Advocacy

Do you know what a negative keywords are? As anyone who has ever used Google can attest, what comes up in your search is not always relevant to what you were actually looking for. Negative keywords are very specific words or phrases that you want to block from your target keyword list in an ad campaign to ensure that your ads will not be shown around those specific words. These words often share grammatical similarities to keywords you would like to target, but have a vastly different meaning.

There is a lot of talk these days about programmatic buying and how digital advertisers use it as the primary way to buy digital advertising.

Advocacy polling is an important foundation for campaigns that are, more often than not, a long haul. They require long-term planning and commitment, and ideally, they have the benefit of staff that has extensive knowledge and policy experience in a particular issue area. That deep knowledge of an issue is incredibly valuable, but it can also create some message obscurity if you’re not careful. In other words, there can be a huge temptation to explain, in minute detail, the many nuances of the issue you’re working on, but that detail (counter-intuitive as it may be) can often be a turnoff for your average supporter.

We have written a lot about political fundraising but not on advocacy fundraising, so here we go. Whether it is for advocacy or for political campaigns, fundraising is largely similar and shares a number of characteristics. For both, the ask is a core component of your fundraising technique. Below is a look as some of these shared characteristics.

Looking for an advocacy glossary? Well you have come to the right place. Creating an advocacy campaign can be complicated. There are so many factors to consider, budget, goals and timelines. Often times, understanding the language of advocacy can become its own challenge. To help lighten the load, we've have put together an advocacy glossary of useful advocacy terms. Enjoy!

Advocacy strategies have changed a lot over the last 20 years. When I was a chief of staff in the New York State Legislature, I don't remember there ever being a real advocacy campaign around public support of an issue that focused on legislators. The main way groups moved legislation was to hire a lobbyist and that was really it.

Running a non-profit is not easy. but your non-profit board can help your organization go from drab to fab. Fully utilizing your non-profit board can make the difference between a sluggish or vibrant organization. Here are some tips to up your board's performance and give them a meaningful experience.

Recently Facebook launched cross-device reporting for Facebook ads, which will help in measuring conversions of all of an individual's devices. We have grown beyond just using desktops. Now folks are using multiple devices and advertisers and publisher are adjusting to connect with consumers.

Last week we released our first ebook: Political Direct Mail In The Digital Age. The book explains why with all the technology we have, political direct mail in the digital age is still relevant. We explain how you should decide on direct mail and targeted communications strategies for political and advocacy campaigns. We also discuss the cost of direct mail, micro-targeting strategies and how to use direct mail for GOTV.

Advocacy campaigns get inspired by GOTV.  Get Out The Vote, has come a long way. A good GOTV program can give a political campaign a big lift and those tactics are now being used for advocacy. you can read more about GOTV techniques here and here. GOTV techniques have transcended their former use as “valued election tools”, and are now the core component of modern GOTV Tactics.

Advocacy and fundraising don't always mix but when they do it can be magic for an organization. I have written over the past year about the difficulty of getting true engagement for nonprofit advocacy groups. The ice bucket challenge has done an amazing job of engaging people who have not participated in advocacy in a long time as well as getting folks who had done some advocacy work but never for ALS.

Last week, The Campaign Workshop hosted a interview training event for Code for Progress at our office that included a stellar cast of entrepreneurs, TCW staff, and an amazing group of fellows that are about to take the job market by storm.