Advocacy: Strategizing, Planning and Measuring Impact

Examples of successful advocacy are rare today, chiefly because many organizations do not spend sufficient time analyzing the specific environment in which they are going to advocate, particularly the main sources of influence in decision-making at various levels.

Tested on dozens of organizations in the past decade, our approach is based on a thorough analysis of the decision-making establishment, with a focus on the key influencers in the process. We help organizations create methodologies to carry out such analysis through a heavily qualitative approach based on interviews and consultations with experts and stakeholders.

This preparatory work helps organizations map the main networks of influencers and their characteristics, empowering them to build tactical alliances and impactful advocacy. Actors we study include institutions that propose, draft and approve laws and policies, people with influence serving in these institutions as well as external players (organizations, groups of interests, individuals) who directly or indirectly shape the decision-making process.

Our coaching and workshops take the clients through all stages of advocacy planning: field research, strategizing, advocacy campaign design and impact evaluation.

Specifically, these advocacy planning workshops help clients to:

• Think strategically about how to set goals and targets in advocacy
• Design fact-based advocacy campaigns
• Create methodologies to assess the impact of advocacy
• Design research that supports targeted advocacy projects
• Create methodologies to analyze and identify the key influencers in the policy making process