EU Advocacy and

Communications Workshop

September, 2015

Iskra Kirova, Eleanor Kelly, Antonia Zafeiri

Open Society Foundations

Session objectives

• Understand advocacy as structured and strategic activity

• Grasp the building blocks of advocacy planning

• Enrich and perfect your toolbox and advocacy skills

What is advocacy?

OSF definition

Advocacy is an organized, sustained and

strategic attempt to change policy, practice

and/or attitude by presenting evidence and

arguments for how and why change should

happen.

OSF definition

Advocacy is an organized, sustained and

strategic attempt to change policy, practice

and/or attitude by presenting evidence and

arguments for how and why change should

happen.

Persuasion and influence

• Establish credibility

• Establish relationships = advocacy assets

• Know the policy process

Theory of change

Core elements of good strategy

Clarity on:

• The change that you want to see

• Who has the power to make that change

• Who or what can induce them to make that

change

• How can you wield those levers or press

those buttons

Theory of change

[XX change – your goal] will happen if [target]

does [action that brings about goal] and they

will be induced to do this by [XX tactic/change]

Goal and objectives

• Goal: overall vision, long-term

• Objective: a specific outcome measurable

over time

• Objective = Success indicator

Setting SMART objectives

• Specific: one particular event/change

• Measurable: quantitative or observable in

some way

• Achievable: possible given your resources

and time

• Relevant: to the real problem

• Timebound: when you want to see it happen

Identifying targets

• Who has the power to make the change?

What and who might influence them?

• 5 Ps of influence: press, public, peers, policy

community, partners

• Map friends, foes and floaters

Timeline and opportunities

• Political processes and events

• Self-generated opportunities

• Unforeseen events and risks

Messaging

• An effective message reflects the strategic

decision an organization makes about the

frame for the discussion, reinforces its

desired position and resonates with the

organization’s target audience.

• Good messages are short, clear and

persuasive

• Repeat your messages at every opportunity

Messaging

Think of your target audience

Motivation: What does my audience care most about? (It may be different to what you care about)

Resistance: What barriers does my audience have to our message, and how can we overcome their resistance?

Ask: What specifically do I want my audience to do?

Incentive: What does my audience have to gain?

1. Who Is Your

Audience?

2. Find a shared value.

(motivation)

3. Address

their barrier.

(resistance)

5. Offer them

an incentive.

4. Make your ask.

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

• Supporting point

Framing

• Framing your message means crafting and

delivering it in a way that is compelling,

meaningful and memorable for your

audience.

• Politicians and media are more likely to pay

attention to your message if you frame it

within the context of an upcoming policy

decision, major summit, elections, crisis etc

Audience: • Young Person

Goal: • Persuade them to stop

smoking

Frame 1 • Smoking as a

health problem

Assessment

•Young People think they will live forever; they are not influenced by long term repercussions

Frame 2

•Smoking is unattractive

Assessment

•Better Frame. Successfully identified young people’s concerns.

Tools and tactics

Direct policy advocacy (lobbying): the organized, sustained, and strategic effort to directly influence a specific government policy or practice.

• Tools: meetings, small roundtables and group consultations with officials, policy memos, letters and policy briefs, email, input into official papers, resolutions

Top 10 tips for lobbying success

• Know what you want from the meeting

• Have full and fall back asks

• Have done your homework on your target and issue – and show that you have

• Be in charge of the agenda for the meeting

• Show you understand their position and constraints

• Speak language they understand

• Engage in dialogue

• Praise where it’s due

• Be ready to press your point – politely

• Follow up

Tools and tactics

Public (indirect) advocacy: public-facing efforts undertaken to build support for or against an issue or to influence public attitudes on a larger scale.

• Tools: large conferences, events, coalition and alliance building, media and social media, content production (videos, visuals, websites, exhibitions), community building (petitions, sign ups), other forms of mobilisation

Communications Toolkit

• Reports - policy briefs and policy backgrounders ; factsheets

• Memos on forthcoming issues

• Articles with other organisations

• One to one briefings

• Press Briefings

• Public Events

• Targeted Roundtables

• Public Speeches

• Open Letters

• Social Media

• Targeted communications via

email groups and lists

• Multimedia

• Newsletters

• Data Visualisation

• Media content

• Media focussed event-

delivering a petition, silent

march etc.

• Data visualisation

• Video and Photos

• Vox Pop Interviews

Tools for Indirect Advocacy

1. Media Relations

2. Social Media

3. Public Campaigns

Top tips for Engaging with Media

• Identify right reporters (develop media lists)

• Cultivate personal relations with reporters

• Become useful to them. They’ll pay back the

favour

• Press release/conference: do you have news

to share? What’s your news hook?

• Timing is key

Social Media

• Twitter and Facebook are centred on building

a community/social network of allies or like-

minded people.

• Use social media to promote your content

and build your audience.

• Is your target audience on social media?

• Do you have the resources for genuine

engagement with your followers?

Twitter

• A well-maintained Twitter presence can help

frame your organization and its leaders as

major players

• Tweets are the new press releases.

• An active Twitter presence can raise the

profile of problems the organization

addresses and the solutions they provide

Public Campaigning

• Mobilizing public support to press decision makers for change

• Involves direct activities designed to achieve a particular purpose

• Impactful campaigns need a clear Ask

• Think what stories will motivate people to support your cause

• Ask yourself: do you really need it?

Azerbaijan Campaign

Build Coalitions

• Enlist all allies and similar minded organization

• Seek supporters outside the usual circle of grantees and partners.

• Broadening your base of support by reaching out to groups that are not necessarily natural allies can serve as a bulwark against attacks and increase your legitimacy in the public eye.

Monitoring and evaluation

Why?

• Measure success

• Adjust strategy

• Set priorities

• For accountability

When? Ongoing

How? SMART objectives

Monitoring and evaluation

EU leverage &

relevance OSF assets OSF priority

Opportunities & need for

advocacy Advocacy of others in

Bxls Mode of OSEPI

involvement

Drones Medium –

mainly MS Strong Strong

Medium:

Dutch presidency 2016?

Other op’s in MS Weak Proactive

MENA Medium to

strong Weak Medium to strong

Medium:

Strong on Isr/Pal, less on

others;

ENP review

Medium to strong:

EMHRN & others On demand

SW Asia Weak to

medium Weak to medium:

foundations Medium

Weak to medium:

Iran in case of nuclear

deal

Weak to medium:

ENNA on Afghanistan;

less on Iran & Pak On demand

Central Asia Weak

Weak to medium:

foundations but

little advocacy

input

Weak

Medium:

Uzbek: cotton

Turkmen: PCA

Kazakh: PCA

Strong: IPHR, EUCAM,

ASI On demand

HRDN EU

HR policy Medium to

strong Medium to strong Medium

Medium to strong: new HR

Action Plan Strong: HRDN Own initiative

Burma Medium Strong Strong Medium Weak Proactive

…etc

Monitoring and evaluation

Questions to ask:

• Did we achieve our objectives/goal? Why? Why not?

• What were our initial hypotheses and assumptions? Were they correct?

• Was our theory of change accurate?

• Why this mix of tools, tactics and activities?

• What surprises, successes, regrets, and lessons

• emerged?

• With hindsight, what might we have done differently?

• How would we amend our strategy to reflect the above?

Literature

• The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy (2011)

This accessible scholarly article defines advocacy through a series of historical examples and frameworks for understanding the goals of advocacy and the changing roles of advocates. It also engages with the challenges of measuring advocacy and introduces methods for understanding and evaluating it in practice.

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_elusive_craft_of_evaluating_advocacy

• Annie E Casey Foundation: A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy (2007)

This publication by the Annie E. Casey Foundation outlines and defines several different theories of change, as well as how these theories can be implemented, measured, and evaluated. This guide is a user’s guide written for foundations and incorporates case studies and tools for engaging with policy advocacy evaluation.

http://www.aecf.org/resources/a-guide-to-measuring-advocacy-and-policy/

• Harvard Family Research Project: A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy (2007)

Published in conjunction with the Annie E. Casey guide, A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy outlines a way to identify and talk about the outcomes associated with advocacy and policy work. The guide highlights a core set of outcome categories and provides concrete direction for those searching for what to measure about their advocacy and policy strategies.

http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/original/application/6bdf92c3d7e970e7270588109e23b678.pdf

• Harvard Family Research Project: A User’s Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning (2009)

A toolkit for advocates or those evaluating them to understand advocacy plan each advocate is employing and subsequently to measure how effective those plans are.

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.afrea.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/User_Guide_Advocacy_Evaluati.pd

• Building National Campaigns: Activists, alliances, and how change happens

This book draws on Oxfam International's experience in supporting national labor-rights campaigning initiatives at local and national level. The authors describe and analyze what happened in five campaigns in Colombia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/building-national-campaigns-activists-alliances-and-how-change-happens-115412

• Amnesty International: Literature Review on Active Participation and Human Rights Research and Advocacy (2010)

A four-section literature review focused on understanding participation, approaches to participatory frameworks for human rights research, participatory frameworks for advocacy and campaigning, and creating a culture of participation within an organization. Section three, participatory frameworks for advocacy and campaigning, is most relevant to OSI’s work and goes into detail identifying different types of advocacy and methods for effectively engaging in them.

https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/LiteratureReviewonActiveParticipationandHumanRightsResearchandAdvocacy.pdf