Advocacy Is Essential to Fulfill Your Mission and Serve Your Communities
Today’s post is the third in a series about board members and nonprofits advocating for their missions and the people they serve. Board members must understand how public policy impacts their organizations, the importance of educating policy makers, and the need to include resources for advocacy in an organization’s budget. In this post, I interview Judy Reckelhoff, Chief of Staff for BoardSource. She describes why BoardSource has elevated advocacy and points to resources they provide to help nonprofits and board members.
In my last post, I shared an Advocacy Checklist compiled from interviews I did with many board members who have advocated on behalf of their organizations. In the first post of the series, I interview Sonya Campion, a founder of Stand for Your Mission.
Why did Board Source start focusing on advocacy?
It started six or seven years ago. We were hearing more and more from sector leaders that board members did not understand what advocacy was. They thought it was illegal for their organization to engage in advocacy. This lack of knowledge was inhibiting nonprofit organizations and the sector more broadly to interact with policy makers as they contemplated important policy and funding decisions. Without advocacy from nonprofit leaders, policy makers were making decisions without all the information they needed.
Please select this link to read the complete article from BoardSource.