Advocacy part 3

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Advocacy part 3

• Improving your advocacy campaign
• Nisrine Mansour
• YWLA 2009

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Session Objectives

• Ethical issues of advocacy
• Accountability in advocacy campaigns
• Managing finances in advocacy campaigns
• Managing advocacy human resources
• Monitoring, evaluation, learning

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Why are accountability and ethics important?

• Legitimacy at stake
• Representativeness claims
• Long term vs. short term goals better met through
  accountable behaviour
• To prevent doing harm

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Ethical issues in advocacy for social issues and
humanitarian relief

• Doing Good or Do No Harm?
• Parts v. whole
• Collaboration and cooperation
• Funding
• Campaigners safety and wellbeing

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Accountability definitions

• Accountability is about the obligations to give
  account for performance rendered
• Four dimensions of accountability (Kumar 1996)
• Fiscal/financial accountability demonstrating
  money has been spent where it was supposed to be
  spent
• Legal accountability actions are within the
  laws of the state where programme is implemented
• Programme accountability effectiveness of the
  programme in achieving objectives
• Process accountability efficiency and process
  of implementation

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Multiple accountabilities
trustees
government
donors
Upwards
Advocacy campaign
Downwards
supporters
partners
Staff/ volunteers
Concerned populations
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Accountability to Donors

• Fiscal Accountability
• To spend money for designated purposes
• Account monies spent
• Programme Accountability
• Demonstrate effectiveness and impact

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Accountability to the State

• Legal accountability
• Are the advocacy activities within the legal
  framework? Can they always be? How to counter
  this challenge?
• Fiscal accountability
• Are any applicable taxes paid accordingly?
• Programme accountability
• How does it fit/clash with the larger planning
  goals and policies of the state?

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Accountability to own organisation/group

• Programme accountability
• Are campaign objectives being met?
• Promoting self evaluation and learning
• Process accountability
• Is the process appropriate to the groups
  resources and capabilities?
• Is learning occurring?
• Is archiving occurring? - organisational and
  institutional memory

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Accountability to the concerned populations

• Do advocacy actors have accountability to the
  concerned populations on all levels fiscal,
  legal, programme and process?
• How can vulnerable populations hold advocates
  accountable?
• Children
• Disabled
• IDP/Refugees
• If not, who can? Donors? The media? the state??

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Representation of the concerned populations

• Ethics of using images of starving poor, women as
  victims etc. - e.g. Pornography of poverty
  (Plewes and Stuart)
• Populations are portrayed as helpless victims and
  dependent at times reinforce racist stereotypes
• E.g. Save the Childrens switch to using of
  positive images smiling children, village pump,
  etc.

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Accountability and Funding

• Funding, integrity, and reputation
• Should certain sources be rejected?
• Government funding
• Corporate funding e.g., arms manufacturers,
  companies with poor human rights records?
• gt Defending your choice of funding sources
• Autonomy and resource dependency

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Tips for Raising funds Maintaining Autonomy

• Scan the external environment (knowledge may lay
  dormant in various parts of organisation itself)
• Loosen dependencies through diversification
  horizontal and vertical mergers. But often
  exchanges one kind of dependency for another
• Decentralise control, sub-managers will be
  better at responsive and discretionary management

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Advocacy Management Issues

• Human Resource Management

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Five Human Resource Choices

• All interdependent
• Recruiting
• Training
• Managing teams
• Voice and representation
• Compensation
• Hunter (1997)

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Campaigners safety and wellbeing

• Clashes with opponents can have serious
  consequences
• gt need to put a plan of action for protecting
  and publicising abuse

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Monitoring and evaluation 1

• Advocacy objective
• Moving smoothly? Obstacles?
• Moving forward? Stuck?
• Achievable? Needs adjusting?

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Monitoring Evaluation 2

• With every decision making cycle
• How does the policy change relate your objective?
  
• Has your objective been achieved entirely or
  partially?
• Would you carry on with your objective or change
  it as a result?
• How does the policy change affect the problem
  that the campaign is addressing?

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Monitoring Evaluation 3

• Message delivery/communications assess
  effectiveness of
• Reaching audiences
• Positive response
• Delivery formats
• Media coverage

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Monitoring Evaluation 4

• Use of data and research
• Usefulness to advocacy efforts
• Presentation of data - how persuasive were they?
• Are there any new research questions? Is new data
  needed to back your campaign?

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Monitoring Evaluation 5

• Decision making process
• Is the process more open as a result of the
  campaign?
• Is it easier to reach decision makers in the
  future?
• How many actors were involved before and after
  your campaign?
• How to improve the decision making process?

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Monitoring Evaluation 6

• Coalition building
• Success of coalition in raising attention and
  getting support?
• Timely delivery of information to coalition?
• Cooperation? Information exchange? Any unresolved
  conflicts?
• Retaining coalition members?
• Leadership opportunities?
• Maintaining and expanding your network?

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Monitoring Evaluation 7

• Overall management issues
• Financial viability? More fundraising?
• Accurate accounting system?
• Wise use of financial resources?
• Logistics of events?
• Staff motivation and workload?

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Summary Conclusion

• Define the issue, have a clear objective!!!
• Map out allies, competitors, opponents
• sharpen the message content and output
• Draw an action strategy
• Manage your team
• Manage accountabilities
• Account for legitimacy and representation issues