June 13, 2025
The Shortest Distance Between Where You Are Now and the Advocacy Results You Want
I have a really important question I want to ask you. How satisfied are you, really, with the advocacy results that you're currently getting?
Chances are, you're frustrated with at least one of the money or policy decision makers in your world. And there could be a lot of reasons for that frustration.
But here's something you may not have considered. That frustration could be the biggest thing getting in the way of the results you want. In this week’s episode, we're diving into two powerful ways to shorten the distance to those results.
In this episode, we share:
- The number one secret to getting the advocacy results you want
- How to uncover the hidden sources of much of your frustration with decisionmakers, and why it matters
- The critical piece of advocacy strategy most nonprofit leaders are missing
- How to turn our frustrations with decisionmakers into part of a winning strategy
- The four key questions to ask when developing your advocacy plan, and whenever you hit a roadblock
Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!
WEBVTT
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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share the shortest distance between where you are now and the advocacy results you want.
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So stay tuned.
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If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I.
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I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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Because I have a really important question I want to ask you.
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How satisfied are you really with the advocacy results that you're currently getting?
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Chances are, you're frustrated with at least one of the money or policy decision makers in your world, and there could be a lot of reasons for that frustration.
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But here's something you may not have considered.
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That frustration could be the biggest thing getting in the way of the results you want.
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Today we're gonna dive into two of the keys to shortening the distance to those results.
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There's a lot of things that go into getting the advocacy results you want.
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But I wanna share with you the number one most critical secret to getting those results.
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And that is, you've got to have crystal clarity about precisely what those results are.
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And that sounds really simple.
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Of course I know what I want.
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Of course I know what results I'm looking for.
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Do you?
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Do you really have absolute clarity?
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If I walked up to you right now and said, name a decision maker that's important to you, that you care about.
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And I said to you, what precise result do you want from them?
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What is the advocacy result you are seeking and what is their role in it?
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What action do you need them to take?
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Could you answer that with precision and detail and specificity, down to the absolute last detail of what you want them to do?
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Chances are it is more the case that you have a general idea of what you're trying to make happen.
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It tends to be along the lines of, well, we want them to give us money.
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We want them to give us more money.
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Or maybe even, we want them to give us a specific amount of money.
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That's better.
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That's more specific.
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If it's in the policy arena, is it that we want them to support an appropriation that will result in us getting more money.
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We want them to support authorizing legislation that will establish a new category of funding.
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Generally speaking, I find that often folks are pretty clear about dollar amounts, but once it goes beyond that, the specificity kind of falls apart.
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And I believe there's a reason for that.
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There's something I've noticed that is so consistent that I finally have realized that it is a thing.
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And it's a thing that most of us struggle with not just in advocacy, but in lots of different parts of life.
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And that is that the'what do you want' question is often a lot more complicated than we give it credit for.
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The reality is that we want a lot of things.
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Sure, maybe we want the$500,000 or the Senate bill number 27 or whatever it is.
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But what else do we want?
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And why are we frustrated?
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A lot of times we want the thing, we want the specific result.
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And maybe we can even name that result very specifically.
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And if it's something a decision maker can vote on, then you know, our ask can wind up being very simple.
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We want you to vote for X.
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This appropriation or this line item, whatever structure you're working in.
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But if it's not that cut and dried,'cause honestly, most advocacy asks are not that cut and dried.
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A lot of times it's that maybe we're working with a government agency that is going to implement policy that we've advocated for.
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And yay, we got the policy in place.
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But now it has to be made real.
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Now it has to be implemented.
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And the process of doing that involves a ton of details, most of which have the ability to either make the thing work really well or to cause it to fail.
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We need them to get those details right, but often we first have to get them to understand why all those details matter before we can get to telling them what we need them to do.
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And if they're not getting it, we start stressing out and getting frustrated.
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And we feel like we're moving further away from our desired result.
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And what very often winds up being in the mix is that it's not just about the outcome we want.
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Or the specific policy language that we want.
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It's that we want to have a strong and respected voice in the decision making process.
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And that's where I find so many leaders sharing with me that that's the source of their frustration, is that they're not getting that.
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They feel like they're on the outside looking in and they're banging on the door saying, Hey, you need to pay attention to this thing, and you need to pay attention to these five different moving parts'cause they all matter.
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We know they matter because we have the expertise, we have the experience, we have the data, we have the evidence.
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We have all the things that show that this is the right way to do it.
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This is the way to do it that will produce the result we all said we wanted.
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And what often happens is that those decision makers say, that's great.
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Thanks for your input.
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And then they go off in a corner and they make decisions without necessarily keeping you at the table, or without necessarily fully considering the expertise you have shared.
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And that is enormously frustrating.
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But what we often don't realize, is that that's also part of what we want.
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That's also part of the result we want.
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We don't just want their actions, we want their respect.
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We want them to value us appropriately.
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So there's a lot of layers in this, and it's partly about feelings.
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And that, I've noticed, advocates often don't want to talk about that part.
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Or they don't even realize it's happening.
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They'll express enormous frustration and they get very emotional in that process, but they don't see that as part of the advocacy work to be done.
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Those feelings are about wanting to be valued and respected and heard.
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And in fact not just heard, but to have your words and your opinions, your expertise and your advice be valued and acted upon.
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that's one way you show you value somebody's opinions and expertise is, they give you their advice and you act on it.
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It's also about having your work and its impact be truly valued at the level you know it's really worth.
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And when decision makers don't value, don't appreciate, don't respect either our expertise or the work that we do or its impact, that hurts.
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That's upsetting.
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That triggers a bunch of feelings.
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And the sooner we are aware of that and build that into what we're trying to make happen with our advocacy, first of all, the faster we're gonna get to the results that we want.
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But we're also going to be able to do the additional work that is needed to cause the result of respecting, and valuing us and our work at the same time.
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They are inextricably tied.
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If a decision maker does not fully understand and appreciate the value of the work that you do and the impact that it has.
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How in the world are they going to properly value that work in the decision making process?
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They're not.
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And if they don't fully respect and value your expertise, how much more likely are they to make mistakes because they didn't listen to you.
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They overlooked the incredible resource that you are.
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So I want you to try this idea on for size.
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That one of the most critical pieces of effective advocacy is building in strategies that will cause that respect and valuing to occur with decision makers.
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Once you have that, the path to getting them to take the actions you want, that will benefit the work that you do, is so much shorter and more efficient.
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It is the shortest straight line between where you are now and what you want them to do.
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But in many years of coaching and teaching Nonprofit leaders, one of the things I hear most often is, oh, I've got lots of good relationships with decision makers.
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It's great.
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They come to our program, they really like us.
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It's great.
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We're good.
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And in the very next breath, they'll tell me how frustrated they are that those same decision makers don't respect and value their expertise and their work at the level that they feel it should be valued.
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So first of all, that's a heads up that maybe those relationships aren't really where you want them to be yet.
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But also that frustration can have consequences.
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And if we're not careful, that starts to weave its way into our messaging and our engagement.
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And we start making that path to the results be longer and more convoluted.
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If we don't get clear on all the layers of what we want, we're gonna have a lot of stuff in the way when we go to build those very intentional relationships with decision makers.
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So here's the thing.
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In order to get clear on the specific end results we want from our advocacy, we have to acknowledge that all those other layers exist too.
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And we have to be willing to uncover all those layers.
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And make some decisions about which results are the end goal, and which results may be part of the process of getting there.
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So how the heck do we do that?
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What I find is most helpful, and I do this a lot with clients.
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When they're struggling, when they're in a really frustrating situation and they're kind of going in circles and not being able to move beyond a certain point in their advocacy with that decision-maker or set of decision makers.
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They feel like they're at a stalemate or a standstill.
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They've been trying all these different things and they're not getting what they want.
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They don't feel like the decision makers are really listening to them.
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The decision makers certainly aren't taking action in the way that the advocates want them to.
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And so they're just super frustrated and feeling like they've put a lot of work into this and it's not producing anything.
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So whether you find yourself in that spot or whether you have a new advocacy goal that you want to pursue and you wanna avoid winding up in that spot.
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The process is the same.
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You can do this at any point in the process, but it's always better to do it at the beginning and make your life a whole lot easier.
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You start by asking yourself a fairly simple set of questions.
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You wanna ask this before you begin any advocacy planning process, and you definitely wanna ask this if you find yourself at a standstill.
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The very first question is, what is the specific money or policy result I want?
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And be as specific as possible.
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If it's money, a specific dollar figure, from what source, on what timetable.
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Do you want it in fiscal year 2028 and you're gonna give yourself two years to make it happen?
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Or do you want it in FY 26 and the budget process is already happening and you gotta do this right now, you're already late.
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Or somewhere in between.
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The more specific you can be, the clearer your path to getting to that result is going to be.
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Just in the example I gave, you can see how different your plan would be, your approach would be if you've got two years to get the thing done, or if you've got three months to get the thing done.
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When time is compressed you gotta be super efficient.
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And you're gonna have to pick only the highest value approaches for the highest value decision maker targets, and that's it.
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You don't have time to mess around.
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If you've got a longer term goal, you have the luxury and the opportunity to build much deeper relationships and to use a lot more possible strategies to getting the result that you want, and building really strong relationships that will serve you in a lot of other ways in the future.
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Or maybe between now and then.
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So as specific as possible.
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The next thing is, once you're clear on the result you want, then for each of the decision makers you've identified who have a role to play in that.
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Ask yourself, what specific actions do I want each of those relevant decision makers to take that will help bring about that result?
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What do I want them to do?
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I will remind you that support is not an action.
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Nowhere in your plan should there be, I want the decision maker to support anything.
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That's not an action.
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It's not measurable.
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You can't say whether they did it or didn't do it.
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You want them to take a specific action.
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Maybe you want them to vote for something if that's how this process works.
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Or maybe you want them to agree to speak to the higher up in their organization or to speak to three of their colleagues who are also gonna have a voice in this.
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Whatever it is.
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But there's specific things you want them to do.
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And write it down.
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And then you're gonna ask yourself, for each of the decision makers involved, what am I most frustrated by with respect to this decision maker?
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And get really clear on that.
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This is the one that is always hiding in plain sight, and we don't give it enough attention and it gets in our way like you can't believe.
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So what's making me crazy about this person?
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What is frustrating me?
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What aren't they doing?
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How are they responding to me in a way that is frustrating?
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Maybe it's, they don't really listen.
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Maybe it's that they say nice things to my face, but then they turn around and don't do anything afterwards.
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Maybe they ask for my advice and ignore it.
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Could be any number of things.
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It may be that they think that the work that we do is worth about a quarter of what it's actually worth.
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And so they're chronically wanting to low ball any funding requests because they don't think that it could possibly cost what we say it costs.
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And they figure that if it does, it must mean that we're inefficient, not that that's actually what this quality of service costs.
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It could be lots of things.
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I don't know any non-profit leader who doesn't have a fairly lengthy list of things they are frustrated about and by, with respect to the decision makers in their world.
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So write it down.
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Because this needs to become part of your advocacy strategy.
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Those frustrations are meaningful.
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They are information.
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They are telling you stuff about where that decision maker is at relative to where you need them to be.
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In order for them to take the actions that you already identified you want'em to take, to get to the result you said you wanted to get.
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But if we don't tackle those frustrations and what's causing them, we're missing half the advocacy strategy.
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And so to get to that second piece of the strategy, the last question you're gonna ask is, what would it take in terms of actions or behavior on the part of that decision maker to eliminate your frustration?
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What would they need to be doing differently?
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And again.
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I want you to be specific.
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Don't say, well, they would respect my opinion more.
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Well, how would you know?
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What would they have to do, what action would they have to take for you to know that they respected your opinion?
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It could be physical evidence of them respecting your opinion, like they start taking notes when you talk.
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Or they start asking more sophisticated questions that show that they're really listening and engaging with you as a problem solving partner whose help they need and want.
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It could be that they start including you in their discussions of how to shape the details of policy implementation.
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Those could be the kinds of actions that they would be taking that would show that they are in fact respecting your expertise more.
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If you are frustrated that they don't value your work at the proper level, what action they would need to be taking would be that they would be starting to respond to the higher dollar requests as not only legitimate, but maybe even asking you, are you sure that's enough?
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And they can quote back to you the reasons why the investment needs to be at the level that you're saying it needs to be at.
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All of those would be signs, would be actions they would be taking that would tell you, you now have their respect.
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They value your expertise, they value your work and its impact.
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Until we define the result we want, our chances of actually getting it are very, very slim.
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Because we can't build a plan to get the result if we don't know what it is.
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So those four questions will frame up the two major pieces of specificity that you've gotta have for results, in order to draw the straightest possible line from where you are now to get to those results.
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But you can't neglect the pieces and parts that are currently causing you frustration or that have caused you frustration in the past and have gone unresolved with a particular decision maker.
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99% of the time, it's the stuff you're frustrated about that is actually at the heart of what's in your way.
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It's what's keeping you from the results.
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So you wanna build an action plan and a set of strategies that address both.
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That are gonna be a plan to change the decision maker behavior around the thing that's frustrating you, and to get you to the end result.
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Both pieces will have their own strategic elements.
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But if we're just focused on the end goal of we want this money or we want this policy, but we got these bozo decision makers in our way who just don't get it and it's really frustrating.
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If they only got it, this would be so easy.
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Well, you know, most of the time they don't get it.
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And one of the curses of being in Nonprofit work is that there's all sorts of combinations of lazy thinking and unhelpful beliefs that are held by decision makers and others that are pretty pervasive in the land.
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About, because the services are available to those who receive them at very low cost or free of charge, then in the mind of the decision maker, they're free.
00:20:14.701 --> 00:20:15.990
They don't have any cost.
00:20:16.490 --> 00:20:19.671
Besides, it's a Nonprofit providing it, so it should be cheap.
00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:27.804
There's all this kind of random, lazy thinking junk that's floating around that already makes your job harder.
00:20:28.304 --> 00:20:35.175
And there is an inclination to take Nonprofits less seriously than your for-profit counterparts.
00:20:35.675 --> 00:20:39.786
We just have to deal with the reality that a lot of times we're working against that.
00:20:40.346 --> 00:20:44.426
That Nonprofit automatically means less professional than for profit.
00:20:44.926 --> 00:20:47.926
Nonprofit automatically means it's gonna be cheaper.
00:20:48.376 --> 00:20:50.146
It means all these things.
00:20:50.176 --> 00:21:00.538
It doesn't mean any of that in reality, but we're working against a fairly pervasive set of beliefs that are just kind of in the ether that decision makers are not immune to.
00:21:01.438 --> 00:21:03.298
So we can stay in frustration.
00:21:03.798 --> 00:21:07.278
Or we can pop the hood up on that frustration and say, what's in there?
00:21:07.278 --> 00:21:08.178
What's under the hood?
00:21:08.632 --> 00:21:13.672
What's going on, and what needs to change so we don't have to deal with this anymore.
00:21:13.731 --> 00:21:15.021
Because it's in the way.
00:21:15.291 --> 00:21:17.541
It's between us and the result we want.
00:21:18.405 --> 00:21:26.150
That's the secret sauce a lot of times is pulling apart that secondary set of issues that we often tend to disregard.
00:21:26.150 --> 00:21:27.740
Of oh, well that's just annoying.
00:21:27.950 --> 00:21:29.210
That's just my emotions.
00:21:29.210 --> 00:21:30.240
That's just whatever.
00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:31.430
It's real.
00:21:32.105 --> 00:21:33.855
And it has to be part of the strategy.
00:21:34.548 --> 00:21:43.544
When you build that in from the start, the path from here to the results is automatically gonna be smoother and more direct and more efficient.
00:21:44.044 --> 00:21:54.174
And if you've had the misfortune to get stuck in that standstill, stalemate place on your way to a result, pull out these four questions and reexamine all four of them.
00:21:54.914 --> 00:22:00.134
So first thing, what is the specific money or policy result I want?
00:22:00.690 --> 00:22:02.835
And be as specific as possible.
00:22:03.623 --> 00:22:12.086
For each of the decision makers who have a role to play in that, what specific actions do I want each of them to take that will help bring about that result?
00:22:12.715 --> 00:22:14.336
What do I want them to do?
00:22:15.105 --> 00:22:23.244
And then ask yourself, for each of the decision makers involved, what am I most frustrated by with respect to this decision maker?
00:22:23.943 --> 00:22:32.134
And finally, what would it take in terms of actions or behavior on the part of that decision maker to eliminate my frustration?
00:22:32.733 --> 00:22:35.134
What would they need to be doing differently?
00:22:36.105 --> 00:22:38.601
You can never go wrong getting more clarity.
00:22:39.044 --> 00:22:47.294
It is always helpful to revisit your end results, your strategy for getting there, and very importantly, examining the stuff that's in the way.
00:22:47.894 --> 00:22:51.163
And building strategies to move it out of the way.
00:22:51.663 --> 00:22:59.510
When you put that all together, what you've got is the shortest distance between here and those results that you know you really want.
00:23:00.230 --> 00:23:05.121
Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
00:00:00.005 --> 00:00:02.674
You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
00:00:03.004 --> 00:00:09.789
In today's episode, we share the shortest distance between where you are now and the advocacy results you want.
00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:11.800
So stay tuned.
00:00:17.971 --> 00:00:27.091
If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
00:00:27.091 --> 00:00:27.120
I.
00:00:27.481 --> 00:00:40.500
I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
00:00:41.131 --> 00:00:53.670
It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
00:00:53.731 --> 00:00:56.521
Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
00:00:59.731 --> 00:01:02.731
Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
00:01:08.373 --> 00:01:09.090
Hey there folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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Because I have a really important question I want to ask you.
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How satisfied are you really with the advocacy results that you're currently getting?
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Chances are, you're frustrated with at least one of the money or policy decision makers in your world, and there could be a lot of reasons for that frustration.
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But here's something you may not have considered.
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That frustration could be the biggest thing getting in the way of the results you want.
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Today we're gonna dive into two of the keys to shortening the distance to those results.
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There's a lot of things that go into getting the advocacy results you want.
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But I wanna share with you the number one most critical secret to getting those results.
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And that is, you've got to have crystal clarity about precisely what those results are.
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And that sounds really simple.
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Of course I know what I want.
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Of course I know what results I'm looking for.
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Do you?
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Do you really have absolute clarity?
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If I walked up to you right now and said, name a decision maker that's important to you, that you care about.
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And I said to you, what precise result do you want from them?
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What is the advocacy result you are seeking and what is their role in it?
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What action do you need them to take?
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Could you answer that with precision and detail and specificity, down to the absolute last detail of what you want them to do?
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Chances are it is more the case that you have a general idea of what you're trying to make happen.
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It tends to be along the lines of, well, we want them to give us money.
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We want them to give us more money.
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Or maybe even, we want them to give us a specific amount of money.
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That's better.
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That's more specific.
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If it's in the policy arena, is it that we want them to support an appropriation that will result in us getting more money.
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We want them to support authorizing legislation that will establish a new category of funding.
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Generally speaking, I find that often folks are pretty clear about dollar amounts, but once it goes beyond that, the specificity kind of falls apart.
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And I believe there's a reason for that.
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There's something I've noticed that is so consistent that I finally have realized that it is a thing.
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And it's a thing that most of us struggle with not just in advocacy, but in lots of different parts of life.
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And that is that the'what do you want' question is often a lot more complicated than we give it credit for.
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The reality is that we want a lot of things.
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Sure, maybe we want the$500,000 or the Senate bill number 27 or whatever it is.
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But what else do we want?
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And why are we frustrated?
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A lot of times we want the thing, we want the specific result.
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And maybe we can even name that result very specifically.
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And if it's something a decision maker can vote on, then you know, our ask can wind up being very simple.
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We want you to vote for X.
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This appropriation or this line item, whatever structure you're working in.
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But if it's not that cut and dried,'cause honestly, most advocacy asks are not that cut and dried.
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A lot of times it's that maybe we're working with a government agency that is going to implement policy that we've advocated for.
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And yay, we got the policy in place.
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But now it has to be made real.
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Now it has to be implemented.
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And the process of doing that involves a ton of details, most of which have the ability to either make the thing work really well or to cause it to fail.
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We need them to get those details right, but often we first have to get them to understand why all those details matter before we can get to telling them what we need them to do.
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And if they're not getting it, we start stressing out and getting frustrated.
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And we feel like we're moving further away from our desired result.
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And what very often winds up being in the mix is that it's not just about the outcome we want.
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Or the specific policy language that we want.
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It's that we want to have a strong and respected voice in the decision making process.
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And that's where I find so many leaders sharing with me that that's the source of their frustration, is that they're not getting that.
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They feel like they're on the outside looking in and they're banging on the door saying, Hey, you need to pay attention to this thing, and you need to pay attention to these five different moving parts'cause they all matter.
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We know they matter because we have the expertise, we have the experience, we have the data, we have the evidence.
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We have all the things that show that this is the right way to do it.
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This is the way to do it that will produce the result we all said we wanted.
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And what often happens is that those decision makers say, that's great.
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Thanks for your input.
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And then they go off in a corner and they make decisions without necessarily keeping you at the table, or without necessarily fully considering the expertise you have shared.
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And that is enormously frustrating.
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But what we often don't realize, is that that's also part of what we want.
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That's also part of the result we want.
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We don't just want their actions, we want their respect.
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We want them to value us appropriately.
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So there's a lot of layers in this, and it's partly about feelings.
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And that, I've noticed, advocates often don't want to talk about that part.
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Or they don't even realize it's happening.
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They'll express enormous frustration and they get very emotional in that process, but they don't see that as part of the advocacy work to be done.
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Those feelings are about wanting to be valued and respected and heard.
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And in fact not just heard, but to have your words and your opinions, your expertise and your advice be valued and acted upon.
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that's one way you show you value somebody's opinions and expertise is, they give you their advice and you act on it.
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It's also about having your work and its impact be truly valued at the level you know it's really worth.
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And when decision makers don't value, don't appreciate, don't respect either our expertise or the work that we do or its impact, that hurts.
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That's upsetting.
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That triggers a bunch of feelings.
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And the sooner we are aware of that and build that into what we're trying to make happen with our advocacy, first of all, the faster we're gonna get to the results that we want.
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But we're also going to be able to do the additional work that is needed to cause the result of respecting, and valuing us and our work at the same time.
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They are inextricably tied.
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If a decision maker does not fully understand and appreciate the value of the work that you do and the impact that it has.
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How in the world are they going to properly value that work in the decision making process?
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They're not.
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And if they don't fully respect and value your expertise, how much more likely are they to make mistakes because they didn't listen to you.
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They overlooked the incredible resource that you are.
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So I want you to try this idea on for size.
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That one of the most critical pieces of effective advocacy is building in strategies that will cause that respect and valuing to occur with decision makers.
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Once you have that, the path to getting them to take the actions you want, that will benefit the work that you do, is so much shorter and more efficient.
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It is the shortest straight line between where you are now and what you want them to do.
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But in many years of coaching and teaching Nonprofit leaders, one of the things I hear most often is, oh, I've got lots of good relationships with decision makers.
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It's great.
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They come to our program, they really like us.
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It's great.
00:10:06.278 --> 00:10:06.878
We're good.
00:10:07.378 --> 00:10:20.732
And in the very next breath, they'll tell me how frustrated they are that those same decision makers don't respect and value their expertise and their work at the level that they feel it should be valued.
00:10:21.485 --> 00:10:28.125
So first of all, that's a heads up that maybe those relationships aren't really where you want them to be yet.
00:10:29.086 --> 00:10:32.096
But also that frustration can have consequences.
00:10:32.563 --> 00:10:36.844
And if we're not careful, that starts to weave its way into our messaging and our engagement.
00:10:37.344 --> 00:10:43.333
And we start making that path to the results be longer and more convoluted.
00:10:44.298 --> 00:10:54.899
If we don't get clear on all the layers of what we want, we're gonna have a lot of stuff in the way when we go to build those very intentional relationships with decision makers.
00:10:55.678 --> 00:10:56.663
So here's the thing.
00:10:57.234 --> 00:11:07.514
In order to get clear on the specific end results we want from our advocacy, we have to acknowledge that all those other layers exist too.
00:11:08.453 --> 00:11:11.144
And we have to be willing to uncover all those layers.
00:11:11.644 --> 00:11:19.342
And make some decisions about which results are the end goal, and which results may be part of the process of getting there.
00:11:20.639 --> 00:11:23.524
So how the heck do we do that?
00:11:24.024 --> 00:11:26.849
What I find is most helpful, and I do this a lot with clients.
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When they're struggling, when they're in a really frustrating situation and they're kind of going in circles and not being able to move beyond a certain point in their advocacy with that decision-maker or set of decision makers.
00:11:40.369 --> 00:11:42.948
They feel like they're at a stalemate or a standstill.
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They've been trying all these different things and they're not getting what they want.
00:11:47.282 --> 00:11:50.312
They don't feel like the decision makers are really listening to them.
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The decision makers certainly aren't taking action in the way that the advocates want them to.
00:11:55.701 --> 00:12:01.616
And so they're just super frustrated and feeling like they've put a lot of work into this and it's not producing anything.
00:12:02.437 --> 00:12:11.287
So whether you find yourself in that spot or whether you have a new advocacy goal that you want to pursue and you wanna avoid winding up in that spot.
00:12:11.736 --> 00:12:12.876
The process is the same.
00:12:13.221 --> 00:12:20.172
You can do this at any point in the process, but it's always better to do it at the beginning and make your life a whole lot easier.
00:12:21.014 --> 00:12:24.772
You start by asking yourself a fairly simple set of questions.
00:12:25.384 --> 00:12:34.755
You wanna ask this before you begin any advocacy planning process, and you definitely wanna ask this if you find yourself at a standstill.
00:12:35.436 --> 00:12:41.196
The very first question is, what is the specific money or policy result I want?
00:12:41.855 --> 00:12:44.525
And be as specific as possible.
00:12:45.125 --> 00:12:51.645
If it's money, a specific dollar figure, from what source, on what timetable.
00:12:52.145 --> 00:12:57.785
Do you want it in fiscal year 2028 and you're gonna give yourself two years to make it happen?
00:12:57.966 --> 00:13:04.822
Or do you want it in FY 26 and the budget process is already happening and you gotta do this right now, you're already late.
00:13:05.322 --> 00:13:06.371
Or somewhere in between.
00:13:07.017 --> 00:13:13.344
The more specific you can be, the clearer your path to getting to that result is going to be.
00:13:13.844 --> 00:13:23.894
Just in the example I gave, you can see how different your plan would be, your approach would be if you've got two years to get the thing done, or if you've got three months to get the thing done.
00:13:24.394 --> 00:13:27.813
When time is compressed you gotta be super efficient.
00:13:28.313 --> 00:13:34.388
And you're gonna have to pick only the highest value approaches for the highest value decision maker targets, and that's it.
00:13:34.567 --> 00:13:35.798
You don't have time to mess around.
00:13:36.298 --> 00:13:52.302
If you've got a longer term goal, you have the luxury and the opportunity to build much deeper relationships and to use a lot more possible strategies to getting the result that you want, and building really strong relationships that will serve you in a lot of other ways in the future.
00:13:52.761 --> 00:13:54.052
Or maybe between now and then.
00:13:54.511 --> 00:13:56.822
So as specific as possible.
00:13:57.562 --> 00:14:05.384
The next thing is, once you're clear on the result you want, then for each of the decision makers you've identified who have a role to play in that.
00:14:05.884 --> 00:14:15.316
Ask yourself, what specific actions do I want each of those relevant decision makers to take that will help bring about that result?
00:14:15.816 --> 00:14:17.285
What do I want them to do?
00:14:18.056 --> 00:14:21.144
I will remind you that support is not an action.
00:14:21.644 --> 00:14:26.205
Nowhere in your plan should there be, I want the decision maker to support anything.
00:14:26.830 --> 00:14:27.981
That's not an action.
00:14:27.981 --> 00:14:28.942
It's not measurable.
00:14:28.942 --> 00:14:31.432
You can't say whether they did it or didn't do it.
00:14:31.932 --> 00:14:33.522
You want them to take a specific action.
00:14:34.022 --> 00:14:37.022
Maybe you want them to vote for something if that's how this process works.
00:14:37.022 --> 00:14:46.649
Or maybe you want them to agree to speak to the higher up in their organization or to speak to three of their colleagues who are also gonna have a voice in this.
00:14:46.919 --> 00:14:47.392
Whatever it is.
00:14:47.817 --> 00:14:49.677
But there's specific things you want them to do.
00:14:50.177 --> 00:14:50.868
And write it down.
00:14:51.628 --> 00:15:01.187
And then you're gonna ask yourself, for each of the decision makers involved, what am I most frustrated by with respect to this decision maker?
00:15:01.687 --> 00:15:03.307
And get really clear on that.
00:15:03.807 --> 00:15:12.131
This is the one that is always hiding in plain sight, and we don't give it enough attention and it gets in our way like you can't believe.
00:15:13.106 --> 00:15:15.375
So what's making me crazy about this person?
00:15:15.375 --> 00:15:16.575
What is frustrating me?
00:15:17.075 --> 00:15:18.335
What aren't they doing?
00:15:18.797 --> 00:15:22.221
How are they responding to me in a way that is frustrating?
00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:24.140
Maybe it's, they don't really listen.
00:15:24.471 --> 00:15:30.453
Maybe it's that they say nice things to my face, but then they turn around and don't do anything afterwards.
00:15:30.813 --> 00:15:34.932
Maybe they ask for my advice and ignore it.
00:15:35.413 --> 00:15:36.793
Could be any number of things.
00:15:37.293 --> 00:15:42.783
It may be that they think that the work that we do is worth about a quarter of what it's actually worth.
00:15:42.962 --> 00:15:49.802
And so they're chronically wanting to low ball any funding requests because they don't think that it could possibly cost what we say it costs.
00:15:50.302 --> 00:15:55.903
And they figure that if it does, it must mean that we're inefficient, not that that's actually what this quality of service costs.
00:15:56.232 --> 00:15:57.702
It could be lots of things.
00:15:58.349 --> 00:16:09.173
I don't know any non-profit leader who doesn't have a fairly lengthy list of things they are frustrated about and by, with respect to the decision makers in their world.
00:16:09.683 --> 00:16:11.183
So write it down.
00:16:11.683 --> 00:16:14.923
Because this needs to become part of your advocacy strategy.
00:16:15.764 --> 00:16:18.283
Those frustrations are meaningful.
00:16:18.644 --> 00:16:19.903
They are information.
00:16:20.083 --> 00:16:26.384
They are telling you stuff about where that decision maker is at relative to where you need them to be.
00:16:26.833 --> 00:16:33.734
In order for them to take the actions that you already identified you want'em to take, to get to the result you said you wanted to get.
00:16:34.557 --> 00:16:40.787
But if we don't tackle those frustrations and what's causing them, we're missing half the advocacy strategy.
00:16:41.287 --> 00:16:55.683
And so to get to that second piece of the strategy, the last question you're gonna ask is, what would it take in terms of actions or behavior on the part of that decision maker to eliminate your frustration?
00:16:56.183 --> 00:16:58.163
What would they need to be doing differently?
00:16:58.663 --> 00:16:59.083
And again.
00:16:59.583 --> 00:17:01.563
I want you to be specific.
00:17:02.283 --> 00:17:05.884
Don't say, well, they would respect my opinion more.
00:17:06.384 --> 00:17:07.963
Well, how would you know?
00:17:08.003 --> 00:17:14.272
What would they have to do, what action would they have to take for you to know that they respected your opinion?
00:17:14.772 --> 00:17:20.502
It could be physical evidence of them respecting your opinion, like they start taking notes when you talk.
00:17:21.002 --> 00:17:32.252
Or they start asking more sophisticated questions that show that they're really listening and engaging with you as a problem solving partner whose help they need and want.
00:17:32.752 --> 00:17:39.202
It could be that they start including you in their discussions of how to shape the details of policy implementation.
00:17:39.836 --> 00:17:46.507
Those could be the kinds of actions that they would be taking that would show that they are in fact respecting your expertise more.
00:17:47.287 --> 00:18:04.420
If you are frustrated that they don't value your work at the proper level, what action they would need to be taking would be that they would be starting to respond to the higher dollar requests as not only legitimate, but maybe even asking you, are you sure that's enough?
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:11.400
And they can quote back to you the reasons why the investment needs to be at the level that you're saying it needs to be at.
00:18:11.900 --> 00:18:18.200
All of those would be signs, would be actions they would be taking that would tell you, you now have their respect.
00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:22.099
They value your expertise, they value your work and its impact.
00:18:23.017 --> 00:18:30.277
Until we define the result we want, our chances of actually getting it are very, very slim.
00:18:30.777 --> 00:18:35.696
Because we can't build a plan to get the result if we don't know what it is.
00:18:36.196 --> 00:18:51.384
So those four questions will frame up the two major pieces of specificity that you've gotta have for results, in order to draw the straightest possible line from where you are now to get to those results.
00:18:51.884 --> 00:19:02.365
But you can't neglect the pieces and parts that are currently causing you frustration or that have caused you frustration in the past and have gone unresolved with a particular decision maker.
00:19:03.161 --> 00:19:10.211
99% of the time, it's the stuff you're frustrated about that is actually at the heart of what's in your way.
00:19:10.711 --> 00:19:13.590
It's what's keeping you from the results.
00:19:14.090 --> 00:19:20.790
So you wanna build an action plan and a set of strategies that address both.
00:19:21.494 --> 00:19:28.768
That are gonna be a plan to change the decision maker behavior around the thing that's frustrating you, and to get you to the end result.
00:19:29.758 --> 00:19:32.998
Both pieces will have their own strategic elements.
00:19:33.498 --> 00:19:42.929
But if we're just focused on the end goal of we want this money or we want this policy, but we got these bozo decision makers in our way who just don't get it and it's really frustrating.
00:19:43.348 --> 00:19:45.388
If they only got it, this would be so easy.
00:19:45.953 --> 00:19:48.474
Well, you know, most of the time they don't get it.
00:19:48.974 --> 00:20:03.044
And one of the curses of being in Nonprofit work is that there's all sorts of combinations of lazy thinking and unhelpful beliefs that are held by decision makers and others that are pretty pervasive in the land.
00:20:03.517 --> 00:20:14.701
About, because the services are available to those who receive them at very low cost or free of charge, then in the mind of the decision maker, they're free.
00:20:14.701 --> 00:20:15.990
They don't have any cost.
00:20:16.490 --> 00:20:19.671
Besides, it's a Nonprofit providing it, so it should be cheap.
00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:27.804
There's all this kind of random, lazy thinking junk that's floating around that already makes your job harder.
00:20:28.304 --> 00:20:35.175
And there is an inclination to take Nonprofits less seriously than your for-profit counterparts.
00:20:35.675 --> 00:20:39.786
We just have to deal with the reality that a lot of times we're working against that.
00:20:40.346 --> 00:20:44.426
That Nonprofit automatically means less professional than for profit.
00:20:44.926 --> 00:20:47.926
Nonprofit automatically means it's gonna be cheaper.
00:20:48.376 --> 00:20:50.146
It means all these things.
00:20:50.176 --> 00:21:00.538
It doesn't mean any of that in reality, but we're working against a fairly pervasive set of beliefs that are just kind of in the ether that decision makers are not immune to.
00:21:01.438 --> 00:21:03.298
So we can stay in frustration.
00:21:03.798 --> 00:21:07.278
Or we can pop the hood up on that frustration and say, what's in there?
00:21:07.278 --> 00:21:08.178
What's under the hood?
00:21:08.632 --> 00:21:13.672
What's going on, and what needs to change so we don't have to deal with this anymore.
00:21:13.731 --> 00:21:15.021
Because it's in the way.
00:21:15.291 --> 00:21:17.541
It's between us and the result we want.
00:21:18.405 --> 00:21:26.150
That's the secret sauce a lot of times is pulling apart that secondary set of issues that we often tend to disregard.
00:21:26.150 --> 00:21:27.740
Of oh, well that's just annoying.
00:21:27.950 --> 00:21:29.210
That's just my emotions.
00:21:29.210 --> 00:21:30.240
That's just whatever.
00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:31.430
It's real.
00:21:32.105 --> 00:21:33.855
And it has to be part of the strategy.
00:21:34.548 --> 00:21:43.544
When you build that in from the start, the path from here to the results is automatically gonna be smoother and more direct and more efficient.
00:21:44.044 --> 00:21:54.174
And if you've had the misfortune to get stuck in that standstill, stalemate place on your way to a result, pull out these four questions and reexamine all four of them.
00:21:54.914 --> 00:22:00.134
So first thing, what is the specific money or policy result I want?
00:22:00.690 --> 00:22:02.835
And be as specific as possible.
00:22:03.623 --> 00:22:12.086
For each of the decision makers who have a role to play in that, what specific actions do I want each of them to take that will help bring about that result?
00:22:12.715 --> 00:22:14.336
What do I want them to do?
00:22:15.105 --> 00:22:23.244
And then ask yourself, for each of the decision makers involved, what am I most frustrated by with respect to this decision maker?
00:22:23.943 --> 00:22:32.134
And finally, what would it take in terms of actions or behavior on the part of that decision maker to eliminate my frustration?
00:22:32.733 --> 00:22:35.134
What would they need to be doing differently?
00:22:36.105 --> 00:22:38.601
You can never go wrong getting more clarity.
00:22:39.044 --> 00:22:47.294
It is always helpful to revisit your end results, your strategy for getting there, and very importantly, examining the stuff that's in the way.
00:22:47.894 --> 00:22:51.163
And building strategies to move it out of the way.
00:22:51.663 --> 00:22:59.510
When you put that all together, what you've got is the shortest distance between here and those results that you know you really want.
00:23:00.230 --> 00:23:05.121
Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
