Will the project "Pandemic Prevention Pledge" receive receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?
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Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.
Why the applicant thinks we should fund this project
Pandemics continue to pose a grave existential threat but the government commitment towards addressing them still remains weak. Broadly, to enact policy change for GCBRs, you can either be the actor generating sound policy recommendations or directly lobby them to the key decision makers involved. Given we’re operating at a crucial moment (in the immediate aftermath of COVID), there is a lack of experiential learning and evidence for the potential of a citizen-led advocacy to be an additive tool for policy influence addressing x-risks.
Our model, if successful, will enable us to build a highly valuable network of key supporters within the parliament for pandemic prevention, whilst sharing informational value for engaging the wider public in x risks cause areas.
Here's the mechanism by which the applicant expects their project will achieve positive outcomes.
MPs (Members of Parliament) in the UK are incentivised to listen to the issues that their constituents or voters are concerned about to grow their supporter base and increase their chances for getting re-elected. Since the first general election in the UK after COVID-19 will be in 2024, we expect this sentiment to be even higher. We employ in-house email technology, which allows a constituent to send a uniquely generated and personalized email to their MP from their own inbox with very low time cost. Employing the technology as one of our campaigning routes, we will mobilize citizens across the UK (650 constituencies) asking their MPs to commit to a public pledge to keep them safe from future pandemics. Of the MPs who decide to sign the pledge, combined with our analysis for identifying high priority MPs to target, we will identify the small group of MPs best positioned to support policy outcomes for pandemic prevention and mitigating biological risks. Equivalents of this advocacy model already exist with some MPs being ambassadors for global health issues (such as TB or Polio within the UK parliament) that help mobilise both budget spends and party influence for these cause areas.
How much funding are they requesting?
$332,100
What would they do with the amount specified?
For a detailed budget breakdown, see this table.
For an overview, the funding will be used for:
12-month salary for
Project Lead for operations, delivery and management.
Campaign Manager to mobilise the campaign, engage with constituents, liaise with the MPs and political actors, and secreatise the APPG.
Part-time Evaluation Officer to lead on MEL and campaign impact analysis, write reports and publish findings from the RCT experiment and 12-month evaluation for the tested theory of change.
Campaign Technology
A temporary software developer for setting up the email campaign technology and webpages.
Targeted advertising spend for Facebook (Meta).
Market research tools for identifying high priority MPs.
Two in-person advocacy events to organize constituent and MP meetings.
Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ze9951RZulQ6arv914r6Z2qVO3dfzpLhkDTSu7f4EiM/edit
Sep 20, 3:29pm:
Sep 20, 3:50pm:
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Like most of the commenters I cannot see that this should be funded, especially as it needs so much money to get off the ground. I have read the other projects and this is comparable to the ‘Reforming regulations for pandemic countermeasures’ project but significantly weaker, because it does not have any particular legislative lobbying goal that would offer a mechanism for impact. All politicians would agree to the platitude that pandemics and death are bad, but as we saw from 2019 onwards in U.K. governance, that is not the same as prioritising life-saving policy measures over party politics, economic benefits or anything else. Most successful lobbyists are experienced and established with the network of connections that they can leverage. It would be risky to fund a lobbying group that cannot provide this. Finally, pandemics are out of the newsround and the public is fatigued with coverage and wants to focus on issues like cost of living and general economic recovery, so I cannot see this gaining a lot of traction. Unfortunately I don’t think this is the best use of funds or at the same standard as some of the other proposals.
Maybe I'm too cynical but the pledge (pictured below) seems basically meaningless and consists of platitudes everyone can agree with. I expect that making it less meaningless would make it much harder to get commitments, and getting signatures in the current state might not be that hard but would be unlikely to change much in terms of actual legislation.
Would be curious from an opinion from someone who has much more political experience than me.
@EliLifland My understanding is that getting everyone to say that they agree to something is valuable. You can then publish articles and hold people to account.
Whether it's worth $300k is a different question
@NathanpmYoung Is there an example of a successful campaign that first got politicians to sign a pledge agreeing on platitudes, then turned that into transformative legislation?
My model of the world is that few constituents actually care about future pandemic prevention as an issue relative to the economy, culture war stuff, etc. So I'm not sure why the published articles would actually make much of a difference.
@EliTyre @NuñoSempere @NathanpmYoung
Thank you all for your feedback! You're right Eli, the pledge by design does not achieve much on its own. We deliberately wrote this pledge to be very low committment and non-partisan so MPs from all parties find it easier to publicly commit in front of their voters (and if the pledge doesn't specifically ask MPs to be held accountable to any concrete asks, the easier it is to get more signatures). Our priority here is to get as many MPs as we can to engage with us via the pledge and build a network of parliamentarians who are sympathetic to pandemic prevention. This allows us to directly platform more concrete policy recommendations to this MP network via forums such as the first UK APPG for pandemics and biosecurity we will be building via this campaign.
The goal here is to build a more long term relationship with many strategic MPs and parliamentarians so we can continue working closely with them as an organisation to make concrete recommendations. For effectively lobbying policy recommendations, building long term relationship and credibility with MPs will be important.
Getting them to sign this low commitment pledge which affords them publicity opportunity in front of their voters is the first step.
Very happy to address any more feedback or questions you have!
@Gigacasting Thank you for adding your feedback!
I hope my comment above helps clarify why we strategically chose the pledge to be low committment and our priority goals with the campaign.
But happy to address additional questions you may have.