Countless nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the world are doing invaluable work to promote justice, care for people, and enact change. The scale of their impact often depends on the amount of support they can build up from various communities.

Advocacy campaigns are one of the most effective ways to mobilize people into action. They raise awareness, educate people, seek to influence decision-makers, attract donations, help build your brand, and much more. A well-designed advocacy campaign has the potential to trigger wide-scale responses, prompt people to change their actions, and even affect government policies.

Advocacy can be misunderstood and difficult to define at times. To further complicate things, there are some rules and regulations about how nonprofits can engage in advocacy. Before you start planning your first campaign, we created this resource to help guide your organization in incorporating advocacy into your work.

Do you work for an organization that seeks to enact real, measurable change around a specific cause, policy, or position? A significant part of the work of many nonprofits includes advocacy. You're probably very invested in raising awareness, lobbying, and using other methods to change (or create) laws, influence people’s opinions, and bring about social change.

Whether your organization is directly or indirectly involved in advocacy, advocacy campaigns help nonprofits raise awareness about their mission and mobilize supporters to take action. Advocacy also helps organizations raise money!

Every advocacy campaign is different, with a wide range of goals, causes, advocates, and other variables. With the right preparation, you’ll be able to run a powerful, effective advocacy campaign. We put together a basic strategic plan to help you get started on your early advocacy campaign planning.

Salesforce advocacy software can be a powerful tool for your nonprofit to build momentum around a key issue, mobilize existing supporters, expand your mailing list, and raise money. This is true even if your organization isn’t primarily engaged in advocacy.

But what do you need to know before investing in Salesforce advocacy software? Here are 11 key questions you should answer before making a buying decision.

An online petition can be an effective way for your nonprofit to rally support for a campaign and trigger change - all while increasing enthusiasm for your mission, boosting donations, and quickly growing your supporter list. With the latest update to the Soapbox Engage Petitions app, you can also customize the fields you include on your petition to get exactly the information you're looking for from supporters.

Hey, so I know we just met but is there any chance you can come over and dogsit for me this weekend?

Too much? Too soon? We do hardly know each other, right? It probably would be best to get to better acquainted before I hit you up for favors, eh? Maybe we can grab some coffee to get to know each other first? Yes. Coffee first. Dog later.

Just as personal relationships require time and steps to develop before both parties are willing to invest something of substance so, too, your nonprofit’s relationship with its would-be donors requires nurturing. Your first ask being a donation ask won’t necessarily be a winner. Just with my dog sitting, you need to grow into it. So, what’s the nonprofit version of asking someone out for coffee?

We’re so glad you asked! Here are five tactics your organization can use to grow your community before asking them for donations. Each falls on what is commonly referred to as a “commitment curve” or “ladder of engagement,” They get you from that introduction to getting an email address to growing engagement to finally getting someone to watch my dog, er, I mean, winning a new donor.