Advocacy

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to take a stand. While this moment is always more dramatic in the movies, it could still be life-changing for you and others in your community.

Your realization might center on a policy or issue in your community that needs to change. If you’ve decided to advocate for your cause within your local legislature, this guide will equip you with key legislative advocacy strategies to make a real impact.

While the list below is far from comprehensive, we think it’s a useful roadmap for launching your advocacy efforts. 

When you’re a part of an advocacy campaign, spotting issues and fixing them are not always easy. In the realm of advocacy, there will always be bumps in the road, that is the nature of making change. Identifying common advocacy hurdles and proactively planning for solutions is a good strategy that can improve your campaign. 

What is direct employee feedback, and how can it help you? Building a cohesive, effective team requires effort and intentional communication at every level. As we strive to improve our skills and abilities, expand our knowledge, and strengthen our teamwork, we rely more and more on open and clear communication. To boost our efforts, we have instituted a new set of guidelines for giving and receiving internal feedback, and we’d like to share a bit about it with you.

Grief at work: In 2022, as part of our DEI efforts, our team started looking at factors that cause stress in the workplace. One that became apparent was grieving at work. At TCW, we define a grief event as often occurring when a friend or loved one dies, a friend or loved one becomes ill, a pet dies, or a relationship ends. These grief events are frequent in the workplace, and we estimate that a typical employee will experience this at least once, if not more while working at TCW.

Katherine Miller is the author of At the Table: The Chef's Guide to Advocacy. She is involved in advocacy training, and strategist. She has previously served as the VP of Impact at the James Beard Foundation where she worked with leaders in the food system to create new and innovative programs to help address gender equity, sustainability, food waste, and child nutrition. She is a current Distinguished Fellow at GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs, and is a professional alum of the LA Times, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the U.N. Foundation. This week, we asked Katherine 7 questions about her career and experience. 

Advocacy strategies can be time-consuming to create and difficult to execute. We have written often about the core elements of an advocacy plan, but taking the time to develop your advocacy strategy is an important step. But where do you begin? Try using strategy tools.

If you've ever worked on an issue advocacy campaign, you know that convincing a person to even listen to your message can be a difficult task. Now, more than ever, public opinion has become harder to shape when people tune out information more than they tune it in.

Organizations and campaigns have used patch-through calls for years when they need many people to reach out to elected officials. But in an era of cord-cutting and digital everything, will folks still take the time to get patched-through to a lawmaker? And will lawmakers listen? The answer is maybe.

Have you been implementing SMS for advocacy, or texting for advocacy, into your issue advocacy or public affairs campaigns? Texting for advocacy is an important tool for nonprofits and organizations creating an issue advocacy communications program.

Advocacy emails are a powerful tool. For many groups and organizations, advocacy emails can amplify their message in a positive way. As you are probably well aware, most people use their email for both work and personal use, so communicating with your supporters with this medium is a logical choice.

Engaging individuals in advocacy efforts is an essential part of creating lasting change. But it can be a challenge to get people to take meaningful action, and even more challenging to keep them engaged over the long term. That's where the advocacy engagement funnel comes in.

With advocacy campaign season in full swing, it's time to clear the air on some common advocacy myths about what will and won't hurt your advocacy group.