Mission-based Advocacy Toolkit from Alliance for Children & Families

© January 2006 The Alliance for Children and Families v
Executive Summary
The Alliance for Children and Families and its member agencies have had a long and
abiding interest in helping the nonprofit human services sector participate fully in
promoting the rights and enhancing the advancement opportunities of children and
families. Its Mission spells this commitment thus:
To strengthen the capacities of North America’s nonprofit child and family-serving
agencies to serve and to advocate for children, families and communities
The Alliance was fortunate to be able to secure funding from the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund to undergird its efforts to attract the clout and concern of the hundreds of
committed board members and volunteers serving nonprofits and this effort coincides
with the foundation’s priority area of enhancing civic participation in our society. Thus
an alliance of interest and resolve resulted in what we have termed the “Building
Community Voices” project, an effort to engage human service providers in advocacy
that enhances and implements the mission of our agencies as well as our own.
The project seeks to promote the resurgence of nonprofit leadership in values-driven
public policy, engage the valuable contributions of board members and volunteers and
motivate the whole structure of human service agencies to utilize their potential in
achieving better policies that enhance their organizational capacity to serve their clients
more effectively.
The Toolkit, therefore, focuses on mission-based advocacy, the process by which
organizations harness the political potential of all the individuals, board members,
trustees, volunteers and staff committed to the organization’s mission to, in concert, take
actions that can lead to more effectively achieve or advance the organization’s goals.
This effort gives salience to the concept of civic participation, an essential value of our
democratic society. So, the Toolkit, by providing valuable, tangible tools to educate you,
your staff, volunteers and board members to organize and implement your advocacy
agenda, helps you to participate tangibly in the democratic decision making process by
voicing ideas and opinions that can result in the improvement of the lives of the
vulnerable in our society and sound and just public policies.
The Toolkit posits that Advocacy is as easy as 1,2,3! It provides reminders to the readers
about what makes the advocacy process glide by highlighting three principal sections or
“legs of a stool” that support effective citizen action:
1. The Basics of Government: the first part of the Toolkit is designed to be a resource
to the reader on the process of making laws, points out the difference between
advocacy and lobbying, and delves into various aspects of advocacy.
2. Addressing Common Barriers: the second part of the Toolkit addresses ways to
overcome six barriers that nonprofit agencies have indicated hold them back from
advocacy and lobbying. It helps dispel some myths that exist about nonprofit
advocacy.