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Resources and links related to Advocating for Change
These web sites offer information on advocating for change.
- Network for Good helps organizations use the web to solicit donations online, find volunteers for your programs, create petitions, distribute electronic newsletters, send action alerts, and more.
- The Alliance for Justice provides information about environmental, civil rights, mental health, women's, children's and consumer advocacy organizations, plus many links.
- Independent Sector educates charities about the role lobbying can play in their mission, with information about how to lobby legally. Some items for sale, but most resources are free.
- A Goodman. Communications expert Andy Goodman explains the basics of creating public interest print ads in "Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes," which is available for downloading.
- Kansas Action for Children provides an excellent Advocacy Toolkit to support people attempting to change or create policy that supports children. Contents include how a bill becomes law, where to get legislative information, questions to ask candidates, working with the media, etc.
- A Media Relations Toolkit designed to assist grantees of the Ontario Trillium Foundation has general advice about working with the media.
- The Democracy Center in San Francisco offers advocacy training and resources to strengthen nonprofit and community groups, with materials also in Spanish.
If you'd like to talk with people who are doing work similar to yours, visit the Community Tool Box Learning Community. These links to online learning communities or electronic discussion lists may also help.
- Network for Good offers Organizers Collaborative, an access point to special interest message boards, e-mail discussion lists, and other communication with peers.
Electronic discussion lists available through CataList, a clearing house for e-mail groups:
For other information on planning an advocacy campaign, see these books:
- Rothman, J. & Tropman, J. E. (1987). Models of community organization and macro practice perspectives: Their mixing and phasing. In F. E. Cox et al., (Eds.), Strategies of community organization: Macro practice. (pp. 3-26). Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers.
- Altman, D. G., Balcazar, F. E., Fawcett, S. B., Seekins, T., and Young, J. Q. (1994). Public health advocacy: Creating community change to improve health. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention.
The Community Tool Box is a service of the
Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas.
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by the University of Kansas for all materials provided via the World Wide Web in the ctb.ku.edu domain.
