most important features of your petition; implemented and converted those plans into physical form, and additionally have the appropriate materials ready to collect the signatures you need. It is now time for your volunteers to head out on to the real world and collect as many signatures as possible. There are many tips which can be useful for manually collecting signatures. To investigate these, petitions is an excellent resource. The overall idea is to collect as many signatures as possible, effectively creating more and more support for your cause. At the end of the day, the more respondents you have, the more chance you have of a successful outcome.  

When it comes time to halt the signatures and support collecting process, the most difficult aspects of the petition are well and truly completed. There are, however, a few final administration tasks still to be completed. 

As you see in this diagram, we are firstly expressing our appreciation to those who have assisted us in mustering public support on our issue. It is only right that these people be formally acknowledged for their efforts. Additionally, the petition should now be copied and sent to the target which was decided in the planning stage. On the successful delivery of the final report – your participation as the organizer may or may not be concluded. Given that the target party’s response is unknown, further negotiating may be necessary to complete the entire process with a reasonable, reciprocal outcome. Because of the inability to predict whether or not this will happen, we will not cover it in this article. Negotiating is in itself an entirely separate  topic, well past the scope of this informational article. 

Regardless of the topic or issue on which you decide to petition, the formula above is an excellent template to work off, and can easily be applied to most situations. At times, petition subjects or specific case characteristics will call for a much different approach to be called upon. We will leave the identification of such a scenario you. Petitioning requires mainly skill, and a touch of luck. For that reason, we wish you every success in your endeavors, knowing that you now have the skill set you need to begin a triumphant campaign.

Start a Petition Today!