Three Advocacy Resolutions for 2011

This week we bring you the second installment of Three Resolutions for 2011 (read the first installment here: 3 Media Relations Resolutions.)

We spend significant bit of our time helping causes advocate for better policy, and we spilled a good bit of digital ink this year on how we thought it could be done more effectively.  Heading into the new year, we humbly suggest three advocacy resolutions for 2011:

1.  Differentiate between advocacy and movement building.

Recently we’ve argued a somewhat controversial perspective: online petitions and mass email to Congress shouldn’t count as advocacy, because neither tactic has any effect on the policy process. We’ve never argued that organizations should never use petitions or email campaigns, though.  We merely hope that, as people trying to change the world, we recognize that some things we do – like online petitions and mass email campaigns – build lists, help people hop onto an engagement ladder, and build capacity, which makes those tactics important even if they don’t directly change the course of policy and therefore aren’t effective advocacy tools.

Clarity about the difference helps us build better long term strategies and make evaluating campaigns a more honest and straightforward process.  (See more on the rationale for this resolution here, here, and here.)

2.  Build a coherent engagement strategy.

What are the contours of your pool of potential advocates, and why do you do define it that way?  What experience will inspire them to get involved?  What will their first advocacy action be, and what will they do second?  How will you spot and cultivate your best advocates, and what will you do when you find them?  What opportunities are available for your advocates to become leaders?  To have a voice in the cause?

In other words: what is your engagement strategy? How is your advocacy program built to find, inspire, cultivate, support and thoroughly involve your advocates? And, just as important: how will you measure progress along the way?

Watch for more on this in the coming year, as we’re working on developing more tools and ideas for organizations building movements oriented toward advocacy and policy change.  In the meantime resolve to build a strong engagement strategy as an integral part of your advocacy program.

3.  Get all of your information right before going to policy-makers with it.

Yes, we’ve got a sitting legislator on our team so we’re a little biased, but we would suggest this resolution even if none of us claimed “The Honorable” as a title.  That said, we’ve got some inside insight that helps illuminate why it’s important.

Just last week David (ahem, Delegate Englin) got a mass email from a major national education advocacy organization congratulating him on his winning reelection in November and setting forth a policy agenda for his consideration.  Great, except that no one in the Virginia legislature was on the ballot in November; their elections are in 2011.  By not getting the basic details of the electoral calendar right, this organization signaled that maybe the rest of their take on the Virginia education policy and politics in their message wasn’t entirely trustworthy.  A shame, particularly in this case, because David would be a natural ally for them.  Imagine how it was received by other legislators with less inclination to be supportive of their cause.

David also regularly gets messages as part of email petition campaigns urging support or opposition to bills that were considered last year but not this year, are not yet under consideration in the House (where David serves), or upon which he has no opportunity to act (bills that are stuck in a committee that he doesn’t serve on, for example).  All of those messages put the organization behind them in a bad light.  While these badly executed campaigns don’t change David’s policy position they make him less likely to turn to the organization when he’s considering new policy or thinking through a policy that he hasn’t made up his mind on.  This is true for our in-house legislator, for his colleagues in Virginia, for legislators in statehouses across the country, and in Washington, DC, too.

Make a resolution to respect your advocacy targets enough to get not just your policy information right, but your political information right, too.