Campaigning for “less popular” causes is a delicate balancing act that can easily backfire on charities, Oxfam boss Mark Goldring has warned, while admitting he has twice got it wrong with damaging consequences.

In a candid presentation to an audience of charity professionals on 14 December, Goldring said Oxfam had made high-stakes misjudgments in its notorious “perfect storm” clash with the coalition government and in the row over the involvement of its then celebrity ambassador, Scarlett Johansson with a company operating in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank.

The Johansson furore had cost Oxfam America “literally thousands” of donors, Goldring revealed.

Both events took place in 2014. In the first, to promote a book it had co-produced about foodbanks, Oxfam tweeted an image of stormy seas with the caption: “The Perfect Storm. Starring: zero hour contracts, high prices, benefit cuts, unemployment, childcare costs.” In response to a complaint by a Conservative MP, the Charity Commission ruled that Oxfam should have done more to avoid any misperception of political bias.

In the Johansson case, after a protracted stand-off, the actor ended her eight-year association with Oxfam over its criticism of her for endorsing fizzy drinks company SodaStream, which at the time had a factory in an Israeli settlement.
Goldring, who has been Oxfam chief executive since 2013 and was previously chief executive of the learning disability charity Mencap and of the international volunteer charity VSO, told a seminar on campaigning for less popular causes that in mishandling the Johansson affair, Oxfam turned what should have been a point of principle into “something of a PR disaster”.

Oxfam’s error, said Goldring, was letting the controversy drag on so that Johansson could eventually seize the initiative. “The judgment was when to be proactive, when to be forceful, and when to be balanced and reflective,” he said. “We got that wrong.”

Goldring also acknowledged that the UK “perfect storm” tweet had provoked a massive backlash, and wrecked much of the slow, methodical lobbying work that Oxfam had been doing in partnership with other organisations to persuade the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of the problems caused by benefit curbs. “We lost any sense of engagement with the DWP, we lost the traction we had and we probably over-politicised the debate from the point of view of our partners,” he said.

In contrast to these two own goals, Goldring highlighted two instances of campaigning that had been positive for Oxfam. Working mainly behind the scenes, as a “responsible interlocutor”, it had helped persuade most leading UK supermarket chains first to label clearly, then withdraw, any produce from Israeli settlements. Only one chain had needed firmer pressure, which had been exerted by other campaigners.

The second example, demonstrated in the current Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Yemen, had been Oxfam’s two-pronged campaigning against the effects of war in that country, at times stressing the humanitarian plight, but at other times lobbying against the UK’s sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, which was involved in the conflict.

“Sometimes the public is hugely important; sometimes you need to get to a small group of opinion-formers,” Goldring said. “Where you get it wrong is where you have not used enough evidence or allowed things to become too politicised.”

Charlotte Ravenscroft, a charity consultant and former civil servant, told the seminar, organised by Cass Business School’s centre for charity effectiveness, that charities embarking upon campaigns needed to choose between an “insider” or “outsider” strategy or, as in the case of Oxfam and Yemen, which strategy to use at any given time. “I have seen charities do this quite badly over the last few years,” she said. Having secured precious insider meetings with ministers, some charity leaders had failed to use the opportunity to present a reasoned, detailed case, but had instead delivered “a face-to-face lecture”.

Achieving change was a slow process, Ravenscroft warned, but it was enough to be able to “look yourself in the mirror and say you have acted with integrity, and the campaign generally has furthered the cause, even if you didn’t necessarily win that particular battle”.