Are you a believer, backer, promoter, sponsor, supporter, activist, or campaigner?

Then you are also an advocate. The word derives from an old French verb that meant "to call."  Advocates come calling to advance a cause, or, on occasion, to stop it in its tracks.  

We each use a variety of ways, day in and day out, to persuade people to support something important to us.  That was how I as a 12 year old got to go the movies. Waiting to catch my parents in a good mood, knowing they were busy themselves…any and everything I could think of to get them to "yes."  

Advocates are sometimes known as lobbyists and more often than not equated with special interests. Yet history is replete with examples of persistent persuasion that ameliorated our collective destiny in ways we now often take for granted:

• William Wilberforce pressed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for 26 years until passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807
• Susan B. Anthony's half-century fight for equal rights -- and her motto "Failure is impossible" -- led to the 19th Amendment granting women the vote in 1920
• Organizations from Children's Defense Fund to Girl Scouts of the USA won bipartisan passage of the Children's Health Insurance Program in the 1990s.

Washington, D.C. is a city of advocates. The House and Senate office buildings on Capitol Hill, the West Wing of the White House, any number of executive branch buildings – these are the frame of reference for much of the persuasion that takes place. Advocates or lobbyists seeking a particular legislative or regulatory outcome work both sides of the political aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Many have been at it for decades.

The charitable sector as a whole has had its ups and downs influencing policymakers in Washington, sometimes prevailing in groundbreaking victories and other times bearing defeat. Many organizations invest considerable time and energy in advocacy that does not always yield the desired results, while others have developed reputations for consistently achieving success. Given the complex policy environment, pressures on the federal budget, and limited budgets of charitable organizations, it seemed to us imperative to understand what works.   

So we decided to take a close look at organizations that regularly realize their policy goals, regardless whether Democrats occupy the White House or Republicans lead Congress. We examined successful coalitions and exceptionally effective organizations all along the ideological spectrum, producing case studies on the Human Rights Campaign, Americans for Tax Reform, General Electric, and four nonprofit coalitions. 

We asked many hundreds of self-described advocates what they thought the key elements of successful advocacy were.  We’ve had the privilege of learning from the deep advocacy experience of the IS network and beyond. All told, we interviewed 100 individuals and surveyed 700 advocacy professionals and 500 sector CEOs.

What we learned might surprise some of the most seasoned advocates.

It didn’t matter whether groups were focused on popular causes or those esoteric.

It didn’t matter whether they were well financed for-profit corporations or coalition partners operating on a shoestring.

It didn’t matter whether the organizations had been around for decades or newly formed.

All of the most successful organizations and coalitions turned the practice of advocacy into an art form and a science -- with deep, well-researched insights that enabled them to make wise judgments about strategy and to take advantage of key opportunities.

We wondered if there might be one model of successful advocacy and quickly realized that strategies that work in one context might not work in another. That said, there were key elements common to and deployed by all of the successful groups. It was what distinguished them and made them prevail. We have learned a great deal from this study and look forward to sharing it with you when we launch it later this month.

I also want to encourage you to attend GameChangers, our Annual Conference on Veterans Day weekend, November 11-12, in San Francisco. That will be an excellent opportunity to tackle this subject with colleagues from across the country. We’ll be talking about our findings and what we’ve learned, and I am convinced that this will help all of us be better "advocacy artists" on behalf of the people we serve.

Learn more about Beyond the Cause: The Art and Science of Advocacy.