Team & organisation training
Give your people the confidence and practical skills to engage with political decision-makers.
Want to help your staff, supporters, students or community turn concern about climate and nature into meaningful political action?
Hope for the Future delivers practical political engagement training for organisations across the UK. Drawing on more than a decade of experience supporting people to build constructive relationships with politicians, our workshops help participants understand where they can have influence, what effective political engagement looks like, and how to put it into practice.
Whether your participants have never contacted a politician before or already have some experience of advocacy, we create an accessible, non-partisan space to build their confidence, skills and political understanding.
Who is it for?
Our training can be delivered for:
charities, NGOs and campaigning organisations;
universities, researchers and students;
community and voluntary organisations;
membership organisations and networks;
environmental and nature organisations;
staff and volunteer teams; and
groups of supporters, campaigners or community leaders.
We can train an existing team or incorporate a workshop into a conference, festival, away day, development programme or community event.
What will participants learn?
Our workshops go beyond simply encouraging people to email their MP or sign a petition.
Participants explore how political influence actually works and how to engage decision-makers in ways that are strategic, constructive and more likely to build lasting support for climate and nature action.
A typical workshop covers:
How MPs, councillors and other political decision-makers work, and where you can have influence
What makes political engagement effective
How to understand your decision-maker and tailor your approach
How to communicate climate and nature issues through shared values and local concerns
How to develop clear, achievable political asks
Practical approaches to writing to, meeting and building relationships with politicians
How to turn an issue you care about into a practical plan for political engagement
Where appropriate, we can also invite a local politician to join part of the session, giving participants an opportunity to hear directly about how political decisions are made and what makes engagement useful from a decision-maker's perspective.
A practical introduction to effective political engagement. Participants will understand how political influence works, explore what makes engagement effective and begin applying the learning to an issue or decision-maker relevant to them. The aim is for people to leave thinking: “I understand how I could influence this, and I know what I can do next.”
Our more in-depth workshop gives participants time to turn the learning into practice. Alongside the core content, we can explore political strategy and relationship-building in greater depth, work through participants' own examples, practise conversations with decision-makers and help participants develop a clear plan for their next steps. The additional time is particularly valuable for teams or groups who want to move from learning about political engagement to developing a strategy they can actually use.
We also offer tailored training and direct delivery support for academics, researchers and university teams who want their research to have influence beyond academia. We can help researchers think strategically about how evidence connects with communities, public engagement and political decision-making, and how to build those relationships into their approach to impact. This can include identifying the people and institutions with the power to act on research findings, translating evidence for different audiences, engaging communities around research, and developing constructive relationships with political decision-makers.
Need something different?
Not every organisation needs the same workshop.
We can adapt our training around your audience, issue or event, including shorter sessions, bespoke workshops and training focused on a particular political challenge.
We can also work with organisations that want to go further than a single training session, providing more intensive political strategy and advocacy support. Find out more about what other support we can offer organisations.
Bring political engagement training to your organisation
If you want your staff, supporters, students or community to feel more confident engaging with political decision-makers, and better equipped to turn their ideas into influence, we'd love to hear from you.
Cost shouldn't automatically be a barrier. We have some flexibility within our pricing model and are happy to discuss this with organisations where budget is a constraint.
Get in touch to discuss a workshop for your organisation.