The Campaign Workshop Blog

Advocacy Engagement Goes Further with A Funnel

Engaging individuals in advocacy efforts is an essential part of creating lasting change. But it can be a challenge to get people to take meaningful action, and even more challenging to keep them engaged over the long term. That's where the advocacy engagement funnel comes in.Think of the advocacy engagement funnel to turn supporters into engaged activists. It involves defining high-value and low-value contacts and moving action-takers towards more meaningful actions. The more personal the action,…

Grasstops vs. Grassroots Advocacy: What's the Difference?

Grasstops and grassroots are both an important part to any successful advocacy campaign. Maybe you’ve heard the term and have asked, “What’s the difference?" They sure sound the same. Well, you're not the only one scratching your head. Political and advocacy definitions can be confusing. Too often in this work, we assume that someone knows what these things mean without offering a real definition. Even folks who have been around for a long time get these terms confused. So, in our never-…

Volunteer Recruitment Tactics to Grow Grassroots

Volunteer recruitment is never easy. It usually starts like this:The campaign is just getting going, although your community seems enthusiastic, you are just not getting the massive volunteer support you expected. You keep getting all these excuses from your field director and team.You are now starting to get a little discouraged, you tell yourself that you are just getting started, that you can knock on doors alone, that it's too early to knock on doors, you'll wait till Labor Day to find…

Using Community Advocacy to Make the Change Your Community Deserves 

If you are thinking of working for a community advocacy group, here are some tips to get you started. As we have seen, both globally and locally, the best advocates for change are people who can tell a story that move people towards action — no matter their age or walk of life. The exciting thing about advocacy is that there are hundreds of worthy causes ready for you to join in on. Once you find what you feel most passionate about, you’ll be one step closer to taking these…

Advocacy Campaign Strategies to Accomplish Your Goals

Executing a successful and impactful advocacy campaign requires time, dedication, and organization. In today’s day and age, there is strong competition from various advocacy issues fighting for attention, so to run a successful campaign, you will need to be ready to hit the ground running. We have put together several tips to help ensure you can run an effective and winning advocacy campaign. Provide your campaign a clear and measurable goal.Frequently, organizations that wish to run…

Remote Work Can Create a Robust Company Culture 

We are now three years from the start of our remote work journey, and we have built a company culture based on remote work - we are not a hybrid workplace - we do have access to offices, but we are still focused on making remote work a vibrant experience for our team. But it takes time and effort. Remote work is both a blessing and a curse. Virtual workplaces can allow your folks to have greater flexibility, have a more diverse employee pool, and reduce overhead. Telecommuting can also be a…

Here's a Rundown on What Union Printers Are and Why They're Important in the Political Space

Why are unions and union printers important? Post-pandemic, unionization efforts experienced a surge of support in the public sector, from coffee chains to online retailers. It is estimated that in 2022 alone that more than 16 million people were represented by a union and 60 million workers wanted to join a union but were unable to do so (Economic Policy Institute). Public support for…

Advocacy Training: Everything You Want to Know 

Martín Diego Garcia has devoted his professional career to building a more representative democracy.  For the past nine years. Martin has developed advocacy training, and trained and developed the leadership abilities of thousands of candidates, campaign operatives, and advocates. He is passionate about uplifting marginalized communities and advancing a progressive and inclusive political agenda. Martín began his career as a member of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund Institute’s political team. He also…

Email List Hygiene:  A Clean Will Grow Your Organization

Let’s face it, most folks don’t spend enough time working on their email list hygiene. There is always something wrong with your email engagement. If you are working with emails, you can always fix something. Contrary to popular opinion, most email problems stem from list problems. Nevertheless, most folks just focus on email content instead of list hygiene. Fixing subject lines and A/B testing are easier fixes than digging into the nitty gritty work of fixing a bad email list.  Clean…

Patch-Through Calls for Public Affairs & How to Make Them Count

Organizations and campaigns have used patch-through calls for years when they need many people to reach out to elected officials. But in an era of cord-cutting and digital everything, will folks still take the time to get patched-through to a lawmaker? And will lawmakers listen? The answer is maybe.  Have a strategy first – Folks often make the mistake of choosing tactics before strategy and with patch-throughs being such a long-term tactic for advocacy, folks sometimes just…

Getting Started with Advocacy Opposition Research Opposition research is an important component of any advocacy campaign’s messaging strategy. This research is more commonly associated with candidate campaigns— however, being able to articulate a contrast with the other side is equally important in the advocacy space. If you want to be successful in effecting policy change, you need a comprehensive understanding of the landscape you’re…

Advocacy Strategy and Advocacy Tactics: Do you Know the Difference? 

You and your organization have worked hard to create great policy. Now, how do you get Congress or your state legislature to turn policy recommendations into policy reality? You need to advocate for it. Advocacy can come in many shapes and budget sizes. But whether it’s round or square, big or small, you need to have a plan. You need a clear and detailed advocacy strategy that outlines your overall goal and effective tactics that will help you cross the finish line. Let’s look…

The 12 Most Damaging Advocacy Myths:  How to Break Bad Advocacy Campaign Habits

With advocacy campaign season in full swing, it's time to clear the air on some common advocacy myths about what will and won't hurt your advocacy group.You don’t need an explicit advocacy strategyYour advocacy campaign will grow and change over time, but that just means having a firm advocacy strategy to guide your campaign is all the more important. Take the time…

Online Advocacy Campaign Consultants: Should You  Manage Your Digital  Presence or Hire a Consultant?

Online advocacy and digital engagement can grow your movement and hiring an advocacy campaign consultant can help, but achieving real online advocacy results can be tough in both execution and budget.   Digital platforms are now one of the most efficient ways to reach a large…

But First, What is an Advocacy Message? 

Advocacy message development can be challenging, so we are here to help! You and your team will want to develop a consistent message that aligns with your values, but at the same time, you will want to craft one that will be applicable to any number of audiences you are reaching out to. You don’t want to string together run on sentences, but you also don’t want to miss any crucial information. Advocacy issues are usually complex, affect thousands (or millions) of people, and contain multitudes. How do we…