In the non-profit world, there are two kinds of organizations: top-down and bottom-up. Most of the household name brands that you and I recognize are top-down. They operate similarly to a corporation, with boards of directors, tall org charts and plenty of oversight. There's nothing wrong with this particular model—it's served us well for over a hundred years.
There are, of course, other ways to organize. Bottom-up organizations like Avaaz and 350.org are using the web to achieve large-scale, distributed actions with small staffs and big dreams. They're not overseers. At best, they're wranglers.
TckTckTck is a coalition of NGOs from both schools of thought. There are the established organizations like Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Red Cross, as well as the upstarts like Avaaz and 350.org. In this sense, we're a big, nay, huge tent under which all of our partners can happily co-exist and work toward a single goal: a fair, ambitious and binding climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.
TckTckTck is itself a small, ad hoc collection of motivated people from the Global Campaign for Climate Action and a constellation of consultants. When we planned the campaign back in early 2009, we were confronted with an obvious question: "how can we best collaborate with all of these partners, each with their own global reach and particular objectives?" In other words, how can we cut through the noise and diversity of the many independent campaigns around Copenhagen, and create a common framework of message and mobilization, build community and strengthen long-lasting social ties?
The answer? Create an open source campaign.
What does that mean? In truth, we're still figuring it out. But we're trying to borrow from the ideas and ethos of the open source software movement. Here are some essential concepts that we've applied:
- Everybody owns TckTckTck. We devised a simple, unique word that's meant to imply both the urgency of the ticking hands of time as well as the idea of a 'tick' or check in a box. Beyond the term itself and the logo, we're happy to let partners and individuals around the globe use it as they see fit. In the Philippines, for example, the brand became Tik Tok Tik Tok. In Brazil, it's Tic Tac Tic Tac. We're intentionally not precious or pretentious about the brand. As long as people are emphasizing a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen, we're not hung up on how they use it.
- Enable collaboration. Lots of organizations make their logos available, with the intent that the media or bloggers might republish them next to articles. From day one, we've been keen for people to use the brand in creative ways. An early example of this was a Danish creative agency which, all on their own, devised a great campaign around putting TckTckTck-branded water wings on statues around Copenhagen. As another example, 350.org's was trying to schedule actions in every country on the globe as part of their International Day of Climate Action. We used our Climate Insider list—an old-school email list of people working inside the movement—to discover organizers in 10 countries they hadn't reached.
- Shine a light on everybody else, and encourage others to do the same. All of our partners—big and small—are in the midst of Copenhagen-related projects. By creating a neutral brand, they can feel comfortable cross-promoting each other's projects on their own sites as well as in social media channels. TckTckTck's role is to connect the dots between these projects, and tell the world about them.
- Build tools that empower and share. We knew that our partners would be producing world-class work—see, for example, Greenpeace's Action-Pact or . So we waited until reasonably late in the campaign, figuring out where we could fill in gaps among the partner projects. We created a Facebook 'Friendraiser' app that can be co-branded by any of the campaign's major partners, a mobile app that they can help spread, and a campaign video that simply focuses on the campaign's main message. Likewise, we produced website widgets that anybody—partners, bloggers and so forth—can use to spread the word about the campaign. Importantly, our Tck in a Box widget enables site visitors to complete the central ask of the campaign—take the pledge—without ever leaving the site that's embedding the widget. We're not interested in stealing anybody's traffic.
We've also taken some lessons from NGOs like Avaaz. Avaaz actually asks their members what they think is important, and whether they care about an issue enough to take action on it. They don't push out, the pull in. They listen, and that listening feels essential to an open source campaign.
The idea of an open source campaign informs a lot of our decisions. This approach obviously means giving up control, and trusting our partners and site publishers generally. More importantly, we look at a lot of decisions through the lens of "what would an open source campaign do?" In a busy campaign where the clock is ticking, that means we reach consensus more effectively, and can stay focused on reaching our goals in Copenhagen.
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