Advocacy & Coalition-Building
Alliance for Justice/Bolder Advocacy
Alliance for Justice is a national association of 130 organizations, representing a broad array of groups committed to progressive values and the creation of an equitable, just, and free society. AFJ’s work is divided into two main programs: Justice Program and Bolder Advocacy. Bolder Advocacy is the leading authority on the legal framework governing nonprofit advocacy. Bolder Advocacy promotes active engagement in democratic processes and institutions by giving nonprofits and foundations the confidence to advocate effectively and by protecting their right to do so. In 2023, Bolder Advocacy published state-by-state Practical Guidance: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Lobbying (click links for Missouri and Illinois guides).
The Urban Institute is a trusted source for unbiased, authoritative insights that inform consequential choices about the well-being of people and places in the United States. It is a nonprofit research organization that believes decisions shaped by facts, rather than ideology, have the power to improve public policy and practice, strengthen communities, and transform people’s lives for the better.
This tool offers a simple one-page tool for thinking about the theories of change that underlie public policy advocacy strategies. It also provides simple, visual ways to think about evaluating advocacy and coalition-building strategies with specific examples of indicators.
Guide for Building a Sustainable and Resilient Collaboration
This guide from the Tamarack Institute is designed to broaden our collective thinking about the factors that contribute to sustainable, resilient, and impactful collaborations. This nearly 100-page guide is broken into nine sections, each written to provide readers with ideas, questions, and resources that will supplement thinking and action.
Empower Missouri works to secure basic human needs and equal justice for every person in our state through coalition-building and advocacy. They conduct anti-poverty advocacy work, with a special focus on food security, affordable housing, and community justice. They host coalitions for all three focus areas, provide Advocacy 101 training for nonprofits in the state, and publish weekly anti-poverty legislation updates.
Five Principles for Building Powerful Coalitions
The most successful coalitions are ones that seek to achieve social change goals (such as individual victories and shifting the political climate) at the same time as they strengthen the organizations that participate in them.
Health professionals attend numerous meetings and sometimes assume that they understand everything it takes for working groups to succeed. Often, however, groups fail or, perhaps worse, flounder. To avoid this type of experience, which only erodes faith in collaborative efforts, people need to sharpen the skills that are necessary to build and maintain coalitions. This paper contributes to the discussion of group processes by offering an eight step guide to building effective coalitions.