Case study: Parents for Future UK
We supported Parents for Future UK and Mothers Rise Up to make sure their communications have the best chance of connecting meaningfully with parents. Get in touch to see how we can help you.
[The project] started a process within the organisation. Our communications volunteers started to ensure they had a target audience in mind and to consider their language more to get that crucial engagement. That permeated gently out within the working groups. And it’s now embedded in the organisation.”
Charlotte Howell, Parents for Future UK, Oct 2024
Who are Parents for Future UK?
Parents for Future UK is the largest parent climate movement in the UK. As of 2024, the organisation has a network of 35,000 supporters, with a thriving online community and over 35 local groups across the UK. The organisation campaigns locally and nationally to provide a safe and thriving environment for today’s children, and to safeguard a stable climate for their futures. Building on the youth climate strikes, Parents For Future UK was founded in 2019 by a group of mums and now provides a supportive community to break barriers to getting involved in climate action. This enables a broader section of society to influence climate policy and social change.
I recognised that my children were going to be impacted by climate change which was a powerful personal driver. Parents are everywhere - in every school, in every community, in every government, in every business you know. And there are lots of ways that parents can engage around the climate crisis”
Rowan Ryrie, Parents for Future UK
What did we do?
Climate Outreach conducted a short review of what is already known about effectively engaging parents on climate change, and analysed how Parents for Future UK and one other grassroots organisation, Mothers Rise Up, were already communicating with parents. Together with Parents for Future UK, Mothers Rise Up and the creative agency Glimpse we then drafted and tested a number of climate messages – specifically designed for parents – with the different Britain Talks Climate (BTC) audiences. These included narratives around protection, intergenerational togetherness, inheritance and chances for the next generation.
It was clear that all of the narratives resonated with parents, but some connected more strongly with different audiences. You can find out more detail on the narrative testing in this longer article.
What was the impact?
Collaborating with Climate Outreach helped Parents for Future UK get strategic about its communications
It is clear that Parents for Future UK has a strong message that resonates with large numbers of people. As a grassroots campaign organisation that works with volunteers, often through numerous local groups, building carefully crafted strategic communications was not always practical. In 2022 the organisation had limited strategic communications capacity within the team. Working with Climate Outreach helped support a culture of considered communications and messaging.
“[The partnership] helped us to think more strategically about how we might try to reach different groups. We’re a voluntary organisation, we didn't have lots of expertise around strategic communications, so having that input was really invaluable in helping us to think through how to be more effective in what we’re doing.”
Rowan Ryrie, Parents for Future UK, Feb 2022
By 2024 strategic communications had been integrated more into the Parents for Future UK’s work, with the team expanding to include more communications expertise and providing training to the volunteer network:
When capacity allows, we're hugely thoughtful about who we’re trying to reach, how we’re trying to reach them, in a way that feels real and authentic and meets people where they’re at.“
Charlotte Howell, Parents for Future UK, Oct 2024
Message testing helped Parents for Future UK be confident about its place in the movement
Climate Outreach chose to partner with Parents for Future UK and Mothers Rise Up as we could see the potential of parent climate engagement. Our findings from the message testing confirmed the value of the partnership we created – that messages were effective and positively received across different value segments of parents.
Being selected for the collaboration, and the positive results from the message testing, helped Parents for Future UK organisers gain confidence.
“[The partnership] helped us to have more confidence in what we were doing. [That] it is effective, and we are able to reach people, and we can use emotive language.”
Rowan Ryrie, Parents for Future UK, Feb 2022
Understanding values helps the movement connect with a wide range of parents
Where we’ve got local Parents for Future groups in Conservative leaning council districts, they’ve been able to take [the insights] quite quickly and use some of that language on the posters that they’re putting up and on the leaflets they’re handing out”
Rowan Ryrie, Parents for Future UK, Feb 2022
The audience segmentation research showed that the parent messages resonated across all the segments. This has supported local groups in politically diverse areas over the years. A particular surprise to Parents for Future UK was how well the messaging resonated with the Loyal Nationals segment – a group they had not initially expected to reach.
The response rate from the Loyal Nationals isn’t something that we’d anticipated. But it’s shown that there is real potential across the political spectrum with parent perspective work.”
Rowan Ryrie, Parents for Future UK, Feb 2022
As Parents for Future UK has grown, so have the opportunities to nurture a broader community.
We’re now moving towards being able to build and extend our audience. And the message testing results among Loyal Nationals have always stuck in my mind. Knowing that the message testing went really well, and trusting that we could reach and engage a broader audience has given us the confidence to do just that”
Charlotte Howell, Parents for Future UK, Oct 2024
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