While federal legislation certainly affects the operations of nonprofits, the funding and policy decisions that most affect locally-based nonprofits and their constituents come from city, county, and state governmental bodies. This publication is designed to prepare nonprofits for engagement at the state and local levels - where most nonprofits are likely to have the capacity to engage, and the potential to see quicker results - as well as for opportunities at the federal level.
The challenge with a publication of this type is the lack of uniformity among local and state governments across the United States. Capturing the individual practices of 50 state legislatures and thousands of city and county governments would be impossible here. This publication thus focuses on three elements to aid nonprofits in their advocacy at all levels of government:
- Generalized processes and principles of how to influence public policy in our federal system of government. By becoming familiar with general practices in policy development, nonprofits can better adapt to the specific ways of a particular jurisdiction's government.
- Guiding questions that will help translate an understanding of general principles into appropriate strategies for specific issues at specific levels of government.
- Case stories that bring key ideas to life and allow nonprofits to imagine themselves in similar situations.
This publication resulted from a partnership between the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
The Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest promotes, supports, and protects 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy and lobbying in order to strengthen participation in our democratic society and advance charitable missions. CLPI seeks to "make the extraordinary ordinary" - that is, to make advocacy a core part of nonprofit work. To make this vision a reality, CLPI's
trainings and resources include a dual focus on
organizational capacity and strategy to accelerate nonprofit
engagement in and philanthropic support for advocacy.
For more information, please visit CLPI's website at
www.clpi.org.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 to "help people help themselves." Specifically, the organization supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.
For greatest impact, the Foundation targets its grants toward specific areas, including health, food systems and rural development, youth and education, and philanthropy and volunteerism. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
For more information, please visit the Foundation's website at www.wkkf.org.
The Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation would like to thank the many nonprofit advocates who contributed directly or indirectly to this publication. We are especially grateful to Michael Cortés, Ph.D. for his early and myriad contributions. Additional acknowledgements appear in the text with specific case stories and excerpts.
Special thanks to Sheri Brady of the Kellogg Foundation for seeing the need and having the vision to create this publication, to Elizabeth Heagy and Jim Hudson of the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest for marshalling the resources and expertise to make it a reality, and to CLPI Senior Consultant Gita Gulati-Partee for stewarding it to fruition. |
