Advocacy strategy: how to optimize it thanks to an adapted CRM?

The 5 steps to lead an effective advocacy strategy

Advocacy actions have become essential in recent years as an essential element of the role of foundations. Developing a new, more societal face requires specific strategic thinking that it is important to anticipate. Here are 5 essential steps that will allow you to understand this paradigm shift and start developing your strategy within your organisation.

1 – Adopt a smart strategy

Adopting an advocacy strategy is, in effect, adopting a strategy. It is therefore essential to carry out a precise analysis prior to the construction of a coordinated action plan.
The first strategic step to take is to establish the objectives of your advocacy campaign. These objectives must be

• Simple: clear and precise, they must be understood by all
• Measurable: quantitative or qualitative, they must be able to be the subject of a post-campaign report
• Ambitious: they must be able to motivate all stakeholders
• Realistic: they must remain consistent with the scope and legitimacy of the structure
• Temporarily delimited: they must have a start date and an end date

2 – Unite, train and engage its teams

Before carrying out an advocacy strategy aimed at your targets, it is important to carry it out, first of all, internally. Your employees are the primary stakeholders in your campaign; they must be the first to be affected. Internal change management is therefore potentially necessary with regard to your traditional strategy. This involves, for example, setting up a training policy to train your teams in legal and technical issues.

3 – Communicate at the right time, in the right place and to the right person

A successful advocacy campaign should be broken down into actions and messages relevant to the target audience. Lobbying actions aimed at politicians and legislators and awareness messages intended for the general public are two distinct results of the same strategy. Better still, an action aimed at the general public can be the starting point for a lobbying action and vice versa.

4 – Collect, qualify and use the data collected

Your base of existing contacts and those you will build during your actions are the soul of the successful advocacy strategy. Each useful piece of data collected, whether it emanates from a survey, a collection campaign, or an awareness-raising campaign, must be analysed, shaped, and used in such a way as to take advantage of it in order to complete or readjust your strategy.

Therefore, for an effective advocacy campaign, it is good to use a tool that brings this data together in one place. Being able to manage the new donations generated, the expenses made, and the results of your actions allows you to manage your actions in a more agile way and therefore be more efficient with regard to your initial objectives.

5 – Respect the rules of law

In order to be relevant and legitimate with your desire to change things and in particular the laws, your actions must be irreproachable by the laws in force. In Europe, there is in particular a concern about the data collected by all companies, public or private, profit or non-profit.

The European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an element that has become central in the actions carried out using digital data. It requires a specific and precise adjustment in order to be in order and to carry out actions that can be taken into account. These 5 keys are a help in setting up your future advocacy strategy.