Advocacy Toolkit - Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange

WHAT IS ADVOCACY?

Advocacy means supporting and defending a cause.

Advocates support and argue for the rights and needs of the poor and vulnerable.
Advocates also provide them the skills and opportunities to speak on their own behalf.
Advocates work for justice by impacting the public conversation about an issue, leading to changed responses and solutions.
Advocacy takes place on many different levels. For example, professional lobbyists advocate for specific legislation, nonprofits advocate for their clients and legislation that impacts them, and individual citizens advocate for a community need or a cause about which they feel strongly. Each advocate uses his or her right to participate in our nation’s democratic process.
Advocacy is to make changes.
Advocacy is influencing outcomes.
Advocacy is giving voice for those who have no voice and helping people find their own voice.

HOW CAN ADVOCACY HELP THOSE WE SERVE?

Effective advocacy can come in many forms. Ultimately, by changing the public understanding of an issue and its solutions, advocacy can lead to a more just world. As an advocate, you make an impact in the following ways:

You Educate. As an advocate, you can change how the public and elected officials understand your issue and the challenges facing your clients. Some legislators will have in-depth knowledge about your issue. Others will know very little about it. All will be constantly bombarded with information and requests from various interests groups and constituents. Your job is to keep your issue front and center among competing priorities, and shape how the public perceives it and its importance.
You Witness. Your direct service work at your agency gives you expertise as a real-life witness to the challenges faced by the poor and vulnerable. You can inform public opinion using the data and stories you gather about the needs of the poor, the solutions that would be most effective to address these needs, and the resources required to battle the root causes and effects of poverty.
You Enlist Allies. As you educate the public and elected officials, you enlist individuals and organizations to support your cause and join a movement for change.
You Tap Resources. Politics and policy are about the distribution of scarce resources. By educating the public and drawing attention to your issue, you help to raise it in importance among competing causes.
You Improve Services for the Poor. Using your knowledge of how programs actually work at your agency, you can call attention to policies that are ineffective or create unnecessary barriers to services, and work to improve them. Advocates also hold legislators accountable for their decisions, helping to ensure that they make informed and careful choices.
You Facilitate Connections between Legislators and Constituents. Legislators want to connect with and be responsive to their constituents. As an advocate, you can facilitate those connections. Legislators will welcome opportunities to better understand their constituents’ needs and build relationships with them. In the process of connecting them to your programs and clients, you will establish yourself as an experienced resource that legislators and their staff will turn to with questions as discussion of your issue moves forward.
You Empower your Clients. By including your clients in conversations and relationship building with their legislators, you empower your clients with skills and opportunities to speak for themselves.

WHAT IS “FRAMING”?

Not surprisingly, the word “framing” means different things to different people. Advocates sometimes think of framing as using a catchy slogan to attract attention to your issue of concern. Yet framing runs deeper than slogans and messages that change with the context and needs of a specific moment in time. Sonja Herbert of the Berkeley Media Studies Group defines frames as, “… the mental structures that help people understand the world, based on particular assumptions and values.” The idea is that none of us is a blank slate. Every person’s unique framework processes differently the causes and consequences of the actions we see in the world. We receive and understand information and form opinions based on our past experiences and our deeply held values. The legislators and public that you target will filter all of the data and messages you share through their framework and values.

Frames will not only impact how people understand your work and your issue, but also who they see as responsible for solving it and what solutions they believe will work. Examine, for example, how one dominant framework in our culture, the importance of individual choice and responsibility for one’s own success, impacts a conversation about health. Discussing the problem of a rising number of overweight children in low-income urban neighborhoods within this individual responsibility frame leads to solutions like, “Families should exercise more,” or “Parent should feed their children healthy foods.” This framework ignores the context in which individuals make choices about their lives. It ignores the possibilities that an urban neighborhood with heavy traffic may not be a safe place for children to play and exercise, that the family may not own a car or live near quality public transportation to reach grocery stores that do not locate in low-income neighborhoods, or that families scraping by from month to month may be forced to choose lower-quality, cheaper foods over fruits and vegetables. Framing the individual’s choices in the context of an unhealthy community helps advocates to argue effectively for institutional solutions like the construction of public parks, or zoning laws that give incentives to grocery stores and limit fast food restaurants.

By framing an issue well, you can impact how your problem and solutions are portrayed and discussed. The steps below will help you think about how to draw connections between individual stories and their social context as you work to frame your issues.

BASIC FRAMING TIPS

Do Your Homework: To frame and issue successfully, be sure to understand the current frames used to talk about it. Most legislators and the public, form opinions on issues based on media coverage. Track your issue in the media – both print and electronic. Imagine that you are not an expert on your issue and ask yourself questions like these:

What do articles and reports tell you about the problem?
Why is it important and who cares about it?
What are the solutions, or who should fix it? If you find your issue framed in a way that will not support your solutions, think about how the data and trends you have seen at your agency could help tell the story another way.

Define Your Core Values: Facts, data, and policy arguments can intimidate people who could be potential champions for your cause. You may find it more effective to connect to people’s values. Values connect to our emotions and shape our motivations for taking action. Think about these questions:

What values are central to our vision?
What values will resonate with our target audience?
How can we show that this problem impacts all of us? (Refer to Catholic Social Teaching on the common good to help answer this question).

Communicate Within Your Frame: Once, you define your values and frame for discussing your issue, work to communicate it in every message you create. Messages will change as your advocacy targets and strategies change, and no two advocates will deliver a message in the same way. However, if you speak within your framework of values you will remain consistent, but flexible. The Berkeley Media Studies Group and The Praxis Project recommend that messages within your framework clearly answer these three questions:

What’s wrong? Focus on a specific part of the problem rather than trying to explain the entire issue. Try to show how individuals are impacted by social institutions.
Why does it matter? Communicate your underlying values here.
What should be done about it? Who and what are involved in the solution? Communicate an achievable, concise action step.

QUICK FORMAT TO CONDUCT DISCUSSIONS

Create an Open Climate. Introduce yourselves; thank the legislator for thee meeting and state some favorable position they have already taken (if one exists).
Present your Message.
Make a Specific Request for Legislative Action. Then, let them know what action you are requesting. A specific request for legislative action will allow you to control the meeting. You have not set the agenda. If attempts are made to divert discussion, simply, and politely, return to your issue. Finally, if the legislator seems supportive, seek a commitment. If the legislator remains opposed, ask her or him to keep an open mind and remain neutral.
Be responsive to your legislator’s questions. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t fake it or bluff. Say, “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you on it.” Then DO IT.
Don’t overstay your welcome. Conclude the visit by again extending the appropriate thank you. Reaffirm your intention to forward any information or materials which were requested by the legislator.
Send a copy to other members of the group and those who are directly lobbying on your behalf. If the visit was held with a staff member, still address the letter to the legislator with a copy (cc) to the staff member.

HOW DO I FIND OUT WHOM TO CONTACT?

To find anyone’s legislators:

WHAT DO I SAY?

Regardless whether you send an email or a letter, you should include your return address and keep your communication short and to the point. Use the same guidelines for Advocacy meetings in your written communication. State your position, use your framing, and make the “ask”.

WHAT DO I SAY IF I CALL INSTEAD OF WRITING?

If you telephone the office, be brief. An example is: “I am a constituent and I urge (Senator ______, or Congressman _______ or Assembly member ________ to vote no on AB 27.”