Many nongovernmental organizations and nonprofits are doing great work across a range of development sectors, but the impact and scale of their development initiatives is often dependent on the amount of support they can mobilize — both financial and otherwise.
Advocacy campaigns are critical to effectively mobilizing this support. Aside from raising awareness or helping build a brand and relationship with stakeholders, these campaigns can attract donations, garner enough signatures to back a petition or draw crowds to an important event. A well-planned and well-positioned campaign has the capacity to trigger wide-scale behavioral changes and even affect and influence government policy.
But what goes into an effective advocacy campaign? While some funds are of course necessary, good campaigns need not be expensive and are more about the hard work, creative thinking and energy you put into them. A strong advocacy campaign has well-researched and clear objectives and a detailed strategy and plan for reaching them. Organizing one requires a creative and multidisciplinary team and selection of the right channels. While traditional print and television remain popular, digital technology and social media have given rise to an alternative communication channel that is cheaper, more dynamic and even more powerful.