How to Successfully Build Advocacy into Every Team Member's Role

I was on the road working with a client last week. And the CEO there asked me the most awesome question that I was super excited to answer. The minute we had the conversation, I knew it was one that we needed to have on the podcast as well, because it applies to absolutely every direct service nonprofit.

I was on-site to help the client develop some advocacy strategies that were focused on specific desired results, involving particular decisionmaking bodies. But in the course of the conversation, the CEO said to me, “I'm so seeing the value of this work and how much impact it can have when we have a focused team working on a specific advocacy goal. It makes me think, what can we do to train every member of our staff to include advocacy as part of their jobs? Because I'm realizing it's just like we tell them that fundraising is part of everybody's job. It's everybody's job to build financial support for the organization in their personal circles or wherever they travel. I want that for advocacy as well. How do you do that?”

That’s exactly the right question to ask. What I shared with her was, there are three core skills every staff member is going to need, and you’re going to have to train them. And I can tell you how.

In this episode, we share:

• How one nonprofit staff member turned a chance encounter with a decisionmaker into a big win
• The three core skills your team members need in order to be effective at basic advocacy
• The most valuable advocacy skill you can teach your team, that will serve them everywhere in their life
• How to create an organizational culture that will support advocacy work by all
• The most common organizational culture elements that can inadvertently undermine your efforts, and how to solve them
• The natural and intuitive messaging and engagement approach that will be easy for every team member to learn and use effectively

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