Policy Advocacy

Bob Keefe is the executive director of E2 - a nonpartisan organization which aims to provide business perspectives on environmental issues -  and oversees their work on a national scale. Keefe primarily focuses his attention on the economic benefits of smart environmental policies; the clean energy economy; jobs and related issues.

Legislative Advocacy is important because there comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to take a stand. While this moment is always more dramatic in the movies, it’s possible that you’ve come to this realization regarding a particular policy or issue in your locality. And if you’ve decided that you want to make a change in policy and advocate for your issue in your local legislature, it’s time for a little Legislative Advocacy 101.

Maintaining message discipline is critical to advocacy message campaigns. If your organization doesn’t have a advocacy message document, or even a mission statement, it’s time you create one. The statement should be specific to your work, but broad enough that all of your campaigns are able to fit comfortably under it, That way, you can continue to maintain overall organizational message discipline over the life of a specific advocacy campaign. It should also be brief—no more than a couple lines on a page, two sentences max.