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Building an Advocacy Plan . Dana M. Faulkner/ CHANGE Project Global Advocacy for RBM Wash DC 9/1-3/04. What is Advocacy?. Advocacy: an attempt to persuade or convince…. Three Crucial Questions:. WHO are you trying to convince? (audience) WHAT are you trying to convince them of ? (goal)
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Building an Advocacy Plan Dana M. Faulkner/ CHANGE Project Global Advocacy for RBM Wash DC 9/1-3/04
What is Advocacy? • Advocacy: an attempt to persuade or convince…
Three Crucial Questions: • WHO are you trying to convince? (audience) • WHAT are you trying to convince them of ? (goal) • HOW are you going to convince them? (messages & delivery channels)
Elements of an advocacy plan • Goals • Target audiences • Message points • Delivery Channels • Tactics / Materials • Outcome Measures
Why an Advocacy Plan? • Developing an Advocacy Plan is a systematic way to define, test and reach agreement on the key elements of an advocacy activity • More importantly…
An Advocacy Plan • It allows us to access the (irreplaceable) collective knowledge of the group
Three Crucial Questions • WHO are you trying to convince? (audience) • WHAT are you trying to convince them of ? (goal) • HOW are you going to convince them? (messages & delivery channels)
What are you trying to convince them of? • You can advocate for a change in belief or a change in action • The former may be necessary but usually not sufficient for impact • The former is also expensive, time consuming, and hard to measure
Accordingly…. • This planning process focuses on advocacy for changing actions not (just ) beliefs
How we will work • We’ll use a series of short discussion sessions and a simple analytical framework to “deconstruct” your advocacy goals and develop the inputs needed for your plan
Advocacy Plan Discussion Sessions • Three: Defining Preliminary Goals • Four: Deconstructing Goals • Five: Deconstructing Target Audiences • Six: Developing Compelling Messages • Seven: Test and Refine • Eight: Pulling It Together
Desired Outcome • First draft of a Global Advocacy Plan for RBM • Common understanding of critical elements • A common framework for further review and refinement
Advocacy: • Is not a magic bullet • It may be simple but it’s not necessarily easy • Requires discipline, resources, and clarityof aims
Session ThreeDefining Preliminary Goals • What are the Most Important Advocacy Goals for RBM? • Who are the Most Important Target audiences?
Session FourDeconstructing Goals • You can advocate for a change in belief or a change in action • The former may be necessary but usually not sufficient for impact • The former is also expensive, time consuming, and hard to measure
An Action Framework • It begins with a goal that the program wants to achieve • Then it poses a series of questions to unearth the specific actions and actors that are needed to achieve the goal
RBM Advocacy Goal:___________________________ Action that needs to be taken Primary actor (who can take this action?) Secondary Action Sec’dary Actor (who can take this action?) Motivations/ Barriers/ Incentives
Session FiveDeconstructing Audiences • Motivations/mindset – What is going on in their world? What is important to them? What are their priorities? • Barriers and Incentives – What are the barriers that they face in taking the desired action? What incentives could speak to their existing motivations? • Access Points – How do they receive their information? What sources do they find credible? What events, types of communication or engagement influence them?
RBM Advocacy Goal:___________________________ Action that needs to be taken Primary actor (who can take this action?) Secondary Action Sec’dary Actor (who can take this action?) Motivations/ Barriers/ Incentives
Session 6Developing Compelling Messages In order to make the benefits of your program compelling to the target audiences, your advocacy messages must be framed in the context of their concerns and priorities Select one or two of the target audiences that you are most familiar with and draft a message that you would find compelling