How to Create an Advocacy Plan

The goal of an advocacy plan is often to pass a piece of legislation or advance a legislative effort. Maybe it’s a coalition working to introduce a bill in a statehouse or a nonprofit organization fighting to pass a bill to lower prescription drug costs.

The recent passage of President Biden’s infrastructure bill featured hundreds of advocacy organizations from unions to business organizations to nonprofits that supported and pushed for the legislation’s passage.

Passing or advancing legislation is harder than it looks and – regardless of how big or small the effort is – a good advocacy strategy is often necessary to help get you to the finish line.

Step 1 - Identify your goal

What does your organization consider success? Is it getting a bill passed? Introduced? Maybe it’s getting one elected leader to sponsor or lead on the bill. Sometimes, passing a bill isn’t the goal, it’s simply getting it on the radar of a legislator.

Often, advocacy organizations will engage in a public awareness campaign to inform people about a specific issue and then follow it up with an accountability campaign, demanding legislators support or oppose their specific issue. This is a two-step campaign process with two different goals – the first is raising awareness and the second is accountability from lawmakers. Each one has a different goal and should be executed with that in mind.

Make sure you know what your goal is so you can focus your efforts to ensure your desired outcome. When it comes to policy making, there are typically small windows of opportunity that – when aligned with effective advocacy – can yield major results. Knowing your goal is key to ensuring you are successful.

Step 2 - Identify your target audience

Before developing a plan and strategy it is critical that you identify who you are talking to or persuading.

If your goal is to introduce legislation, your target audience might be one person: an elected leader (and perhaps that leader’s staff). Knowing this, you can narrow your focus and your efforts. Your communication can target the leader and the people around them to ensure they get your persuasion loud and clear.

If you are aiming to raise awareness, you must go much broader and bigger. Knowing who you need to reach and persuade will tell you the kind of plan you need to develop and the strategies you need to implement to see results.

Step 3 - Develop your plan & strategies

Now that you know your goal, it’s time to come up with a plan. Using the example of the two-part campaign referenced above, the coalition first would focus on raising awareness and then focus on holding lawmakers accountable.

The coalition should start by raising awareness around the issue, posting regularly on social media, taking out digital ads, securing earned media, and communicating with lawmakers. Once the campaign has seen awareness around their issue grow, they can start to transition or begin targeting lawmakers more specifically. They can ask them to show their support and create an accountability tool like a scorecard or other measurement to communicate whether a lawmaker has weighed in on the issue.

This plan starts with raising awareness and communicating broadly and then narrows to lawmakers and their staff encouraging them to act. The campaign uses social media, earned media, and other persuasion communications tools to do this. Read more about the communications tools your advocacy campaign can use here.

Step 4 - Implement your plan

Put your plan into action. Create your communications plan, mapping out your regular social media posts that are aligned with your messaging paired with targeted digital ads (if you are doing those), earned media, and other tools to reach your target audience. Make sure you are posting consistently and taking steps to boost name recognition.

You can use social media tools to see if you are seeing an increase in engagement or name recognition around your account and your hashtags. Pair your social media with strong earned media as well as lobbying or advocacy of elected leaders.

Step 5 - Make an ask

Don’t forget that your communications should make a clear ask of the target audience. If your goal is to raise brand awareness, an ask is less important, but if you are working to introduce legislation or elevate an issue, it’s important to ask people to support your effort, sign something, or – in the case of lawmakers – agree to support an issue, a piece of legislation, or be a champion. That’s where your scorecard can come in – it can be used to pressure lawmakers and their staff to support you. Getting their support should be one of your priority outcomes and that can be used to pressure others who haven’t signed on yet.

Step 6 - Assess outcomes, adjust, start again

Make sure to have clearly defined outcomes so you can determine if you’ve met them or if they are effective. Adjust your strategy, tools, and targets as-needed to get your campaign to where you want to go. Sometimes, we think we have one target audience, but another will emerge. For example, in addition to targeting the general public to change the narrative on a specific issue, you might also want to target reporters to influence how the press talks about the issue. Adjust and adapt your plan based on the results you’ve seen.

For many advocacy organizations, there is never just one campaign. Often, it will be one followed by another, or you’ll re-start your original campaign with a slightly different focus or outcome. This is common as the situation can change – political leaders may change, the environment in the region might change, or the issue might change. Make room to adjust.

Conclusion 

There are helpful resources for different groups or organizations looking to implement an advocacy plan. Bolder Advocacy provides helpful examples, especially for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. They provide specific examples of how to develop a plan and how to identify outcomes for different audiences.

Each advocacy campaign will be slightly different, but the steps, strategies, and tools outlined here will help you develop your plan and achieve your goals.