Advocacy is a long game, and it can be messy at times. However, when paired with grantmaking, it becomes a powerful force for advancing systemic change, deepening relationships with grantee partners, and expanding your foundation’s knowledge and understanding of the issues you care about.
Helping your board embrace a broader understanding of advocacy can shift the conversation from limitations to possibilities. Our foundation’s advocacy journey is still unfolding, but here are some of the building blocks we’ve found along the way.
Demystifying Advocacy for Your Board
Advocacy can include many different elements—large and small. Helping your board move past fear or uncertainty starts with demystifying what advocacy looks like in practice and showing the many ways foundations can engage effectively and legally. Here are some strategies to get started:
- Provide examples. Show your board how other foundations engage in advocacy and what results they’ve seen. Exponent Philanthropy’s blog, podcasts, and Advocacy Field Guide are great resources for real-world stories and ideas.
- Encourage peer learning. Connect board members with peers at other foundations that actively support advocacy. Hearing from fellow trustees can go a long way in shifting perspectives.
- Invite legal expertise. Bring in a legal expert who specializes in foundation advocacy to talk with your board. They may be surprised by the wide range of activities that are allowed and encouraged.
- Identify small, incremental steps. These could include funding technical assistance, signing letters of support, publishing op-eds, or amplifying community voices.
- Fund research. Supporting research is a powerful and low-risk way to inform, educate, and engage around the issues your foundation cares about.
- Act as a convener. Use your role to bring nonprofit partners together and facilitate knowledge-sharing.
- Partner on a first effort. Choose one nonprofit partner to collaborate with on an initial advocacy effort. Identify early steps, and invite the partner to share progress with your board to build comfort and momentum.
Incremental Steps Toward Systems Change
Oftentimes our partners remind us that, as a foundation, we can open doors, lend credibility, and broaden awareness in ways nonprofits may not have the bandwidth to pursue. Shifting our own thinking showed us that incremental actions—funding a study, sharing data, or supporting a messaging platform—are vital building blocks for long-term systems change. Each small step compounds in influence, becoming more powerful over time.
Listen to Angela on the Podcast
Hear more from Angela on The Catalytic Philanthropy Podcast: “We Funded a Data Survey to Count People with Disabilities. The Results Were Stunning, and Helped Our Partners Change the Policy Landscape.”
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Get the Field Guide
Advocacy Field Guide for Lean Funders
This guide helps lean foundations and donors fund and engage in policy directly. It offers 7 practical steps, a basic primer on essentials, ways to fund and engage, and tips for convincing your board. We include strategies and real examples from lean funders to inspire and guide you. Download »
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About the Author
Angela Hult’s career spans philanthropy, global media, strategic communications, and social impact investing. As president of the Kuni Foundation she applies an entrepreneurial approach to the development of grant programs, advocacy, communications, and mission investing in service to advancing innovations in cancer research and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities.