EU Advocacy and
Communications Workshop
September, 2015
Iskra Kirova, Eleanor Kelly, Antonia Zafeiri
Open Society Foundations
Session objectives
• Understand advocacy as structured and strategic activity
• Grasp the building blocks of advocacy planning
• Enrich and perfect your toolbox and advocacy skills
What is advocacy?
OSF definition
Advocacy is an organized, sustained and
strategic attempt to change policy, practice
and/or attitude by presenting evidence and
arguments for how and why change should
happen.
OSF definition
Advocacy is an organized, sustained and
strategic attempt to change policy, practice
and/or attitude by presenting evidence and
arguments for how and why change should
happen.
Persuasion and influence
• Establish credibility
• Establish relationships = advocacy assets
• Know the policy process
Theory of change
Core elements of good strategy
Clarity on:
• The change that you want to see
• Who has the power to make that change
• Who or what can induce them to make that
change
• How can you wield those levers or press
those buttons
Theory of change
[XX change – your goal] will happen if [target]
does [action that brings about goal] and they
will be induced to do this by [XX tactic/change]
Goal and objectives
• Goal: overall vision, long-term
• Objective: a specific outcome measurable
over time
• Objective = Success indicator
Setting SMART objectives
• Specific: one particular event/change
• Measurable: quantitative or observable in
some way
• Achievable: possible given your resources
and time
• Relevant: to the real problem
• Timebound: when you want to see it happen
Identifying targets
• Who has the power to make the change?
What and who might influence them?
• 5 Ps of influence: press, public, peers, policy
community, partners
• Map friends, foes and floaters
Timeline and opportunities
• Political processes and events
• Self-generated opportunities
• Unforeseen events and risks
Messaging
• An effective message reflects the strategic
decision an organization makes about the
frame for the discussion, reinforces its
desired position and resonates with the
organization’s target audience.
• Good messages are short, clear and
persuasive
• Repeat your messages at every opportunity
Messaging
Think of your target audience
Motivation: What does my audience care most about? (It may be different to what you care about)
Resistance: What barriers does my audience have to our message, and how can we overcome their resistance?
Ask: What specifically do I want my audience to do?
Incentive: What does my audience have to gain?
1. Who Is Your
Audience?
2. Find a shared value.
(motivation)
3. Address
their barrier.
(resistance)
5. Offer them
an incentive.
4. Make your ask.
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
• Supporting point
Framing
• Framing your message means crafting and
delivering it in a way that is compelling,
meaningful and memorable for your
audience.
• Politicians and media are more likely to pay
attention to your message if you frame it
within the context of an upcoming policy
decision, major summit, elections, crisis etc
Audience: • Young Person
Goal: • Persuade them to stop
smoking
Frame 1 • Smoking as a
health problem
Assessment
•Young People think they will live forever; they are not influenced by long term repercussions
Frame 2
•Smoking is unattractive
Assessment
•Better Frame. Successfully identified young people’s concerns.
Tools and tactics
Direct policy advocacy (lobbying): the organized, sustained, and strategic effort to directly influence a specific government policy or practice.
• Tools: meetings, small roundtables and group consultations with officials, policy memos, letters and policy briefs, email, input into official papers, resolutions
Top 10 tips for lobbying success
• Know what you want from the meeting
• Have full and fall back asks
• Have done your homework on your target and issue – and show that you have
• Be in charge of the agenda for the meeting
• Show you understand their position and constraints
• Speak language they understand
• Engage in dialogue
• Praise where it’s due
• Be ready to press your point – politely
• Follow up
Tools and tactics
Public (indirect) advocacy: public-facing efforts undertaken to build support for or against an issue or to influence public attitudes on a larger scale.
• Tools: large conferences, events, coalition and alliance building, media and social media, content production (videos, visuals, websites, exhibitions), community building (petitions, sign ups), other forms of mobilisation
Communications Toolkit
• Reports - policy briefs and policy backgrounders ; factsheets
• Memos on forthcoming issues
• Articles with other organisations
• One to one briefings
• Press Briefings
• Public Events
• Targeted Roundtables
• Public Speeches
• Open Letters
• Social Media
• Targeted communications via
email groups and lists
• Multimedia
• Newsletters
• Data Visualisation
• Media content
• Media focussed event-
delivering a petition, silent
march etc.
• Data visualisation
• Video and Photos
• Vox Pop Interviews
Tools for Indirect Advocacy
1. Media Relations
2. Social Media
3. Public Campaigns
Top tips for Engaging with Media
• Identify right reporters (develop media lists)
• Cultivate personal relations with reporters
• Become useful to them. They’ll pay back the
favour
• Press release/conference: do you have news
to share? What’s your news hook?
• Timing is key
Social Media
• Twitter and Facebook are centred on building
a community/social network of allies or like-
minded people.
• Use social media to promote your content
and build your audience.
• Is your target audience on social media?
• Do you have the resources for genuine
engagement with your followers?
• A well-maintained Twitter presence can help
frame your organization and its leaders as
major players
• Tweets are the new press releases.
• An active Twitter presence can raise the
profile of problems the organization
addresses and the solutions they provide
Public Campaigning
• Mobilizing public support to press decision makers for change
• Involves direct activities designed to achieve a particular purpose
• Impactful campaigns need a clear Ask
• Think what stories will motivate people to support your cause
• Ask yourself: do you really need it?
Azerbaijan Campaign
Build Coalitions
• Enlist all allies and similar minded organization
• Seek supporters outside the usual circle of grantees and partners.
• Broadening your base of support by reaching out to groups that are not necessarily natural allies can serve as a bulwark against attacks and increase your legitimacy in the public eye.
Monitoring and evaluation
Why?
• Measure success
• Adjust strategy
• Set priorities
• For accountability
When? Ongoing
How? SMART objectives
Monitoring and evaluation
EU leverage &
relevance OSF assets OSF priority
Opportunities & need for
advocacy Advocacy of others in
Bxls Mode of OSEPI
involvement
Drones Medium –
mainly MS Strong Strong
Medium:
Dutch presidency 2016?
Other op’s in MS Weak Proactive
MENA Medium to
strong Weak Medium to strong
Medium:
Strong on Isr/Pal, less on
others;
ENP review
Medium to strong:
EMHRN & others On demand
SW Asia Weak to
medium Weak to medium:
foundations Medium
Weak to medium:
Iran in case of nuclear
deal
Weak to medium:
ENNA on Afghanistan;
less on Iran & Pak On demand
Central Asia Weak
Weak to medium:
foundations but
little advocacy
input
Weak
Medium:
Uzbek: cotton
Turkmen: PCA
Kazakh: PCA
Strong: IPHR, EUCAM,
ASI On demand
HRDN EU
HR policy Medium to
strong Medium to strong Medium
Medium to strong: new HR
Action Plan Strong: HRDN Own initiative
Burma Medium Strong Strong Medium Weak Proactive
…etc
Monitoring and evaluation
Questions to ask:
• Did we achieve our objectives/goal? Why? Why not?
• What were our initial hypotheses and assumptions? Were they correct?
• Was our theory of change accurate?
• Why this mix of tools, tactics and activities?
• What surprises, successes, regrets, and lessons
• emerged?
• With hindsight, what might we have done differently?
• How would we amend our strategy to reflect the above?
Literature
• The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy (2011)
This accessible scholarly article defines advocacy through a series of historical examples and frameworks for understanding the goals of advocacy and the changing roles of advocates. It also engages with the challenges of measuring advocacy and introduces methods for understanding and evaluating it in practice.
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_elusive_craft_of_evaluating_advocacy
• Annie E Casey Foundation: A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy (2007)
This publication by the Annie E. Casey Foundation outlines and defines several different theories of change, as well as how these theories can be implemented, measured, and evaluated. This guide is a user’s guide written for foundations and incorporates case studies and tools for engaging with policy advocacy evaluation.
http://www.aecf.org/resources/a-guide-to-measuring-advocacy-and-policy/
• Harvard Family Research Project: A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy (2007)
Published in conjunction with the Annie E. Casey guide, A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy outlines a way to identify and talk about the outcomes associated with advocacy and policy work. The guide highlights a core set of outcome categories and provides concrete direction for those searching for what to measure about their advocacy and policy strategies.
http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/original/application/6bdf92c3d7e970e7270588109e23b678.pdf
• Harvard Family Research Project: A User’s Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning (2009)
A toolkit for advocates or those evaluating them to understand advocacy plan each advocate is employing and subsequently to measure how effective those plans are.
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.afrea.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/User_Guide_Advocacy_Evaluati.pd
• Building National Campaigns: Activists, alliances, and how change happens
This book draws on Oxfam International's experience in supporting national labor-rights campaigning initiatives at local and national level. The authors describe and analyze what happened in five campaigns in Colombia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/building-national-campaigns-activists-alliances-and-how-change-happens-115412
• Amnesty International: Literature Review on Active Participation and Human Rights Research and Advocacy (2010)
A four-section literature review focused on understanding participation, approaches to participatory frameworks for human rights research, participatory frameworks for advocacy and campaigning, and creating a culture of participation within an organization. Section three, participatory frameworks for advocacy and campaigning, is most relevant to OSI’s work and goes into detail identifying different types of advocacy and methods for effectively engaging in them.
https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/LiteratureReviewonActiveParticipationandHumanRightsResearchandAdvocacy.pdf