Case Studies - Child Heart Surgery Petitions Campaign

Client: Children's Heart Surgery Fund (CHSF)

Campaign: Save Our Surgery - Petition Collections

Brief:

• To generate public support and collect petition signatures to help prevent the closure of Yorkshire's only Children's Heart Surgery Clinic; via a public outreach and petition signing campaign across the 17 core towns and cities of Yorkshire.

Campaign Description:

• For the first two weeks of activity CHSF utilised 17 teams of four staff, carrying out activity simultaneously, within each of the key towns and cities of Yorkshire (Barnsley, Bradford, Chesterfield, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Halifax, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Hull, Keighley, Leeds, Rotherham, Scarborough, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Wakefield and York).
• After these first two weeks, the location schedules were modified to maximise petition signups relocating the teams, to further stream line the efficiency. Team sizes were also reduced, so activity was reserved to the most receptive areas, at a small number of events, supermarkets and city centres which have the highest expected footfalls and petition yields.

SUMMARY OF ACTIVITY LOCATIONS

The teams targeted a range of different locations throughout the activity, The following were some of the most productive days:

• Barnsley FC                         -  6730 signatures
• Wakefield Wildcats               -  2283 signatures
• Leeds City Centre                 -  1825 signatures
• Leeds Anti Cuts Rally           -  1822 signatures
• Hull FC                                  -  1696 signatures
• Hull RFC                               -  1486 signatures
• Scunthorpe FC                    -  1474 signatures
• Bradford Arndale Centre     -  1463 signatures
• Doncaster Rovers               -  1417 signatures

Branding:

• Staff members were provided with

  • a small A7 flyer, outlining the key messages and encouraging recipient involvement
• 'SOS Save our Surgery' branded T shirts, so they looked part of an official team
• visual flip folders with photos of families and patients, to help communicate the importance
• 8 X clipboards per person to provide efficiency of sign ups and increase outreach

Results:

• Overall the teams collected 196,462 signatures within just a four week duration (and one week activity lead time).
• The completed petitions were all collected from team leaders across each of the 17 towns and cities. All forms were carefully counted, checked, duplicated and boxed up ready for despatch.
• Within just five weeks, all 196,462 petitions (plus all of the ones which the client had collected under their own steam) were hand delivered by the charity directors to the Prime Minister's office in Downing Street.
• The petitions collected by our professional petitioning teams formed the largest, most substantial part of the largest regional petition ever to have been created and delivered in to parliament.