Advocacy Basics

While it’s true that the world of online advertising is fast-paced- banking on instantaneous programs is a good way to fall short of your goals. Planning for a digital program will give you time to really define your goals and make sure your campaign has the right components, creative, and timeline to achieve them.

It is time to look at program evaluation for 2022 and planning for 2023. Whether you are a non-profit, labor union, independent expenditure organization, issue group, or political campaign, taking the time to evaluate the success of your program is a necessary step to future success.

Thinking about how to use QR codes for politics and advocacy? Whether you are in politics, membership, or advocacy spaces and do any kind of targeted communication, you need to think about how QR codes can be useful for your work and what the limitations are.

Every year groups go to Washington, D.C. or their state Capitol to try and impact legislation. At the same time, they are there with a dozen other groups doing lobby visits and it’s even hard to get nonprofit lobby days on the calendar. Lobby days can be a complicated business, but we’re here to help.

For many issues, legislative advocacy is the best and only way to bring about real change. But there’s a lot of different ways to engage in legislative advocacy. There’s the traditional “inside game” where you work to provide resources and information to lawmakers. There’s also the “outside game” where you work with a network of volunteers to provide pressure on legislators from the outside.

When people hear the terms “grassroots organizers” or “community advocates” they often do not see themselves reflected in those descriptions. However, very often they have already been an advocate without even realizing it.

When should I start building my coalition? In short, yesterday. but to find your way coalition mapping will help.

Launching a community advocacy campaign can seem intimidating – where would you begin? There are countless campaign tools available to you, but they don’t mean anything if you don’t know what to do with them.

How do you leverage grassroots advocacy? Start with a cup of coffee.

Advocacy mail does not always get the credit it deserves. Part I of this post takes you through the basics of putting together a letter package for your advocacy mail campaign. Part II walks you through making the most of a letter package that includes a reply device (buckle up!).

In all likelihood, when you’re hashing through communications tactics available to you for advocacy campaigns, someone will raise the idea of running a print ad (or three). With all of the options out there, it’s important to determine whether print is a smart use of your dollars. While I hesitate to say that print ads are never a useful complement to an overall advocacy program, I would urge careful consideration before deploying one. Here are a few questions you may want to walk through before signing an IO.