Advocacy

Here, we give immediate and ongoing strategic tips on how to build and sustain your board, including identifying the traits you want in a board member, defining board terms, focusing on growing recruitment, and developing a board culture as part of an organizational culture. 

Kyle Wagenschutz is a Partner at City Thread, a national nonprofit organization working to connect people and communities and change the way that local leaders think about infrastructure projects with an eye on mobility for all. Kyle was also recognized as a White House Champion of Change under President Obama for his work leading Memphis’s first active transportation master plan. The program secured funding to construct more than 200 miles of new and dedicated bike lanes.

He sat down with us to give his answers to 7 Questions.

Every year, advocacy and issue-based groups go to Washington, D.C., or their state capitol for lobby days to connect with legislators and impact legislation. Very often, there can be competition with dozens of other groups for attention, making it hard to stand out. Lobby days can be complicated, but we’re here to help.

Advocacy strategies can be time-consuming to create and difficult to execute. We have often written about the core elements of an advocacy plan, but taking the time to develop your advocacy strategy is an important step. But where do you begin? Try using strategy tools.

When used right, the power of advocacy storytelling with data can help move your issue forward in a compelling way; when used wrong, it can make your issue more complex than it is and put your issue at the back of the pack. Learn how to effectively incorporate data into your advocacy storytelling and bring clarity and impact to your message. 

In the wake of actions taken by the new administration, remembering that advocacy work can have a meaningful impact on the outcomes of elections can be a strong motivator. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and our opponents aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

Learn effective legislative advocacy strategies with our step-by-step guide and discover how to influence policy in your community. 

As we move past the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, it’s important to be focused on growing grassroots actions for the upcoming years.

When you’re a part of an advocacy campaign, spotting issues and fixing them are not always easy. In the realm of advocacy, there will always be bumps in the road, that is the nature of making change. Identifying common advocacy hurdles and proactively planning for solutions is a good strategy that can improve your campaign. 

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.

What is direct employee feedback, and how can it help you? Building a cohesive, effective team requires effort and intentional communication at every level. As we strive to improve our skills and abilities, expand our knowledge, and strengthen our teamwork, we rely more and more on open and clear communication. To boost our efforts, we have instituted a new set of guidelines for giving and receiving internal feedback, and we’d like to share a bit about it with you.

Grief at work: In 2022, as part of our DEI efforts, our team started looking at factors that cause stress in the workplace. One that became apparent was grieving at work. At TCW, we define a grief event as often occurring when a friend or loved one dies, a friend or loved one becomes ill, a pet dies, or a relationship ends. These grief events are frequent in the workplace, and we estimate that a typical employee will experience this at least once, if not more while working at TCW.