Toolkit and training for State park advocacy

The Difference Between Advocacy and Lobbying

Nonprofit organizations have critical knowledge and experience that must be communicated to decisionmakers for them to understand how their actions impact the lives of community members in their jurisdictions. But, because nonprofits are tax exempt, the IRS has placed some restrictions on the types of lobbying, not advocacy, activities that a nonprofit can do.  Understanding the key differences between lobbying and advocacy activities will help your organization exercise its right (and responsibility) to participate in the public process.

What is lobbying?

The IRS defines lobbying as any attempt to influence specific legislation by:

• ·         contacting or urging the public to contact policy makers for the purpose of proposing, supporting or opposing legislation.
• ·         advocating the adoption or rejection of legislation.  Lobbying involves three parts: communication with a policy maker that takes a position on specific, pending legislation.

Nonprofit organizations must track and report both the time and money that they spend on lobbying activities to the IRS every year.  A good rule is to keep all lobbying activities to less than 5% of your organization’s total budget.

What is advocacy?

Advocacy is the act of arguing in favor of something such as a cause, idea, or policy.  There are no restrictions on nonprofit advocacy, but it is good practice to identify a board member or establish a board committee to set your organization’s advocacy priorities and oversee your activities to ensure compliance with all IRS guidelines.

Examples of advocacy activities:

• Building relationships with your representatives
• Educating representatives about your organization and issues that matter to you
• Influencing decision makers on an issue unrelated to specific legislation
• Educating the public about your organization and issues
• Registering voters
• Commenting on regulations

Illegal Activities for Nonprofits

There are some things that, as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, you may not do and retain your tax-exempt status.  Your organization may not endorse candidates for public office. You may not make campaign contributions.  You also may not rate candidates in terms of their stance on a particular issue, though you can educate the public about each candidate’s viewpoint.

Additional Resources:
IRS guidance on the allowable advocacy and lobbying activities for 501(c)3 organizations.
IRS Measuring Lobbying Activity: Expenditure Test
IRS Measuring Lobbying Activity: Substantial Part Test
Alliance for Justice: Worry Free Lobbying for Nonprofits

Develop an Advocacy Plan

It is important to complete a plan before you start advocating, because, as you will find, each part of the plan can affect the others.

Normally, planning your goals comes first--but you may have to change those plans if you find, as you plan further, that the tactics you were hoping to use are not legal, or won't work. When you plan everything together--and ongoing--you can both build support and make adjustments as you go.

For instance, your goal might be to close down a refinery that had been guilty of dumping toxic chemicals in the environment. You find, when you check into the list of possible allies, that the economic impact of closure would be devastating to the community. So, you adjust your goal to one that would change safety practices in the refinery and permit closer community oversight.

If you had publicly stated your goal of closing the place, before talking with others or filling in the other steps of your plan, you could have antagonized many of those whose support you would need. These might include many people in the community who depended on the refinery financially. And it would have been hard to win them back, after publicly coming out against their interests.

MAKING YOUR PLANS

Planning is best done as a group activity. One way is to write up ideas on the chalkboard. Then, after they have been debated, record the ideas you've chosen in a permanent place. The actual format of the plan is not important. What is important is that you write it down in a form you can use, and that lets you check one part of the plan against the rest. A loose-leaf binder (or computer file) with separate sections for each category may be all you need.

GOALS (OR OBJECTIVES)

If you are asked what the goal of your advocacy campaign or group is, your answer may come out in the form of a mission statement: "We intend to reduce pollution of the local waterways." However, for planning purposes, goals should be split down into much more specific steps. Remember that it's better to keep your focus on a relatively narrow, manageable group of issues, rather than letting yourselves try to cover too much ground and lose strength in the process. It's also important to split up the goals according to your timeframe.

Long-term goals spell out where you want to be, by the end of the advocacy campaign.

• Ten years from now, the supply of low-income housing in Bay City will have increased by 50%
• In four years, we will reduce the pregnancy rate among 12 to 17 year-olds in Bay City by 30%
• Five years from now, toxic dumping in Murray County will be eliminated

Intermediate goals get you much of the way:

• They focus on community and system changes - new or modified programs, policies, and practices in the local community or the broader system
• They provide concrete building blocks towards the ultimate goal
• They help the group to feel it is doing something. This can be helpful to maintain high levels of motivation over the long haul.
• They provide earlier "bench-marks" by which you can measure progress.

• In one year, the City Council will create six new low-income housing units
• In six months, we will have changed the hours of the clinic to increase access
• In nine months, two major businesses will have introduced flextime policies that permit adults to be with children after school

Short-term goals have some of the same functions as the intermediate kind. They help keep a group motivated, providing more immediate benchmarks in the form of action steps.

• By June, we'll have signed up 10 new members
• In two months, we'll hold the first public hearing
• By the November election, we will get 1,500 people out to vote

WRITING OUT YOUR GOALS

In terms of planning, it pays to examine each goal before you write it down, to make sure it meets certain criteria. Specifically, each goal should be SMART + C: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Relevant; Timed; and Challenging.

Here's how SMART + C goal-planning works:

• (S)pecific. The more specific you can be about what it is you want your group to achieve and by when, the better.

 Instead of, "We'll hold a meeting," your goal should be: "We'll hold a meeting for parents of teenage children in Memorial Hall to invite input on the initiative."

• (M)easurable. Put your goals in measurable terms. The more precise you are about what you want to get done, the easier it will be to see what and how much your group has accomplished. This may prove to be essential if you are carrying out a systematic evaluation of your campaign (see related section of this chapter).

Not: "Smoking in our community will be reduced," but instead: "The percentage of smokers in our community will decline by 30% by the year 2000."

• (A)chievable. It's great for you to be ambitious, but you should also remember to set realistic goals that your group can actually achieve. Real change takes time and resources. If you bite off more than you can chew, your group and the community may become prematurely disappointed or discouraged.
• (R)elevant (to your mission). You should be setting goals that will start your group on the path to successfully accomplishing its mission. If you stray too much from that path, you may lose sight of what it is you're trying to accomplish.
• (T)imed. A date for completion should be set. Even if circumstances change and your date must be altered later, it's much better to start off knowing when you can expect to achieve your goals, so you will know when it may become necessary to make adjustments.
• (C)hallenging. Goals should also stretch up. If we know we can get 500 people out to vote, but need 2,000--and can get that with extra effort--we should set the more challenging goal.

PLANNING YOUR GOALS

The simplest way may be to use a loose-leaf binder or computer file, with one page for each of your major goals. On each page, provide space for "short," "intermediate " and "long-term" objectives, with two or three objectives under each sub-heading.

Do you have the resources to reach those goals? That is what you will pin down in the next part of the planning process.

YOUR RESOURCES AND ASSETS

Once you have your goals written down, it is easier to make an inventory of the resources you will need, in terms of organization, money, facilities, and allies--and the assets you have already.

Resources for advocacy may be different from those needed to run service programs in the community. You will not be needing massive financial support over a long period of time, as would be the case if you wanted to open a day-care center, for example. That is the good news. The bad news is that the sort of charitable foundation that might fund a day-care center most generously may not want to put any money at all into advocacy.

While you may not have much cash, you might be rich in other resources--especially people. Your list of available resources will vary, according to the size of your group and its needs, but might include any of the following:

• Funds (including in-kind contributions) balanced against expenses
• People who are already available (both staff and volunteers), and their skills
• People you expect to be available
• Contacts (e.g., with media resources)
• Facilities (e.g., access to transportation and computers, meeting rooms)
• Access to information archives or libraries

Since advocacy is stressful, make sure your assets are solidly in place. Do you have internal problems that need to be solved in your group, such as relationships between staff and volunteers? Disagreements about use of funds? These need to be sorted out now if possible, during the planning stage.

PLANNING YOUR RESOURCES AND ASSETS

The simplest way to plan is to write out a list of resources and assets in a binder (or computer file) so you can add new ones as you go along. Keep one section for each of the headings above: Funds, People presently available, People expected to be available, Useful community contacts, Facilities, and Access to other resources.

Did you come up short on the most vital resource of all--the people who are willing to help? Then the next section might help you build it up, as you survey the degree of community support you have now, and how much you might expect in the future. When you look into your community support, for the next part of your plan, you may find a few surprises.

YOUR COMMUNITY SUPPORT (AND OPPOSITION)

For this part of the plan, you will write down lists of expected allies and opponents. Part of this may be simple. For example, if you are planning to restrict the logging (and erosion-causing) practices of a big local lumber company, it does not take a rocket scientist to guess that the owners and employees of that company are unlikely to be on your side, but local environmental groups will likely give you their support.

But sometimes it is not so simple, which is why it will pay to do some careful planning, including personal contact and listening. It may be that people you expect to be opponents may also be allies under certain circumstances; and those thought to be allies may oppose your efforts.

 You want to get a big strawberry grower in your community to cut down on the pesticide used on his fields. It is getting into the river; and the farm workers and some of the people who live nearby claim it makes them sick. But the mayor of your community normally sides with business interests, no matter what. In the past, he has made statements hostile to many environmental causes. Furthermore, he is an old golfing buddy of the strawberry grower. You naturally pencil him in as a possible opponent. But wait. This mayor owns land just downstream from the strawberry grower and plans to put in a big development of expensive houses ("Strawberry Fields"). The last thing he wants is a cloud of pesticide upstream, and upwind. He may not want to tackle his buddy in public, but you find to your surprise that behind the scenes, he will be your ally.

PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT (AND OPPOSITION)

This can be as simple as making three lists on binder paper: one for allies, one for opponents, and one for unsure (possible allies or opponents). These lists will be useful as you approach the next part of the planning process: deciding specifically whose behavior you want to change, and who can help you do the changing.

TARGETS AND AGENTS OF CHANGE

For this part of the plan, it's important to know very precisely what caused the problem your advocacy group is addressing.

Who are targets and agents of change? Let's suppose you want to take on the many business people in town who are supplying cigarettes to kids. You know they are out there: you've already done an informal survey of kids smoking outside the junior high, and they tell you that buying tobacco is quite easy, in spite of the law.

• Your main targets of change will be the tobacco retailers. They are the ones who will need to alter their behavior if you are to achieve your goals.
• The agents of change are those who will cause the targets to actually make the change, by one means or another.

In many cases, it is not that simple. For example, what about the police, who should be enforcing the law. Are they going to be targets of change, as you work on their enforcement of the law? Or are they to be agents--going in to make the bust?

Sometimes, there may be crossover from one status to another, such as:

• The police chief may be a target initially since there is little enforcement, but a delegation of kids against tobacco persuades him that he really needs to commit himself to their cause. He sanctions undercover buys by minors to get evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the merchants and commits himself to enforcing the law vigorously.
• Even a tobacco retailer may turn out to be an agent, if she sees the light, and offers to influence the practices of other members of the local tobacco retailer’s association.

Although targets (or agents) are often institutions or groups, it may be easier to focus on one individual. For example, you might plan to change the thinking of one elected official or agency head at a time rather than going for a massive shift of opinion. Or it might seem feasible to tackle one senior executive in a company that is not hiring local people who need decent jobs.

PLANNING YOUR TARGETS AND AGENTS OF CHANGE

You can simply write one list of targets, one of agents, and one of possible hybrids: people who could switch from one category to another.

At this point in the planning, you will have a clear idea about what you want to achieve, what are the main obstacles, and what are the resources--in terms of money, facilities and people--that can help you reach the goals. The next steps involve drawing a clear roadmap showing how you will get there from here.

PLANNING YOUR STRATEGY

In a sense, advocacy itself is a strategy--it's the way you have decided to reach your particular goal, because you can't get what you want without taking on some institutions and people who have power and getting that power structure to change.

Now you need the specific strategies that will help you reach your goals. As an advocate, you will also have to make sure that your strategies:

• Make the best use of (and don't antagonize) your allies
• Produce the kind of change you want in your opponents

Many people tend to assume that because you are involved in advocacy, your strategy will involve confrontation. Yes, it may - but often, that's not the best approach.

For example, in a program aiming to curb youth smoking, you might decide on a mix of strategies, some of them quite adversarial, and some not.

Less confrontation / conflict:

• Increase public awareness through a media campaign
• Educate the merchants
• Gather data about violations of the law to encourage increased levels of enforcement
• Work through the schools
• Network with like-minded organizations
• Work for policy change in local government

More confrontation:

• Apply economic pressure on merchants through boycotts
• Arrange for kids to picket

Most confrontation:

• Blockade the entrances to specific stores
• Be prepared to be arrested for your act of civil disobedience

CHOOSING A STRATEGIC STYLE

As you can see, many different actions fit under the definition of "strategy," and they may incorporate many different styles--from friendly persuasion to "in your face."

Your choice of style will depend to a great extent on your knowledge of the community, and of what will work (as well as your knowledge of your members and allies, and what they can do best and most comfortably). The people and institutions of a community are connected in complicated ways, and people may see their own interests threatened if certain institutions seem to be under attack. Yes, you can change people's attitudes - but this may take time. A raucous demonstration at the wrong time might solidify old prejudices, making it harder in the long run for people to change.

On the other hand, sometimes a public demonstration is essential to bring an issue to the attention of the public (and the media). In some circumstances, it can help fire up the enthusiasm of your members and bring in new ones. The point is that you need to think hard about what effect it will have, based on your knowledge of the community, your targets and agents, and the root causes of the issue.

STAYING FLEXIBLE

Although it is a good idea to do as much forward planning as possible, an advocacy campaign is likely to be dynamic, adjusting with changing circumstances. Obviously, not everything can be locked in.

For example, you might be all set to barricade a logging trail in an environmental cause, when you hear that a state senator is about to propose legislation that would go some way towards accomplishing what you want; your barricade might cause some senators to vote against him. Or you might hear rumors to the effect that your people would be met with massive force. Or you might be told that alternative old logging trails are to be opened up. Or that you had somehow overlooked another area of the watershed where logging could produce even more environmental damage.

Here are some things that you should keep in mind, as your advocacy campaign progresses, involving surprise developments from good news; rumors; unmet needs; or bad news.

Good news	If something that your group applauds has happened in your community (for example, if some group has made a good policy change), you will want to reinforce it.
Rumors	You will need to stay ahead of developments by keeping your collective ear to the ground. If you hear that something contradictory to your aims is about to happen (for example, if you hear that a new housing development is not, after all, going to provide the low-income housing that was promised), you need to investigate.
Unmet Needs	If your studies of community needs turned up major gaps, (for example, if the immunization rate for infants is exceptionally low), then you would want to create plans to make sure those needs are met (for example, apply pressure for resources for mobile vans to promote access).
Bad news	You may need to be flexible, with the ability to deliver a quick response if something bad happens, such as the threatened demolition of low-income housing.

 

PLANNING STRATEGIES

It may be useful to brainstorm strategies in the group and write down those that you feel will help you attain your goals. In some cases, simply writing the chosen strategies in a form that you can store easily (for example, in a loose-leaf binder or computer file) is all you need. Others may prefer something more complex.

Here's one possible format, which has a built-in double-check to make sure each strategy is on target.

Goal: Funding for school-linked clinics
Strategy	Does it:	Yes
Launch a lobbying effort to win over elected officials to fund school-linked clinics.	Help us reach our goals? Use our allies? Minimize our opposition? Suit our style?	x x x x

Strategies are the broad strokes: they do not spell out specifically how something will get done. That is the job of the tactics (or action steps) that you choose? the next part of the planning process.

TACTICS

Tactics are the action steps. The icing on the cake. The finishing touch. The part that shows. Tactics can cover a wide range of activity, from writing letters to speaking up at City Council meetings, from filing complaints to setting up negotiations, from boycotts and demonstrations to carrying out surveys.

As you plan tactics, you will need to make sure that they:

• Carry out your strategy, and are appropriate for your goals
• Fit your style (one tactic out of control can wreck a whole campaign)
• Are doable and cost effective, within your resources, funds, allies and good will
• Make your group feel good about themselves, and what they are doing

You will find plenty of discussion of specific tactics in other parts of the Community Tool Box. Some of these relate to the development of programs, but some fit well under the rubric of advocacy - that is, they involve identifying specific targets of change, and encouraging that change for the good of the community.

HELPFUL QUESTIONS

As you plan tactics, it may be useful to ask yourselves these questions about each of them:

• What will be the scope of this action?
• Who will carry it out?
• When will the action take place, and for how long?
• Do we have the resources to make it happen?
• What resources are available?
• Which allies and constituents should be involved?
• Which individuals and organizations might oppose or resist?

PLANNING TACTICS

There are many different ways of writing out your tactical plans. For example, you may find it useful to attach your plan to each major objective. Here's an example of one way you can do that:

Table: Turning goals into action steps

Goal	Action Steps
By August 2023, provide the community with data on youth's views about sexuality, including availability of contraception, methods of contraceptive use, and sexual activity.	By May 2023, the school subcommittee will secure support from school administrators and teachers to survey high school students on issues related to sexuality.
By May 2023, the school subcommittee will secure informed consent from parents and students to distribute the survey.
By June 2023, the school subcommittee will prepare a survey to distribute to high school youth.
By June 2023, teachers will distribute the survey to all high school youth.
By July 2023, the staff will summarize the results and prepare a report.
By July 2023, the chair of the school subcommittee will communicate the results of the survey to the school administrators, teachers, parents, students, and the general community.

Here's another approach, which will also bring your resources and opponents into the planning process.

Goal	Action	By whom	By when	Resources and support needed	Possible opponents
Reduction of teen smoking by 40%	Tobacco-buying sting	Pete, jane, with kids	May 15, 2023	Kids for undercover buys Permission from police chief	Tobacco retailers Chamber of Commerce?

PUTTING THE PLAN TOGETHER

The entire plan, covering all six of the above steps, should be formally written down. The process of writing will help clarify your thinking. The written version will be available to bring us back in line when "scope creep" occurs: we wobble away from our basic plan.

As we have suggested, some groups might be happy working with a loose-leaf binder, with separate sections for each of the main planning steps. However, others may prefer to get all the planning for one major action onto one "Campaign Planning Chart."

In this example, budget cuts have been proposed that will affect the funding for a clinic that offers the only health care available to the poor in the neighborhood. Your group is advocating an increase in funding for the clinic, and opening a new clinic to serve an area now without health-care facilities.

Goals	Resources & Assets	Support / Opposition	Targets / Agents	Strategies	Action Steps
Better health care for the poor in Jefferson County.	Personnel: 1 organizer, 50% time Secretary, 25% time 6 volunteers Need 5 - 8 more volunteers   Budget: $2000 Need additional $1000	Allies: Poor People's Alliance Medical Watch of Jefferson County   Opponents: County Health Care Agency	Possible targets of change:   Key members of the health care committee – Smith and Jones   Possible agents of change: Dr. Peters The Medical Association	Educate community about need	Hold meetings Identify and contact sympathetic media representatives

 

Resources:
MW07.indd (ala.org)

Developing an Advocacy Plan in 5 steps Advocacy Plan Guide

501 Commons.org Resources for Advocacy & Community Engagement

Tell Your Advocacy Story

Storytelling for Advocacy This worksheet gives tips and an overview of why we tell stories.

TED Talks on Storytelling