One of the most
common confusions in the development of
advocacy strategy is the difference between "strategy" and "tactics." Tactics
are specific actions -- circulating petitions,
writing letters, staging a protest -- which
are the building blocks of advocacy. Strategy
is something larger, an overall map that
guides the use of these tools toward clear
goals. Strategy is a hard-nosed assessment
of where you are, where you want to go,
and how you can get there. At its heart, effective
strategy is rooted in nine key questions:
Looking Outward
1. OBJECTIVES: What do you want?
Any advocacy
effort must begin with a sense of its goals.
Among these goals some distinctions are
important. What are the long-term goals
and what are the short-term goals? What
are the content goals (e.g. policy change)
and what are the process goals (e.g. building
community among participants)? These goals
need to be defined at the start, in a way
that can launch an effort, draw people
to it, and sustain it over time.
2. AUDIENCES: Who
can give it to you?
Who are the
people and institutions you need to move?
This includes the those who have the actual
formal authority to deliver the goods (i.e.
legislators). This also includes those
who have the capacity to influence those
with formal authority (i.e. the media and
key constituencies, both allied and opposed).
In both cases, an effective advocacy effort
requires a clear sense of who these audiences
are and what access or pressure points
are available to move them.
3. MESSAGE: What do
they need to hear?
Reaching these
different audiences requires crafting and
framing a set of messages that will be
persuasive. Although these messages must
always be rooted in the same basic truth,
they also need to be tailored differently
to different audiences depending on what
they are ready to hear. In most cases,
advocacy messages will have two basic components:
an appeal to what is right and an appeal
to the audience's self-interest.
4. MESSENGERS: Who
do they need to hear it from?
The same message
has a very different impact depending
on who communicates it. Who are the most credible
messengers for different audiences?
In some cases, these messengers are "experts" whose
credibility is largely technical. In other
cases, we need to engage the "authentic
voices" who can speak from personal
experience. What do we need to do to
equip these messengers, both in terms
of information and to increase their
comfort level as advocates?
5. DELIVERY: How can
we get them to hear it?
There is wide
continuum of ways to deliver an advocacy
message. These range from the genteel (e.g.
lobbying) to the in-your-face (e.g. direct
action). Which means is most effective
varies from situation to situation. The
key is to evaluate them and apply them
appropriately, weaving them together in
a winning mix.
Looking Inward
6. RESOURCES: What
have we got?
An effective
advocacy effort takes careful stock of
the advocacy resources that are already
there to be built on. This includes past
advocacy work that is related, alliances
already in place, staff and other people's
capacity, information and political intelligence.
In short, you don't start from scratch,
you start from building on what you've
got.
7. GAPS: What do we
need to develop?
After taking
stock of the advocacy resources you have,
the next step is to identify the advocacy
resources you need that aren't there yet.
This means looking at alliances that need
to be built, and capacities such as outreach,
media, and research which are crucial to
any effort.
8. FIRST EFFORTS:
How do we begin?
What would
be an effective way to begin to move the
strategy forward? What are some potential
short term goals or projects that would
bring the right people together, symbolize
the larger work ahead and create something
achievable that lays the groundwork for
the next step?
9. EVALUATION: How
do we tell if it's working?
As with any
long journey, the course needs to be
checked along the way. Strategy needs
to be evaluated revisiting each of the
questions above (i.e. are we aiming at
the right audiences, are we reaching
them, etc.) It is important to be able
to make mid-course corrections and to
discard those elements of a strategy
that don't work once they are actually
put into practice.
