An advocacy campaign can drive higher levels of engagement among your supporters, and is a great way to connect with donors outside of fundraising drives. To be successful, however, an advocacy campaign needs to be well planned and executed.
In today’s digital and mobile-first world, successful nonprofit advocacy requires a highly-engaging, multi-channel campaign.
Especially if your mission revolves around social, political, or environmental issues, don’t lose sight of the fact that an election is rapidly approaching. Your constituents certainly won’t!
In addition to the environment created by the pandemic, the “election effect” will play a major role in shaping the fundraising landscape in the months to come. Advocacy campaigns are the perfect way to tap into that energy and mobilize your base around a particular cause.
Let’s walk through a few main points to keep in mind if you decide that an advocacy campaign is the right move for your organization. We’ll cover:
- The Benefits of Advocacy Campaigns
- How to Develop a Multi-Channel Outreach Strategy
- Investing in a Digital Toolkit
- Strategies to Empower Your Advocates and Volunteers
Anchoring your advocacy campaigns with digital tools is an essential element for success today. Let’s get started.
The Benefits of Advocacy Campaigns
Advocacy campaigns come in all shapes and sizes. (Click here for a few great examples of nonprofit advocacy in action.) They range from year-long strategic initiatives to influence legislation to smaller, spur-of-the-moment petition campaigns in direct reaction to a recent event. What unites all advocacy campaigns, though, is a sense of urgency, movement, and action.
Put simply, an advocacy campaign is an initiative with the goal of generating specific change. During these campaigns, nonprofits raise awareness for a cause and bring supporters together in taking action.
The active nature of advocacy campaigns is what makes them extremely engaging when planned well, which snowballs into a number of benefits for your organization. Some of these benefits include:
- mobilization of your community around a specific action or issue related to your mission;
- great fundraising opportunities with well-timed and well-placed donation asks;
- growth of your supporter list, which translates into increased long-term support;
- easy ways to incorporate multi-channel and mobile-centric strategies that fuel even more engagement and increased visibility for your cause; and,
- meaningful engagement with supporters around an issue to draw them closer to your mission and ultimately retain their support for the long-run
Advocacy campaigns tap into your supporters’ desires to effect meaningful change by positioning your organization as the shared outlet or mouthpiece through which they can all band together. In these campaigns, it’s your job to energize them, inspire them, and give them the resources they’ll need to spread the word and take action.
Plus, the rise of social networking can help spread the word farther as your supporters can share your campaign message with their own friends and family. This leverages the concept of social proof to get more people to contribute as they see the cause their loved ones care so much about.
Think of it this way—the new relationships that you started through your advocacy campaign will tend to last longer and generate more support over time because your message is very likely to continue resonating with those passionate supporters.
Plus, advocacy campaigns are a different way for your supporters to give back without having to dive deeper into their pockets. This drives additional engagement that builds stronger donors and supporters relationships while bolstering your mission further.
To really get the ball rolling for your advocacy campaign and start seeing these benefits, you’ll need to develop a multi-channel outreach strategy.
How to Develop a Multi-Channel Outreach Strategy
With a multi-channel marketing strategy, the main idea is to use each of your communication and engagement outlets to generate and drive more traffic to both one another and ultimately to the main target action. In the case of an advocacy campaign, that target action might be signing a petition, calling a representative, or registering for a virtual advocacy event. The action will depend on your specific goals and the context of the campaign.
The communication outlets you might use include:
- your website;
- social media;
- digital ads;
- email;
- text messages; and,
- phone calls.
Remember, all of these channels will lead back to your website, so you’ll want to design a landing page. You’ll likely end up using some of the same strategies you would use to design your donation page. Some of these strategies (according to Morweb’s guide to designing effective donation pages) include a strong call-to-action, contrasting colors, and mobile accessibility.
Here’s what you can expect a well-designed multi-channel approach to look like: Digital ads, SEO efforts on your blog, and/or your Google AdWords all drive traffic to your website. Content on your website, like informational posts about your advocacy campaign, supply material to promote on social media and email, which then drive more traffic back to your website.
Be sure to keep in mind the channels your supporters respond most positively to. Then you can specifically target the appropriate audiences across each channel. By using preferred platforms and including personal details like specific supporters’ names, you can encourage engagement and drive those most likely to contribute their time deeper into your campaign.
Investing in a Digital Toolkit
As mentioned above, going digital is essential to advocacy success. Following the latest online trends could take one of several forms depending on the nature of your campaign, including:
- an advocacy solution that enables you to get the signatures you need or automatically connect supporters to their representative;
- a fully mobile-optimized website, or a standalone microsite just for the campaign; and,
- communication and outreach software, like email, texting, and social posting tools.
Software used to promote advocacy campaigns comes in a wide variety of forms, and some are specialized around particular sectors, like political campaigns. Salsa’s top picks for advocacy software provide a good overview of the range of options available to get your research started.
Your campaign’s particular goals will determine the exact tools you might integrate into your advocacy toolkit and strategy. Whichever goals you have, there are a few things to keep in mind before investing in a new software solution:
- Prioritize ease of use. Advocacy is all about action and speed. Make it as easy and fast as possible for your supporters to complete the target action you’re asking them to do. Think of today’s political campaigns. After a supporter registers with their tools, all it takes is one click to complete a donation. This streamlined user experience greatly reduces the chances that a supporter might rethink the expense or get lost or second guess themselves along the way.
- Mobile-optimize everything. As of March 2020, 52% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Sites that look and work great on screens of all sizes are essential; nothing kills engagement faster than a website that simply doesn’t respond on a smartphone.
- Look for an integrated solution. Advocacy campaigns generate a lot of data, and you’ll want access to sort, analyze, and benefit from that information down the line. Simply being able to automatically report new contacts into your CRM can significantly reduce the logistical challenges your team faces.
- Create action alerts. Just like how notifications on our smartphones keep us continually engaged, your advocacy campaign should aim to do the same. Pre-configured action alerts in your software are an essential part of today’s advocacy strategy because they quickly get the word out about your campaign opportunities via multiple channels. A typical example might be something like, “Bill X will be going to a vote tomorrow; click here to urge your representative to vote no!”
Most organizations today recognize that digital engagement is the key to success when it comes to engaging broad audiences, so it’s wise to invest in a strong toolkit.
Strategies to Empower Your Advocates and Volunteers
Remember, it’s your organization’s job to inspire, empower, and equip your advocates to take action during your campaign.
If you take the time to develop engaging targeted actions for specifically researched campaigns, you’ve got to make the most of them. Actively helping supporters take the next steps for getting involved with your campaign creates a smoother experience that, when done well, keeps them engaged for longer.
Make the most of your engaging advocacy software with strategies like the following:
- Create communication templates. If you’re asking supporters to send emails, make calls, or post on social media as part of your advocacy campaign, creating easy-to-modify templates for each of those communications will drastically simplify the task for them.
- Provide plenty of educational resources. Create one-pagers explaining your cause, positions, and goals. Upload and share relevant articles, studies, and legislation to an online library on your website for advocates to reference. Be sure to include links to these helpful resources (or the whole library) in your communications with supporters.
- Create extra opportunities for engagement. Encouraging supporters to create and share their own content has been shown to drive significant revenue increases for some organizations. Ask advocates to write posts or record their own videos answering the question, “Why does this cause matter to you?” Then, ask them to share their content using a unique hashtag, or get permission to repost it on your organization’s profile.
You’re free to get as creative as you want to come up with new ways to engage and empower your supporters. You just need to first make sure you’ve got the underlying infrastructure and toolkit in place. After that, the sky’s the limit!
Advocacy campaigns are some of the most engaging and effective ways for nonprofits to reach wider audiences, deepen their relationships, and affect change.
If an advocacy campaign sounds like it might be right for your organization, get started researching and planning as early as possible. Remember, these campaigns are logistically complicated and generate a lot of data. By preparing ahead of time and being ready to jump into action when the moment arises, you’ll position your organization to make the biggest difference possible.
Good luck!