PUBLIC HEALTH – Good Answers

MODULE NOTES:
Developing Strategies for Change: The Advocacy Plan

An Advocacy Plan is similar to a business or marketing plan that companies would develop to go about selling a product. An advocacy plan is the development of the strategy that you will use to advocate for changes on your issue. The advocacy plan will consider what specific tactics are necessary, whether it be communications, lobbying events, individual meetings with legislators, advertising campaigns, etc.

The advocacy plan develops an overall strategy to gain support and minimize opposition. By planning your strategy you will be in a better position to maximize the use of your resources and therefore increase the likelihood of success in achieving your goals and objectives.

Every type of advocacy organization has its own model for how they are going to lobby on particular issues. And, this model may actually be different based on the issue and what is needed. In the readings we looked at a couple of examples of advocacy plans from different organizations. As you can see, some are very elaborate and some more simple. But they all outline what they want to do and how they want to accomplish their goals. There really is no one template to be used for creating an advocacy plan. The main components though of most plans are synthesized for you and are presented below.
Components of the Advocacy Plan:
1.Define the Issue – this is where you discuss what your issue is and why it is important
2.Gather the facts/background/research about the issue – and present as fact sheets or talking points
3.Identify the desired outcomes: new legislation/defeat proposed legislation, more funding, greater visibility
4.Identify who the decision-makers are to target – local, state or federal government officials
5.Develop a list of who your allies/supporters are and who your opponents are
6.Identify the main points of your issue and what the main points are from your opponents
7.Develop an activity calendar that will identify the activities and timeline to undertake to achieve your goals. This may include specific communications, a lobbying day, individual meetings with legislators, or activities to engage the public, among others
8.Document and evaluate the results of what worked and what didn’t to impact future efforts
9.Modify and update the plan on an annual basis

The best way to learn about how to create advocacy plans is to look at different plans that organizations have created. In this week’s readings I have identified several sample plans for review. We will be using these plans in the discussion as these plans will help you to frame your own advocacy plan as part of this week’s assignment.

The professional or personal association that you identified in Module 2 probably has their own idea for how they develop Advocacy Plans and may include some sample plans on their web site. Our discussion topic for this week will focus on what samples of Advocacy Plans from different groups and organizations and examine and the different components.

ASSIGNMENT:
My topic is wasteful spending!
Using the list of components of an advocacy plan from the Module readings, and what you have learned from different association advocacy plans, you will be developing your own Advocacy Plan based on the issue you identified in Module 1.

Assume that you are working for your identified professional or personal association and they have asked you to develop for them an advocacy plan based on the issue you identified in Module 1. For this assignment you will create a plan, which at a minimum, should include all the components listed in this module’s notes section. You may add additional components that you may have identified from other sample plans. The plan can be organized any way you would like – straight paper, chart format, or any other style. For the section on evaluation you will describe how you will evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies.

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