INNOVATION IN ADVOCACY: What innovations have you recently adopted in executing your mission (connecting with Congress/States, partnerships, advocate training, etc.) — [1.5 CAE credits]
Advocacy Directors from 24 leading Association met on July 28, 2020 via Zoom Web-conference for a peer-to-peer discussion lead by Katherine McGuire, American Psychological Association (APA)
Katherine started with an insightful 30,000 ft. view of Association Advocacy and gave the advocacy directors 3 guiding questions to frame the discussion:
Revolution or Renewal?
- What societal and ethical pathways are being determined at the moment?
- Against what are you inclined to rebel? What has your allegiance?
- How do you respond to disruptive information? Tools and tactics?
Katherine also summarized the 8 sub-areas of advocacy that everyone is navigating and the importance of combining multiple advocacy strategies to succeed:
- Legislative Advocacy
- Judicial Advocacy
- Regulatory Advocacy
- Industry Advocacy
- Citizen Advocacy
- Media Advocacy
- Diplomatic Advocacy
- Political Action Advocacy
Katherine’s overview slides are provided as a PDF reference on the button below.
Here were the key takeaways from comments of advocacy directors in attendance:
- Covid 19 forcing technology to the forefront. Never used Zoom before covid.
- Successfully transitioning to a virtual conference of 22,000. Made them rethink completely how they do things, instead of taking what they did before and attempt to just do it virtually.
- Seeing innovation as an outcome of these 3 principles: 1) Acceleration (of new ways of doing things), 2) Not overreaching, and 3) Rethink how we do things
- One director wrote a Linkedin post about doing virtual flyins and their advantages. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/proceed-congressional-fly-in-patrick-atagi-mba/
- Our value in advocacy has increased, need to leverage this today. More important to the industry today than ever before.
- What Is the ROI of Advocacy; find a way to measure it and articulate it to constituents.
- “Virtual” is working in the short term, but it will still never replace the in-person relationship building that is necessary for long term success
- As a practice one person noted that the old fashioned conference call is still well received, esp. with Hill staffers, because they don’t have to worry about background image.
- Some other innovations during covid 19 included:
- Working with other partners on Capitol Hill to get messaging through to Members
- Finding ways to tie member engagement and membership value to the work of Advocacy.
- Creating a mandate in the association to submit testimonies for any hearing that impacted our industry
- Took advantage of more accessibility to the association’s members during the pandemic to get them more involved in advocacy.
- Making the advocacy platform/resources completely digital and more accessible.
- Congressional staff needing subject matter experts more than ever. Seeing the association as a valuable SME resource.
- PACs and using our association members as secret weapons (advocates)
Target Members when they are at home instead of when they are in session in D.C.
DELIVERY METHOD: Group live presented online due to COVID-19
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To access Katherine’s overview slides in PDF click here:
