Online resources
From BANwiki
There are a wide range of resources available, both on and off line. Some of them have materials and tools which are freely available; others make a modest charge.
The Advocacy Progress Planner is a brilliant tool which enables you to think about the steps in your advocacy plan. It is written for American audiences, so you have to ignore the options that are irrelevant and make allowances for the language. However, by the end of the process, you will have a well thought through logic model for your advocacy action. You can add notes as you go and save a PDF of the plan. This tool is provided by Continuous Progress and you may want to check the rest of their website which is full of tips and tools.
The Alliance for Justice is a US association of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women's, children's and consumer advocacy organizations. Since its inception in 1979, it has worked to advance the cause of justice for all Americans, strengthen the public interest community's ability to influence public policy, and foster the next generation of advocates.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation was founded in the UD in 1948 is to foster public policies, human-service reforms and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families. In pursuit of this goal, the Foundation makes grants that help states, cities, and neighborhoods fashion more innovative, cost-effective responses to these needs. Amongst its other work, it publishes materials that might support your advocacy efforts. Have a look for example at a guide to measuring advocacy and policy
The California Endowment is a private, health foundation based in the US State of California and created in 1996. It believes that influencing public policy is essential to achieving any long-term solutions to California’s health issues. It has commissioned two interesting reports which look at the challenges facing policy change evaluators and offer recommendations on approaches to policy and advocacy evaluation. If advocacy evaluation is of interest, then download the reports from here.
The Centre for International Private Enterprise is a non-profit affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce and one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. CIPE works in developing countries supporting the private sector in policy advocacy, institutional reform and improving governance. CIPE can provide management assistance, practical experience and financial support to local organizations to strengthen their capacity to implement democratic and economic reforms. It publishes a range of reports and handbooks that may be helpful to organisations beginning to get involved in advocacy.
There is a good resource on Public Policy Writing which takes through all the steps of writing good policy position papers. The UN also has a website explaining how to write policy position papers which is aimed more at participants at UN conferences, but nevertheless has some good tips.
PublicPrivateDialogue.org is intended to serve as a comprehensive one-stop shop of knowledge and advice for stakeholders who are interested in building or maintaining public private dialogue to improve the business climate. They feature on their website a Charter of Good Practice in using Public Private Dialogue for Private Sector Development which was developed at the first International Workshop on Public Private Dialogue, held in Paris in February 2006.
The Thoughtful Activist: a toolkit for enhancing NGO campaigning and advocacy was written in 1999 to help NGOs with their advocacy, but you may find that it gives you some useful ideas. You can download a copy from the web link.
