Discuss the view that financial resources is the most important factor affecting the success of a pressure group. (May 2014)

Financial Resources
Political Status (insider/outsider)
Membership (size, status, willingness to act, proportion of group represented)
Popular Support
Media Support
Clear Aims and Strategy.

INTRO
Pressure group success depends on a variety of different factors. Financial resources is just one of many, there are others including political status, membership, popular support, media support and lastly, aims & strategy. All of which can be argued as the most important in contributing to pressure group success.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES
Different pressure groups have different amounts of resources to use, in order to find the extent to which they are able to campaign. The material resources they have contains things like money, equipment and their offices. Generally, most groups need financial resources in order to function properly, this benefits the organisation is several ways. Firstly, it allows more full-time professional staff, it also gives them a chance to have improved campaigns and lastly it gives them better access to other resources. Clearly, if a party has little financial backing, it is more likely that it will have less coverage and such, rendering it less successful. An example of this is NSPCC, a well-known pressure group, which has an income of £125,877,000, and spends £124,528,000 most of which was obtained from grants and donations. It also