Working with other organisations

Find the one person whose name goes on a yes. Everything after that gets shorter.

Standing is not what gets an approach answered.

A first email from one person with no title lands better than people expect. Most organisations are waiting for somebody to be specific, not for somebody to be important.

Decide what you are asking for before you make contact. An approach that asks for everything produces a friendly meeting and nothing else, and you only get one first meeting.

Who actually decides

Four shapes cover most of what you will meet.

A students’ union. An elected officer can hand you a room today and cannot commit the union to a position. Policy passes at a council or a general meeting, on a timetable published a term ahead.

A church, a mosque or a temple. The minister holds the building. A council or a committee holds the institution’s name. Those are two different asks and conflating them embarrasses the person who said yes.

A trade union branch. A branch can pass what it likes. Whether it travels any further is decided regionally, and a branch resolution is real without being the union’s position.

A charity. A chief executive can act and a board can undo it afterwards. Ask who signs off external partnerships.

One question at first contact saves six weeks.

“Who signs this off, and when do they next meet?”

Ask for one thing

Four asks, in order of what they cost the other side.

A room, a stall or a paragraph in their newsletter. A name on a statement. Bodies on a day. And a door to their members, which means a speaking slot or a mailing to their list.

The fourth is worth the most and is the one beginners ask for first. Start lower.

What you offer

Not gratitude, which is not an offer.

A speaker who will be good in their room rather than in yours. Stewards. A briefing their people can survive being challenged on. Security experience they almost certainly do not have. And one named person who answers the phone.

Then say the cost out loud, before they discover it themselves.

“Working with us will get you criticism from a particular direction. I’d rather you heard that from me now than found it in your replies.”

That warning is what makes the yes stick. A partner who was surprised by the pushback leaves at the first sign of it.

Four things in writing before the day

Who speaks, and for how long. Whose banners are up, and where. Who talks to the press, and in whose name. What the event is called.

Add who pays, and who is named as organiser on any notification.

None of this is bureaucracy. Every one of those is decided on the day by whoever cares most, and that is not reliably you.

When a partner says something you cannot stand behind

Sort this into three tiers now, in the quiet.

You disagree. Say nothing at the time. It is their platform too, and a coalition where nobody may say anything you would not have written is not a coalition.

You cannot stand behind it. Nothing dramatic in the moment. Your speaker states your own position plainly when their turn comes.

Then a short statement in your own name, afterwards, saying what you hold rather than what they said.

It is antisemitic, it calls for violence, or it makes the room unsafe. You leave, and you say why once, publicly, in plain words.

The reason for not walking off in the first two tiers is practical. A walk-off is the only footage anybody keeps, and you lose all control of what it was about.

Call them inside a day, before anything is published.

“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t hear it. I’m telling you first rather than putting something out and letting you read it.”

“We left because of what was said from that platform. We’re not going to explain it away, and we’re not going to make it a running argument.”

Sharing a platform without inheriting a position

Your own banner, never a joint one. Listed as attending rather than convening. Your speaker states their own remit in the first sentence. And any joint statement carries a scope line saying what it is and is not about.

The honest limit is that none of this fully works. A photograph does not carry your scope clause, and somebody will put their worst post in front of you.

Have the answer ready. Short, and not a defence of them.

“I’m not their spokesman. Ask them. What I’ll answer for is what we said and what we did.”

Working with non-Jewish allies

What they need from you is a briefing short enough to hold, written in their vocabulary. And a warning about the criticism before it lands, not after.

Three limits, said plainly.

Some will work with you privately and not publicly. Usually because of their own members. The private version is worth having, and you never out them.

Do not make disavowal the entry price. Requiring an ally to renounce their other affiliations first is the test set out in excluding Zionists from progressive spaces.

That is the same move, run by us instead of at us. We object to it because it is wrong, not because of who it is usually aimed at.

Do not use an ally as decoration. Somebody wheeled out once to demonstrate that you have friends can tell, and does not come back. Ask them to do a job.

And the ally who takes a hit for you is the one you telephone first next time, not last.

Credit and blame afterwards

Blame goes to whoever was named as organiser. Credit goes to whoever employs a communications officer.

Neither is fair and both are predictable, so they belong in the same document as the banners. Agreed wording afterwards, both names or neither, and who is quoted.

Ending it without making an enemy

Privately, on the phone, before anybody else hears it.

Give the reason once. Where the reason is capacity, say capacity. Where the reason is what they said, say that to them and then stop saying it.

“We’re not doing the next one together. It isn’t a falling out and I’m not going to talk about it publicly. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

Then hold the relationship at the level below partnership. Turn up to their thing. Answer their emails. This world is small, and the person you ended it with is on the panel next year.

Where coalition costs you

It is slower. Two organisations move at the speed of the slower one, and some actions are worth doing alone and quickly.

It narrows what you can say. Every partner is one more body to consult before you respond to something at short notice.

And a coalition built to look broad is visible as one. Assembled to do a job it reads as strength. Assembled for the photograph it makes your own people cynical, and they are harder to get back than the partner was.

Two names, and one phone call

Answered from memory, before you open anything. Which organisation in your town has said something supportive in the last year? And who in it signs off a partnership?

If the second is a blank, that is the phone call.

If it is Monday 10 August and I am at my desk before nine, then I will ring the office of the first organisation and ask who signs off partnerships and when they next meet.

If [the likeliest obstacle: nobody rings back, they want a paper first, the officer has changed], then I will [your pre-written response to it].