Advocacy for NonProfits

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Advocacy for Non-Profits

• Maine Public Health Association Annual Meeting
• November 3, 2008
• Megan Hannan, American Cancer Society

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By the end of the session, participants will

• Understand the difference between advocacy and
  lobbying
• Understand their role as an advocate
• Develop and practice audience-specific
  communications
• Understand and apply the principles of media
  advocacy
• Identify advocacy tools and resources

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What is Advocacy?

• To plead in favor of
• To educate
• It is legal for non-profits to advocate for their
  issues, without limit.
• It is vital for non-profits to advocate for their
  issues, in order to win!

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What is Lobbying?

• to conduct activities aimed at influencing public
  officials and especially members of a legislative
  body on legislation
• to attempt to influence or sway (as a public
  official) toward a desired action
• Lobbying is legal to a certain point for
  non-profits, and that point depends on an IRS
  designation.

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Where is the line?

• A direct ask for an active piece of legislation.
• It doesnt matter where, when, or how
• If done during work hours, it is lobbying.
• And thats OK for most of us.
• Register with Ethics if lobbying regularly
• Volunteers, home time, citizens can lobby without
  limits, so use them!

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Objective Check

• Understand the difference between advocacy and
  lobbying

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Your Role as an Advocate
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Understanding Power Relations
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Forms of Power

• Electoral / Legislative
• Consumer
• Legal / Regulatory
• Disruptive / Strikes

• Votes
• Money
• Cut profits
• Brand loyalty affected
• Laws and regs
• Free legal help
• Cut profits
• Keep institution from functioning

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Choosing Problems and Issues
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Issue Criteria

• Win real victories to improve peoples lives
• Make people aware of their own power
• Alter relations of power

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further

• It must be worthwhile
• It must be winnable
• It must be widely felt
• It must be deeply felt
• It must be easy to understand
• Have a clear decision maker, or target
• A clear time frame

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further

• Be non-divisive
• Build leadership
• Set you up for the next issue
• Have a pocketbook angle
• Consistent with the values and organizational
  Mission

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Exercise

• Child in alley
• Stores
• Sewers
• Sales tax

• Which problem is best to take up first? Why?
• What is the issue?
• Who is the target?

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Decide on your issue

• Then use it to build your organization
• Create a campaign (small or large, as necessary)
• Distill the issue into talking points, media
  angles, training materials
• Bring in others who are with you people and
  organizations

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Objective Check

• Understand their role as an advocate

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Communication

• Developing messages
• Media Advocacy
• The need to be audience specific
• The media hit

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Developing messages

• Turn the problem into a solution, that is the
  issue for the campaign
• Say what you want people to think
• Use data carefully, often sparsely
• Frame the issue for your audience
• Different audiences CAN and SHOULD get different
  frames, but contain same information

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We need to rethink communication strategies

• Lessons from cognitive and social science
  research
• Dominant frames exist (the swamp)
• How do they influence policy change?
• How can they be changed?
• Issue research
• What does the public think?
• How can the issue be reframed to change the frame
  for the public?

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What is a Frame? (n)

• Frames are in us
• A frame is an existing conceptual category that
  allows us to interpret incoming information
• Frames are based on prior knowledge, experience,
  and expectations
• Frames are in our materials
• The central organizing principle in any
  communication that structures meaning
• A composition of elements visual, values,
  stereotypes, messengers

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What is Framing? (v)

• The way we tell our story - our use of values,
  context, metaphors, numbers, visuals, tone and
  messengers that trigger the schema or cultural
  models that people use to make sense of their
  world.

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These elements trigger our frames

• Values
• Context
• Metaphors
• Numbers
• Visuals
• Tone
• Messengers

• Each of these elements signal
• What is this about?
• What is the problem?
• What are the solutions?
• Who is responsible?

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Therefore

• Persuasive communications cannot depend on simply
  putting information in front of people
• Making news is not the (only) goal
• Issue awareness is not the (only) goal
• But why?

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There are predators in the swamp, and your story
could get eaten, or even turn on you!
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Key Lesson

• To change the lens on an issue, you have to know
• Whats in peoples head on the issue (in the
  swamp)
• Where the trip wires are in their patterns of
  thinking
• What trumps and redirects those patterns (how to
  navigate the swamp)

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Three Framing Rules

• Order matters! Prime your communications with
  vision, not data
• Tone matters be reasonable, solutions-focused
  dont do crisis (unless the sky really is
  falling)
• Messengers matter look for those with expertise
  but no vested interest (or combinations for
  certain venues)

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Order Matters

• Rebutting is not reframing. Once a frame is
  established, it will dominate the conversation
  and crowd out subsequent frames. Do not repeat a
  bad frame or wait to kill it off. Dont lodge
  your reframe in the last paragraph.
• Example adults have the right to choose to
  smoke.

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OK, which order?

• Value / big idea equality, prosperity,
  opportunity, responsibility
• Issue categories health, education, environment
• Specific policy issue (solution!) higher priced
  tobacco, expanded CHIP, cancer screening

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Attend to Your Tone

• When communications are in a reasonable tone,
  people are more likely to be open to new
  information and problem solving
• Stay away from overtly political, factionalizing,
  or partisan tones
• Crisis disengages people, it does not engage them
  says cant do, vs. can do.

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Messengers Matter

• Who said it matters as much as what s/he said
• Examples
• teachers talking about cutting tobacco cessation
  funds
• law enforcement talking about mental health
  issues.

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Lets try some

• Youth smoking rates up after decline
• Domestic violence incidents up over 2008
• Public health budget cut by 50

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The Media Hit
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Guidelines

• There must be hard news
• Think pictures
• Have a quotable quote
• Help reporters do their work
• Know the media staff
• Include human interest

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There Must Be Hard News

• Large numbers of people doing something
• Someone who is news says it
• A new program is launched
• New information is revealed
• The unexpected happens
• New treatment of an old story
• A tie-in with a breaking story

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Think Pictures
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Quotable Quote

• Capture the meaning of the event
• Each speaker repeats it
• Put it on signs
• If nothing else, spell it write

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Help Reporters

• Write a press release
• Who / what / when / why
• Length of a typical news story
• Factual, well written, and accurate
• Opinions in quotes

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Know the staff

• Develop relationships
• Occasionally give exclusive
• No such thing as off the record

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Include Human Interest

• Children
• Survivors
• Patients
• Family
• Real people with real stories

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But we are not just educating, in this case

• We are defining our issue, our way, with our words

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Media Advisory / Alert

• Media Alert
• Press Conference
• February 6, 2007
• 1100 Welcome Center, Statehouse
• CONTACT Megan Hannan
• 207.373.3707 or 207.831.9893
• megan.hannan_at_cancer.org
• Legislators Address Maines 1 Killer
• Augusta - Cancer is the number one cause of death
  in Maine, unlike most other states. The 5-year
  comprehensive cancer plan is a document designed
  to lower the rate of cancer incidence and death
  in Maine through prevention and early detection
  of cancer. It also addresses the need to reach
  more underserved Mainers, racial and ethnic
  minorities, and to improve cancer treatment,
  care, and the quality of cancer survivorship.
• The press conference will feature several
  speakers
• Senator (Doctor) Lisa Marrache, sponsor of LR
  2036 An Act To Reduce Expensive Health Care
  Treatment and Protect the Health of Maine
  Citizens by Providing Early Screening and
  Detection and Prevention of Cancer
• Jerilyn Staudt, breast cancer survivor diagnosed
  through the Maine Breast and Cervical Health
  Program, Edgecomb resident
• Dr. Jay Bosco, gastroenterologist from Brunswick
  and Detection Workgroup Chair
• John Whalen, husband of colon cancer patient
  (Kathy), Auburn resident
• Dr. Susan Meisfeldt, oncologist from Maine Center
  for Cancer Medicine

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Set up a media hit

• Governor proposes 50 cut in the public health
  budget

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Objective Check

• Develop and practice audience-specific
  communications
• Understand and apply the principles of media
  advocacy

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Advocacy Tools Resources

• APHA www.apha.org/advocacy
• Natl Assoc of City and County Health Officials
  www.naccho.org/advocacy
• CA Center for Public Health Advocacy
  www.publichealthadvocacy.org/
• American Assoc of Family Physicians www.aafp.org
• Midwest Academy direct action organizing
  www.midwestacademy.com

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By the end of the session, participants will

• Understand the difference between advocacy and
  lobbying
• Understand their role as an advocate
• Develop and practice audience-specific
  communications
• Understand and apply the principles of media
  advocacy
• Identify advocacy tools and resources

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Questions? Comments?

• Thank You!