Basic Terms

Advocacy is a broad term covering a range of activities that seek to bring about systemic social change.  Advocacy often seeks to address the root causes, as well as the symptoms, of social and economic problems.  Advocacy by charitable nonprofits may include community organizing, public policy and lobbying, litigation, or nonpartisan voter engagement.

While there have been historical attempts to divide nonprofit involvement in direct service from advocacy, the fact is that they go hand in hand in effective organizations.  Through direct service, nonprofits and their constituents learn what works and what doesn't work and what the public and private sectors may do to make things work better.  Nonprofits can bring that knowledge to the policy table to make government and business more efficient and effective at addressing social problems.  Thus, advocacy then helps to improve direct service by increasing the numbers and quality of people served.  This virtuous cycle goes on and on.

In the book Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant identify advocacy as one of the six practices associated with high-impact nonprofits.  Moreover, they devote a chapter to explaining how all of the high-impact nonprofits they identified in the field combine service and advocacy to make a difference for their causes.

People sometimes confuse the words "lobbying" and "advocacy".  The definition of lobbying generally involves attempts to influence specific legislation through direct or grassroots communications with legislators or their staff.  Advocacy includes lobbying but covers a much broader range of activities such as executive branch activities, issue organizing, and nonpartisan voter engagement.  One way of differentiating between the two terms is to understand that lobbying always involves advocacy but advocacy does not necessarily involve lobbying.

*Link also to Make a Difference for your Cause and Definitions used in this resource guide.  Attached to e-mail with this text.*

Nonpartisan voter engagement may include nonpartisan voter registration, get-out-the-vote in historically underserved communities, voter guides, and candidate forums.  Charitable nonprofits may engage in all of these activities so long as they are done in a strictly nonpartisan manner.  More Information.