Campaigning Wiki

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Summary

SMART goals force a vague campaign ambition (“change policy”, “build power”) into a single, time-stamped, measurable sentence that a team can act on and be held to. They sit between the theory of change and the work-breakdown structure.

Body

A SMART objective states the change the campaign intends to cause, by when, by how much, and in a way that can be verified. The People Power Manual publishes a “SMART Objective writing” process guide and dedicated “SMART Objectives” / “Key questions for developing your objectives” handouts as part of its Campaign Strategy Guide [source: people-power-manual]. The Community Tool Box frames the same step inside its “action planning” sequence: stating objectives in operational, measurable terms is what turns analysis into something a team can execute against [source: community-tool-box].

The most common formulation names five criteria — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound — though several planning traditions add two more: evaluated and reviewed (sometimes called SMARTER). The Commons Library treats the SMART sentence as the unit of accountability between the campaign plan and the campaign team: every tactic, budget line and KPI should be traceable back to one [source: commons-library]. SMARTER bakes the evaluation check-in into the goal itself: evaluated = the goal names how the team will know it succeeded; reviewed = the goal names when the team will re-read it.

For campaigns specifically, SMART objectives work best when they distinguish between outcome goals (the change you want — a vote, a policy commitment, a shift in behaviour) and output / activity goals (the things you will do — petitions signed, meetings held, doors knocked). Conflating the two is the most common failure mode: a team that lists “deliver 200,000 emails” as its objective has written an activity goal and lost the outcome the activity was supposed to cause. People Power Manual’s “SMART Objectives” handout is structured around exactly this distinction: it asks the team to state the change they are trying to cause separately from the contribution their campaign will make [source: people-power-manual].

A working SMART objective also names a deadline and a single accountable owner. Without a deadline, the goal drifts; without an owner, no one is responsible for moving the indicator. Community Tool Box’s action-planning chapters treat both fields as required, not optional, and warn against goals that describe activity rather than change [source: community-tool-box]. The Commons Library adds a discipline worth borrowing: write the goal once, then ask “what evidence would tell us we are not on track?” — if no one can answer, the goal is not yet operational [source: commons-library].

Pitfall: SMART can push campaigns toward vanity metrics. Over-tight “measurable” goals push campaigns toward easy-to-count outputs (petition signatures, doors knocked) over hard-to-count real power (relationships, committed leaders, policy credibility). The Commons Library pairs SMART outputs with relational outcome measures — leaders developed, relationships built, organisational capacity gained — so the dashboard cannot accidentally drift from outcomes to outputs [source: commons-library].

Use it for

Writing the objective of a single campaign; aligning a coalition on what counts as winning; turning a theory of change into a quarterly plan; deciding whether a tactic proposal actually moves the campaign.

Open Questions

None yet.

Sources & verification

  • sources/people-power-manual — grounding: secondary — RAW (7977 chars)
  • sources/community-tool-box — grounding: secondary — RAW (833 chars)
  • sources/commons-library — grounding: secondary — RAW (5257 chars)

Verified 2026-06-23 by llm-qc.

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