Creative Advocacy: A Playbook for Builiding Powerful Campaigns

Lead Authors

Daniel Rossi-Keen // RiverWise

Scott Wolovich // New Sun Rising

Research & Development

Asa Ana // Collaborative Craft

Tim Hindes // TrailBlaze Creative

Playbook Design

Tim Hindes // TrailBlaze Creative

Creative Advisors

Day Bracey // Barrel & Flow and Drinking Partners Podcast

Craig Dershowitz // Artists 4 Israel , Healing Ink , and the Healing Arts Kits

Daniel Grier // Splashed by DKG and Magic City Fashion Week

Jay Manning // JM the Poet , documentarian at Center for Shared Prosperity

Maranie Rae // photographer, videographer, and journalist

Pamela Rossi-Keen // The Genesis Collective

Photo Credits

Erin Ninehouser // Rustbelt Mayberry

Christopher Padget // Human City Creative

When undertaken effectively and deployed wisely, creative advocacy will help to produce communities that are better informed, inspired, connected, mobilized, and resourced to realize their shared vision for the future.

Table of Contents

How we came to Focus on Creative Advocacy

Every story begins with a complex backstory and what is presented in the pages of this Creative Advocacy Playbook is no different. Of course, not every backstory is equally important to understand. So, some of what follows may not be critical for every reader to absorb at the outset. If you prefer to get down to action, then feel free to skip over this section until it becomes helpful.

For those who are interested in understanding the history behind the work presented here, this opening section shares that 15-year trajectory as it has emerged across numerous communities, organizations, and contexts.

In what follows, we briefly explain the organizations who have spearheaded this work. We begin by discussing the issue of capital absorption and its relationship to creativity and community building. We then talk a bit about cultural changes that have taken place throughout the 15-year history of our organizations. Finally, we briefly explain how this playbook relates to other documents and processes that are currently being employed by organizations throughout western Pennsylvania and beyond.

Capital Absorption as a form of Community Building

New Sun Rising and RiverWise are two closely aligned nonprofits, helping communities to lead and benefit from the future they envision. Established in 2005, New Sun Rising has provided capacity building services to more than 400 nonprofits, social enterprises, and collaborations, while making $15+ million of funding and financing more accessible.

RiverWise, an offshoot and partner of New Sun Rising, formally emerged in 2018, in response to the building of a $7 billion petrochemical facility in the heart of its footprint. Since it was founded, RiverWise has worked alongside a growing network of more than 70 regional partners to secure nearly $2 million in direct investment and over $4 million for mission aligned projects that aid individuals, organizations, and collaboratives in organizing community power and voice.

Over the course of its nearly 20-year history, New Sun Rising has worked diligently to test, document, and communicate a series of pathways for communities to ignite, launch, and grow their capacity. First outlined in the Vibrant Communities Handbook (2017) and later expanded in the Vibrant Communities Toolkit (2020), the processes and strategies identified by New Sun Rising have been adapted by grassroots, organizational, and municipal leaders alike.

In the process of working across more than 50 different neighborhoods, New Sun Rising has repeatedly observed communities that, despite their obvious desire for growth and change, remained underprepared to manage sustained and transformational investments. Although communities typically understand their limitations and needs, they often remain stuck in patterns of activity that make it difficult to overcome suboptimal conditions. While residents or organizations routinely rise up to meet specific challenges, communities in transition consistently lack the internal capacity and/or alignment required to build power and direct sustained investments of community capital over time. Other barriers come in the form of systemic conditions which make harnessing community capital so challenging.

New Sun Rising and RiverWise are two closely aligned nonprofits, helping communities to lead and benefit from the future they envision.

The earliest iterations of New Sun Rising’s work focused on building community and organizational capacity to absorb three critically important types of investments: financial, human, and social capital. Individuals and organizations were identified, trained on strategy and process, and resourced, all with the goal of creating more vibrant conditions within the life of the community. Along the way, regular and progressively more substantial investments were secured throughout the 2010s, helping communities take action towards the future they envisioned for themselves. The approach and results of such work are summarized in this 2021 Annual Report

Changing Cultural Conditions

As New Sun Rising continued to evolve and deepen its understanding of where it could most add value to community capacity building, two significant developments challenged us to think more broadly about the issue of capital absorption. The first of these issues was global, the other was much closer to home.

Since New Sun Rising’s founding in 2005, substantial changes have washed over communities all across the country and the world. At the heart of many of these changes is a repeated pattern of paradox that manifests in numerous ways throughout community life.

» Though communities have become increasingly connected via technology, such tools have divided us in increasingly problematic ways.

» Though communities are more fully aware of their need for collective action, they are becoming less and less capable of collaboration and constructive compromise.

» Though communities have greater access to information than ever before, they are less certain about who and what information they should trust.

» Though communities are more aware of the need for increased equity and inclusion, they more acutely feel the negative impact of its absence.

» Though society is awash in resources that should be useful for overcoming the challenges we face, such resources are neither widely accessible nor directed by those who need them most.

As socioeconomic disparities became front and center in our public discourse, New Sun Rising deepened their focus on the systemic causes at the root of these issues. Yes, financial, human, and social capital remain extremely important to community building. But in order to grow collective voice and power, people would need to acknowledge and nurture additional community capitals. Faced with mounting headwinds fueled by these patterns of paradox, we felt the urgent need for new tools promoting healthier natural, built, and political capital flow.

Although communities typically understand their limitations and needs, we have found that they often remain stuck in patterns of activity that make it difficult to overcome suboptimal conditions.

Settling on the Importance of Creative Advocacy

In 2018, as New Sun Rising was starting to explore the role of data, collaboration, and the important role of culture in systems change, a new organization, RiverWise, was born 30 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh. The emergence of RiverWise was, in many ways, built upon the shoulders of New Sun Rising’s 15-year history of iterative community capacity building. Many of the same needs that New Sun Rising had helped others to address were also being faced throughout RiverWise’s footprint. Persistent disinvestment, failing physical and relational infrastructure, limited vision for the future, lack of capacity and leadership — all these and more were shared characteristics of the communities that RiverWise set out to support.

Although many of the conditions that RiverWise was seeking to address were very similar to those that had long been addressed by New Sun Rising, there were several distinctives that helped to bring the need for focusing on cultural capital into clearer view.

First, whereas New Sun Rising set out to work specifically with grassroots projects and disinvested communities on the verge of gentrification, RiverWise deliberately directed its efforts toward an entire county (Beaver County, PA). So, whereas New Sun Rising was, at least in its early stages, focused primarily on hyperlocal efforts, RiverWise was launched with a regional focus squarely in mind.

Second, given Beaver County’s storied history related to the collapse of the American steel industry and lack of recovery, many of its most serious impediments to change were related to shifting people’s mindset. Getting to the point where such places could begin to think about strengthening community capitals required an earlier and more fundamental step, namely getting them to think differently about their role in generating change.

Third, the founding of RiverWise emerged amidst the construction of a $7 billion petrochemical facility at the heart of its geography. Seemingly overnight, a county comprised of 160,000 residents, 54 municipalities, and a history of limited cooperation had become home to one of the largest financial investments in the country, if not the world. Although few communities would likely be well prepared for such an event, it’s not an understatement to say that Beaver County was uniquely unprepared to respond proactively and collaboratively to the kinds of changes that it was rapidly facing. With limited resources, limited leadership, and very limited time, communities needed to dramatically augment their capacity to actively direct the future. They needed to gain citizen agency, vision, voice, and collaborative capacity across 450 square miles. RiverWise and Beaver County, like so many other communities, needed to be able to fight way above their weight. And it needed to do so quickly.

Partly through intuition, and partly through accident, RiverWise set out in late 2018 to generate a more robust regional identity and vision by centering the importance of storytelling and advocacy. RiverWise embedded a professional videographer in its organization from day one, it used high quality digital storytelling to foreground stories of regional cooperation and progress, experimented with regional art projects , it engaged in increasingly visible public

writing about the life of the community, and it worked increasingly toward coordinated advocacy efforts directed at specific causes. Partly inspired by these efforts, an artist collaborative was created in Beaver County, numerous visible projects were brought to the public’s attention and funded, and at least some subset of the community began to think differently about their future. Operating with relatively few financial resources, and partnering with a growing team of creatives, RiverWise was able to establish itself as a visible leader in the region and, more important, with a growing subset of the general public.

At the same time that RiverWise was undertaking these humble steps toward better understanding the importance of cultural capital in advocacy, New Sun Rising was making a number of targeted investments in its ability to collect, organize, and visualize community-level data. Technological investments were made, human resources were mobilized, stakeholders were engaged, and teams of researchers were assembled to explore how best to utilize qualitative and quantitative data in service to community change. As a result, New Sun Rising’s Power in Numbers initiative, including its Vibrancy Portal platform and Data Story Reports, started to be utilized by more and more local organizations to make the case for greater investment and mobilization of community capitals.

Intentional Collaboration and Investment in Creative Advocacy

Inspired by the rapid socioeconomic disruption amplified by COVID-19, New Sun Rising and RiverWise began collaborating at an increasing rate around the necessity of creative advocacy. Both as thought partners and as co-creators, our organizations have worked hard to understand how our unique competencies related to data, storytelling, advocacy, and capacity building can be further brought to bear within the communities we work. As we have tested and witnessed the benefits of creative advocacy, we have come to recognize the importance of deepening, extending, and codifying our emerging efforts so that others can share in our learnings. It is for this reason, and hoping that such insights will be useful for growing community advocacy efforts, that we have undertaken the creation of this playbook.

Rooted in strategies intended to ignite, launch, and grow capacity as outlined in the Vibrant Communities Toolkit, the Creative Advocacy Playbook seeks to be highly adaptive, evolving, and practically applicable for everyday practitioners of community-focused work. At its core, we intend to offer a way of thinking and coordinating action that learns from past successes (and failures), reflects on changing cultural conditions, and responds to evident and widespread community needs. In the end, the Vibrant Communities Framework and Creative Advocacy Playbook offer a thoughtful overview of the patterns of processes, competencies, and dispositions that tend to persist in healthy and vibrant communities.

Vibrant communities must build the capacity to grow cultural capital if they wish to fully achieve their goals.

Meaningful ideas rarely emerge in a vacuum, and our understanding of creative advocacy is no exception. The leadership of New Sun Rising and RiverWise have engaged in ongoing research, study, and discussion about the history which underpins our approach. We recognize that many artists and creative community builders have been deploying related tactics for years. The Creative Advocacy Playbook seeks to both recognize and amplify their efforts. Our journey of ideas and inspiration is ongoing but rooted in the mid-20th century history of Social Psychology (Berneys), Institutional Persuasion (Packard 1957), and Paradigm Shift (Kuhn 1962). The concepts of Social Capital (Putnum), Democracy Inversion (Russell), and New Power (Heimans and Timms) helped to expand this field of knowledge in the 21st century. Additional reference to these foundational concepts can be found in the playbook. Considerably more research and learning can and must be accomplished.

We hope that sharing this historical and cultural context offers a deeper understanding of forces used to shape perceptions and the future of communities. While we share the goal of traditional advocacy to influence decision makers, the interest of creative advocacy is not primarily limited to matters of public policy. Creative advocacy offers a path forward for people and communities seeking to build greater capacity to nurture and absorb all types of capital — especially cultural — in a 21st century reality.

Creative advocacy offers a path forward for communities seeking to build greater capacity to nurture and absorb all types of capital - especially cultural - in a 21st century reality.

Why Communities Often Fail to Use Creative Advocacy

As we have worked to better understand creative advocacy and the conditions that allow cultural capital to be better absorbed into the fabric of the community, we are reminded that many communities are underprepared to bring about the kinds of change they would like to see. The reasons for this are many and varied, but in one way or another, they regularly manifest themselves as a lack of agency over the material conditions in the community (the hardware) and the mindset and relationships that characterize individuals and organizations within the community (the software).

In order to address this lack of agency, the status quo approach to movement building must be re-imagined. “If we continue to rely on traditional forms and structures of organizing, however, we will never build the scale of power we need,” says the Center for Community Change in their Path to Power model. “The field is currently too dependent on a narrow range of external funding sources, too reliant on paid staff in a way that limits scalability, and too insulated from the potential of technology to recruit a mass base and reach a mass audience.”

Community Trauma and the Inability to Absorb Capital

In our experience, a community that is lacking in agency often finds itself in that state because of some kind of collective, historical trauma. Often this trauma is economic in nature, though, that may not always be the case. In response to trauma, community members predictably and wisely focus on short-term survival and may disengage from broader community transformation. Typically, communities in crisis limit the time and energy devoted to longer-range planning, setting aside complex projects and collaborations. In such environments, the luxury of advocating for the collective future often and understandably takes a back seat to more immediate needs.

Because of the precipitating trauma as well as the response to it, communities in decline experience a loss or imbalance of capital of all kinds — natural, human, cultural, social, political, financial, and built. The collective nature of these conditions inevitably creates an inertia and expectation that compounds itself over time. Eventually, communities lacking in agency come to understand themselves as victims of forces outside of their control. This creates a mutually reinforcing cycle of disempowerment, wherein the mindset of the community actually restricts opportunity, limits visionary thinking about alternative futures, and predictably reinforces unhealthy material conditions at the heart of community life.

On the surface, and in a way that most people can easily observe, communities with imbalanced capitals generate unhealthy symptoms of distress and disinvestment. These outward signs include things like broken windows, deteriorating infrastructure, vacant buildings, blight, and more (what we have above referred to as community hardware). Underlying these visible markers (at the level of community software) is a complex set of invisible and often unspoken conditions that work against achieving balance and making progress.

As people have done throughout history, communities in decline develop a more or less coherent set of shared beliefs, stories, and practices that help them to make sense of their accumulated experience. This collective worldview is complex, differs from person to person, and is composed partially by the stories we are told and partially by the stories we tell ourselves.

It It consists of the ways we organize ourselves, the assumptions we tell each other, the community members we laud (or vilify), the dreams and fears we share, and so much more. Over time, these dominant paradigms produce mental maps that largely determine how residents come to understand the world around them and how stakeholders are expected to operate within that world.

The mindset of a community can empower and encourage its residents... or it can reinforce ... unhelpful frames of mind.

Community Mindset and Creative Advocacy

What we are describing above is what we often refer to as a “community mindset,” and it exists at the heart of all communities. The mindset of a community can empower and encourage its residents to seize control of their futures, make their vision a reality, and mobilize others to advocate for the same. Or, as is often the case in communities limited by an unhealthy mindset, this collection of assumptions can reinforce stakeholder disempowerment, apathy, hopelessness, and other similarly unhelpful frames of mind. In recent decades, many established narratives have attempted to position visionary thinking as the domain of certain institutions and sectors — not communities.

Heavily shaping community mindset is the vast amount of misinformation and false content being distributed, targeted, and organically shared at an alarming rate across a sea of digital channels. Research and whistleblowers alike demonstrate that prevailing communication platforms are built to produce and encourage discord. Due to society’s insatiable appetite for digital media, and the massive amount of resources available to those seeking to shape public

Pamela Rossi-Keen | Member of Genesis Collective, Creative Advocacy Advisor

... in our context, there’s just no economy, [no] economic backing for them to tell their stories. We needed to get these out. We needed to help artists to provide hope for a community and allow them the opportunity to work together and work on behalf of not only themselves and the people that they care about, but really just the community at large to tell a different narrative.

perception, this propaganda deeply influences the way people understand an issue and how they organize a response. Even well-designed advocacy efforts can be drowned in the noise of misinformation and daily banter, or become buried by profit seeking algorithms, rendering them ineffective at building attention and coalitions. The fundamental and dangerous challenge presented by disinformation is the way it undermines a community’s shared narrative sense of itself.

Creative advocacy, as we understand it, is a commitment to understand, engage, and (when appropriate) transform community mindset in ways that produce greater agency and more vibrancy within the life of a community. While shifting mindsets through creative advocacy cannot solve all the problems that communities face, our experience suggests that it can go a very long way toward affecting productive change at the level of both community hardware and software.

In what follows, we are chiefly interested in highlighting how creative advocacy can help communities reclaim agency over the unproductive, uninformed, or unengaged mindsets that keep them from experiencing vibrancy together. We want to understand and demonstrate how proactive creative advocacy strategies can function as a tool for changing community mindset around an identified matter, shifting both how the community thinks about itself and the way it acts in light of those shifts in thinking. In so doing, we hope to encourage stakeholders to employ creative advocacy strategies to overcome false and unhelpful narratives that predictably accompany community decline while realizing the resources and capacity to grow in self-directed ways as a result.

What is community mindset?

» Beliefs (stated or unstated) about the community

» Attitudes that are common across the community

» Hopes and/or fears of the community

» Stories that get told again and again by members of the community

» Values that are common to the community

» Rules or norms that govern community interaction

Why does community mindset matter to nonprofits?

» To discover and speak life into their stories

» To overcome false and unhelpful narratives

» To promote collective vision and hope

» To amplify and rebalance underrepresented narratives

» To advocate effectively around shared values and vision

» To inspire positive regard and action

Challenges Facing Nonprofits Interested in Creative Advocacy

The problems surrounding the strategy of “creative advocacy” are many. As we have spoken with nonprofit organizations and leaders, we have identified five primary challenges that often prohibit a careful and protracted focus on advocacy within their organizations.

Many nonprofit organizations lack the capacity to enact an advocacy campaign

Nonprofit leaders throw the word “capacity” around quite a bit, generally with very good reason. More often than not, organizations are working well beyond the bounds of their experience and resources. Team members are regularly called on to work in new and unfamiliar situations, programs are often understaffed, and budgets rarely allow for activity deemed elective or uncommon. Simply put, nonprofit organizations — and the systems that support them financially — have normalized working conditions that lack the requisite capacity to do the work at hand. In an environment of scarcity, nonprofit leaders must make shrewd decisions about how to utilize precious financial and human resources. In such situations, creative advocacy is generally (and understandably) viewed as a luxury, even though it may be one of the most effective ways of creating abundance and buy-in for the organization’s work in the long run. As one nonprofit leader recently said, “If your building is on fire, you don’t have time to create a team and tell stories about the importance of saving it. You have to solve the problem the best you can with the resources you have right now.”

Funding for nonprofit work does not often support creative advocacy

Whether nonprofit leaders (or those who fund them) like to admit it or not, we operate in systems that do not always incentivize innovation, creativity, or disruption. Very often, the funding available to nonprofit organizations is restricted in ways that make it hard to do the kind of creative advocacy we are describing in this playbook. As a result, nonprofit leaders must prioritize processes and activities that are more directly focused on generating perpetual funding than addressing root causes, raising community voice, and building community power to push back against the conditions creating such needs in the first place. A leader in the sector once put it this way: “If you can only get funding to build hammers, you either figure out how to create an organization that builds hammers or you fold. It’s as simple as that.”

Creative advocacy is committed to understanding, engaging, and transforming community mindsets in ways that produce greater agency and more vibrancy within the life of a community.

Fear of public failure

Far more often than not, creative advocacy is intended to be a public activity. Campaigns are generally designed to grow awareness, attract followers, generate publicity, and the like. And, many campaigns are built so that they are attempting to achieve a clear outcome as the result of their efforts. For example, a campaign may seek to gain political support for a project, may intend to forestall undesirable development, or may be focused on attracting funding for a given project. In these and similar instances, the success or failure of the advocacy campaign is inherently public and therefore open to scrutiny, critique, and dissent. For many nonprofit organizations, and given the issues described above about limited capacity and funding, the perceived risk of undertaking such a public effort is deemed to be too great. Even though such organizations may be among the best candidates for organizing advocacy, they often do not see themselves as willing or able to shoulder the inevitable scrutiny that comes along with such public initiatives. And so, in many cases, public advocacy efforts never get off the ground.

Uncertainty about how to maximize campaign effectiveness

As we engage with numerous different kinds of organizations across our region and beyond, we are regularly told that nonprofit leaders recognize that they are not maximizing the potential of the various kinds of media available for spreading awareness about their work. Though we are surrounded by numerous platforms and services that allow us easily to share what we are doing, figuring out how to utilize the effectiveness of such channels is increasingly challenging. Since the success of a given creative advocacy effort may rely heavily on making the most of the benefits of using such media channels, nonprofit organizations who have limited sophistication in this regard may view the matter as too complex, beyond their reach, and psychologically overwhelming. While the desire to conduct a campaign may be present, the perceived barriers to entry are often beyond what nonprofit organizations can bear.

Access to creatives is limited

Although conducting an effective creative advocacy campaign can occur with varying levels of involvement from artists and creatives, we have found that extensive access to such individuals is often required to maximize campaign effectiveness. In at least some cases, however, nonprofit leaders do not know where to begin to identify creatives who can help make their campaign a success. Experience has shown that not every creative is disposed or well-prepared to work alongside a nonprofit organization. It takes a certain kind of creative mind, a unique disposition, and an openness to collaboration that not all creatives or artists possess. For nonprofit organizations who may have had little interaction with the creative community, it can be difficult to know where to start. Simply being interested in working with creatives does not ensure success. Considerations such as culture and work style can make or break this relationship. Given limited resources and time, the notion of trial and error is neither appealing nor possible. Because of this, even the most motivated nonprofit organizations can find themselves unaware of how to connect to mission-aligned creatives who can help bring their campaign to life.

Each of the challenges listed above undoubtedly manifest themselves uniquely in different organizations. They are real and important matters that cannot be simply dismissed or brushed aside. That being said, and in our experience, these matters are often felt by organizational leaders in ways that make them seem more decisive than they need to be. We are hopeful that the remainder of this playbook will help to contextualize some of these problems in a way that grows the confidence and capacity of nonprofit organizations to take the leap into the world of creative advocacy. This is, in our humble opinion, not merely desirable. We believe that the future health and vibrancy of society hinges, in part, on the willingness and ability of nonprofit organizations to invest in more accessible onramps and tangible expressions of what their stakeholders desire for the future of their communities.

Creative Advocacy Advisor

... a good piece of what we wanted to do is to show people the Israel that they haven’t seen before. It’s very political. It’s provocative. How do you do it? It’s because (we have) this capital clout, this cachet, this respect… which (helps) an artist to say: Okay, I trust them. I’ve heard about this program.

Craig Dershowitz | Artists 4 Israel, Healing Ink,

What is Creative Advocacy?

Although we have spent a considerable amount of time talking about the issues surrounding creative advocacy, we have yet to provide a specific definition of this concept. This term is at once straightforward and surprisingly complex. Although one can fairly easily recognize creative advocacy when they see it, sorting out just where the boundaries are for what constitutes creative advocacy is somewhat more difficult than one might think. Recognizing that our definition is emerging and represents only an approximation, what follows is what we hope to be a helpful account of how we understand creative advocacy.

Creative advocacy is a public and intentional form of engagement that employs artistic practice to disrupt prevailing narratives and strengthen community movement toward an identified goal.

Toward a Definition of Creative Advocacy

As we understand and use the term throughout this document, creative advocacy is a public and intentional form of engagement that employs artistic practice to disrupt prevailing narratives and strengthen community movement toward an identified goal.

While it is certainly true that advocacy can function to reinforce existing narratives that are currently serving communities well, we have focused our attention primarily on situations where prevailing narratives are making it hard for stakeholders to become appropriately informed, inspired, connected, mobilized, and resourced to undertake community building activities. This approach to advocacy is focused on providing fresh insights and new ways of considering possibilities and problems, generating cultural movement and community action, while growing and balancing community capitals towards new preferred futures (mindset or paradigm shift) among the public.

As a way of unpacking this definition, let us briefly focus on each of its elements in turn.

Creative advocacy is public

Advocacy happens all around us all the time. Parents advocate at home for their children to clean their room. Friends advocate on the phone for their peers to join them at a party. And individuals can even advocate internally to themselves, seeking to generate motivation or will to accomplish a task. All of these — and much more — constitute a form of advocacy. But, they do not rise to the level of what we are here referring to as creative advocacy. When using this term, we are envisioning a kind of action that deliberately and self-consciously exists in the public sphere. So, we have things in mind like an editorial in a local newspaper, a social media campaign, a satirical advertising blitz, a work of public performance art, the launching of a community magazine, a sit-in, or other similar kinds of actions that can be observed by the community at large.

Creative advocacy is intentional

Sometimes advocacy can occur that is neither planned nor intentional. Casually picking up trash at a public park, for example, might encourage others around you to do the same. Or wearing an “I voted” sticker might remind others to get to the polls and cast their ballot. Although these kinds of actions may move others toward action, they do not rise to the level of intentional activity that we are referring to as creative advocacy. What we have in mind when using this term is a kind of action that deliberately sets out to bring about change as a direct result of the advocacy being undertaken.

Creative advocacy employs artistic practice

In more or less mundane ways, the entire world is filled with public acts of advocacy. A stop sign represents a form of highly effective, though straightforward, example of advocacy. An alert on your phone is advocating for you to check to see who or what is vying for your attention. And the outfit worn by a date is presumably intent on eliciting a positive response about their appearance. These are all, in some way or another, forms of public advocacy. But they are not creative advocacy in the sense we are using it here. When we refer to “creative advocacy,” we are thinking of a kind of goal-directed action that is deeply and intentionally informed by artists (or what we regularly call ‘creatives’ throughout this document), artistic practices, and artistic forms. Examples of what we have in mind are things like public murals, engaging documentaries, interactive art installations, unexpected flash mobs, innovative uses of fashion, publicly-directed forms of music, and much more. As creative and expansive as the artists who are involved in generating it, creative advocacy can take on an infinite number of forms in numerous contexts. The common thread of such activity, however, is the artistic (or creative) engine behind these intentional public acts.

Jay Manning

JM the Poet, Creative Advocacy Advisor

Creative advocacy engages and builds community

When we refer to creative advocacy, we are envisioning a public creative act that is directed toward a more or less identifiable community. We say “more or less identifiable audience” here because the degree of specificity may vary significantly from one situation to another. On the one hand, one can imagine an act of creative advocacy aimed at changing the minds of a specific elected official. Here the size and scope of the identified community is small and fully identified. On the other hand, one could envision a campaign focused on “paying it forward,” in which the goal is to get the members of one’s community thinking more deliberately about engaging in acts of kindness toward others. In this second instance, the number of people being targeted is significantly broader and may end up including all members of the community, be it geographic or issue-based. In both instances, however, the act of creative advocacy is directed toward an identified community or what one might also refer to as a “target audience.” Creative advocacy, to say it a bit differently, places community concerns and community formation at the very center.

...(creatives help) you dig a little bit deeper into seeing things in their natural state, answering those questions with people that are going through the issues, people that are very connected to the questions, seeing their surroundings, seeing their environment, being able to see their actual emotion as opposed to it being scripted, or acted out or reimagined in some way.

Creative advocacy is goal directed

At its core, creative advocacy is intent upon bringing about an identified goal in the life of a community. Sometimes this goal can be very specific. For instance, an act of creative advocacy could be focused on getting one’s city to reopen the community pool. Or, the goal can be considerably more broad. One could conduct a campaign aimed at raising awareness about childhood hunger in western Pennsylvania. In either case, there is a clearly defined objective motivating the deployment of creative thinking, tactics, and media. It is the goal-directed nature of public advocacy that distinguishes it from mere information sharing or storytelling. Creative advocacy, wherever and whenever it occurs, is seeking to spark something within the life of a community, generating transformation in one or more elements of public life. In this way, creative advocacy seeks to act as a tool for constructive community formation and maintenance, generating more vibrant and focused residents that are intentionally moving toward the kinds of sustainable, equitable communities they seek to create together.

When undertaken effectively and deployed wisely, creative advocacy will help to produce communities that are better informed, inspired, connected, mobilized, and resourced to realize their shared vision for the future. We will have much more to say about these goals in the pages below. While there are undoubtedly many different ways that these five goals can be accomplished, we are convinced that most nonprofit organizations can generally become much more effective at arriving at these ends if they understand and grow in their use of creative advocacy as described here. To grow in such awareness, it is first critical to understand the key components, or ‘tools’ of creative advocacy.

The Tools of Creative Advocacy

As you are hopefully beginning to realize, the concept of creative advocacy is both relatively straightforward and yet incredibly complex. In fact, one might make the argument — and some have — that all human interaction is a form of advocacy. Over two millennia ago, a famous Greek philosopher named Aristotle was also interested in this concept, though he referred to it under the name of “rhetoric” instead of advocacy.

In his germinal work titled simply Rhetoric, Aristotle was the first to examine systematically what advocacy is, how it functions as the machinery of democracy, and how best to go about employing advocacy in service to bringing about changes in the public sphere.

Aristotle described advocacy as thepowerofdiscoveringthetoolsavailable forpersuadingothers. At least three critical assumptions were baked into this definition, each of which are important for us to remember as we undertake the work of creative advocacy.

First, Aristotle reminds us that creativeadvocacyisaprocessofdiscovery . At his

core, Aristotle was a student of the natural world. He was a careful observer of whatever situation he found himself in, and his observations served as resources and insight that helped him to generate persuasive appeals.

Second, Aristotle believed that there are discernible toolsavailabletooneseekingtobecomeanadvocate Creative advocacy, though undoubtedly an artistic undertaking, nevertheless employs surprisingly predictable patterns of thought, albeit in very different contexts.

Third, and finally, as Aristotle understood things, every situationpresentsopportunitiesforthedeployment ofadvocacy . The skilled advocate is one who is able to observe carefully enough to understand the levers of influence that present themselves in a given situation, recognize the tools that can best be used in the situation, and then craft appeals that activate the relevant levers of change. This, in a nutshell, is what is happening each and every time advocacy is successfully deployed, even if the advocate might use different language to explain what is taking place from one situation to another.

At least one of the reasons for Aristotle’s continued popularity and utility stems from his commitment to public education. Convinced that the health of public life hinged on the presence of adept creative advocates, Aristotle is said to have offered courses in advocacy to the general public as part of a school he founded called The Academy. When enrolled in these courses, students would be introduced to this understanding of advocacy as well as the practical tools for becoming an effective advocate.

At the very core of Aristotle’s curriculum was the study of three core ideas: ethics, emotions, and logic. According to Aristotle, discovering the tools available for persuading others always boiled down, in one way or another, to some combination of these three ideas. When deploying creative appeals based on ethics, emotions, and logic, the advocate was using what Aristotle called the “artistic proofs.” This combination of creativity (the artistic element) and arguments (the so-called proofs) is instructive to us even today as we seek to craft appeals that move our communities toward an identified position or action. Since much of this document focuses on the creative side, we thought it important to focus briefly on the other other elements of Aristotle’s framework for advocacy: ethics, logic, emotion.

Ethics

When seeking to persuade an audience, one must always keep in mind the broad concept of ethics. According to Aristotle, the successful advocate must craft appeals that take into account the target audience’s assumptions about what the world should be like and what counts as right or noble actions. Does the target audience prioritize a world where individual freedom is paramount? If so, then the creative advocate must somehow amplify the relationship between their campaign and individual freedom. Or, is it the case that the target audience is instead concerned about the collective good? In this case, the advocate must craft their appeals with the idea of corporate responsibility in mind. Accurately assessing this ethical framework of one’s target audience is a vital step in the creative process, for if one misunderstands the ethical worldview of their audience, then the appeals they create are likely to remain unpersuasive and ineffective.

Logic

In addition to being a consummate rhetorician, Aristotle is also considered the father of modern logic. The first to systematize the process of making arguments, Aristotle created processes and methods by which arguments could be evaluated. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle thought that advocacy hinged on making strong and valid arguments about one’s position.

Though logical arguments may rarely be wholly sufficient for persuading another, they are very often necessary for ensuring the effectiveness of a given appeal. Even in the current climate, in which logic has regularly been deprivileged in the public sphere, the creative advocate must remain thoughtful about the arguments being made (either explicitly or implicitly), the evidence being presented (or assumed), and the conclusions being drawn as a result. While the collective value placed on logic may wax and wane from era to era, the structure and strength of one’s arguments remain a vital and important element for the ongoing work of advocacy.

Emotion

The third and final tool for persuasion is human emotion. As a student of what we would today call human psychology, Aristotle spent considerable time and effort cataloging the various human emotions that cause people to act the way they do. Anger, fear, hope, pride — all of these and more represent levers that the creative advocate can pull to help ensure that their message is heard and that their outcomes are achieved. If the target audience is unsure of their future, then connect your appeal to the idea of stability and certainty. If the audience is optimistic and hopeful, consider the value of creating a campaign that activates such optimism and hope. Regardless of the prevailing emotions — and all target audiences demonstrate these to one degree or another — one finds within the audience itself clues about what is most likely to move them toward action. The goal of the creative advocate is to uncover which combination of emotions are most important, and then craft appeals that leverage this understanding to bring about identified campaign goals.

The Dynamic Nature of Ethics, Logic, and Emotion

One of the more helpful features of Aristotle’s understanding of creative advocacy is the adaptive and contextual understanding he had of the matter. It is this adaptive and contextual element to advocacy that makes it truly creative and not merely formulaic. The most critical element of ensuring the success of a given campaign is the ability to discern which of the three elements described above is most important to the identified target audience. In some instances, the creative advocate will craft appeals that are almost entirely built upon logic. A legal brief, for instance, will tend very heavily in this direction. In other cases, the most effective campaign might downplay logic and instead rely most heavily on human emotions. In today’s climate, and as briefly mentioned above, many of the most persuasive messages in culture owe their successes to the use of emotional appeals.

At various times, in different contexts, and via distinct types of media, each of these three elements of advocacy may need to be employed to different degrees. The key to a successful advocacy campaign involves learning when, and in what combinations, such appeals are likely to be effective. Assembling a thoughtful and informed team of advocates can go a long way to making that happen.

and Magic City Fashion Week, Creative Advocacy Advisor

I love to do anything that gets people together and builds community. I’m not even saying we have to get in the room and agree on (everything). Let’s get in here and really talk about the problem. And the solution. Also, what can we do about it? And even if that’s the only thing that I do is create that space for the conversation to happen, I feel like that’s amazing. We don’t often like to put ourselves in other people’s shoes.

Daniel Grier | Splashed by DKG

Building an Effective Creative Advocacy Team

As the African proverb states: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” A simple equation that helps to identify the primary components of your effort is that Catalysts + Creatives = Campaigns. In creative advocacy, the community organization that is working to improve the issue or people with lived experiences are defined as the catalyst. And in order for this intentional approach to narrative disruption and mindset shift to be most effective, the advocacy team expands to include a creative(s). Undertaking creative advocacy requires that the unique skills, perspective, and work style of each team member is respected and understood.

Catalysts

Advocacy campaigns must begin somewhere. Someone, either a group or an individual must identify an issue and begin the process of addressing it. A catalyst is, quite simply, an organization or individual leading the development of a creative advocacy campaign. In this context, the word “organization” is used loosely. Catalysts can be grassroots community leaders, an unincorporated coalition, a nonprofit organization, funding partners, or a collaboration of organizations.

In drafting this playbook, we considered the varied audiences that may use it to organize their efforts. While we acknowledge that nonprofit organizations are most likely to have the need, partner network, and motivation to engage in creative advocacy, they are not the only potential catalyst that can launch a campaign. While broadly applicable to anyone working towards positive community change, the words “nonprofit” and “catalyst” are used interchangeably for our purposes, considering that even smaller resident-organized groups are, indeed, not-for-profit and therefore face similar challenges to registered nonprofits.

Throughout a campaign, catalysts will likely collaborate with organizations and individuals who directly and indirectly align with their cause. This approach allows for building a layered network of support and engagement around an issue. Leveraging collaboration is crucial to campaign success, extending beyond the walls of the initial catalyst. This is important to create a critical mass of affinity and reach around a cause, demonstrating that there is indeed power in numbers.

With the festival, we provide representation by bringing folks in that look like us to inspire other people and also to give them some guidance and networking. We’re providing a safe space for people to congregate, ask questions, and discover something new.

Day Bracey | Founder of Barrel & Flow, Creative Advocacy Advisor

The Catalyst Mindset

Catalysts are generally fuelled by passion and a desire for change. In many cases, a catalyst will have a fairly defined area of service or impact as well as an existing network of relationships. Often, this audience has been curated and cultivated over time, with the catalyst building an affinity with this group. Ideally, the catalyst has a network of dedicated volunteers, donors, or followers that may be helpful in amplifying campaign messages.

While catalysts often focus on many different issues and topics, it is important to consider the proper timing for elevation of messages and the immediacy of action. A catalyst who constantly makes requests and demands of their audience can unintentionally dilute the ability to act when the opportune time comes. Catalysts must maintain a careful balance of audience, message, and frequency, so when it is time to act, the audience can easily see and sense this distinction and importance. When considering whether to launch a campaign, catalysts should understand the characteristics of their audience and the relationship it holds with them.

Although many catalysts have an intuitive ability to cultivate (and activate) their supporters, they often lack the organizational capacity to do so in strategic ways. Sadly, catalysts are often understaffed, overworked, and underappreciated. Many lack strong, clear messaging, data collection, graphic design skills, or the internal capacity required to manage a creative advocacy campaign.

The most effective catalysts are generally those who develop strong social capital outside of the sector in which they are located. They can be surprisingly well connected, so taking the time to document these relationships can often be critical to understanding the impact that a catalyst may be able to have on an issue. Many catalysts have ongoing conversations with necessary legislators about mission and geographic-aligned issues. On a hyper-local level, they are likely very active with, composed of, and connected to the communities they serve.

The most effective catalysts are those who develop strong social capital outside of their own sector. They can be surprisingly well connected, and are likely very active with, composed of, and connected to the communities they serve.

Creatives

Defining the term “creatives” is a somewhat elusive pursuit. Creatives range from artists to musicians, writers to marketers, designers to performers, and just about anywhere in between. While creatives come from diverse backgrounds and deploy varied practices, they often think in a different way from others around them. Importantly, they often have an ability to understand and connect with audiences in ways that may elude catalysts. Creatives can conceptualize unique and different information, actions, and activities that can spark interest and passion. They invoke emotions in their audience that persuade and inform in ways traditional media may be less capable of doing. At their best, creatives will enable an organization to connect and engage with the community and further its mission in memorable ways.

Creatives often demonstrate a unique capacity to deepen audience engagement that can help to promote the subject of a campaign. In the campaign environment, creatives can often conceptualize unique concepts, content, delivery methods, and engagement strategies. This becomes increasingly critical with the myriad of information (and misinformation) that campaigns must stand out amongst in our busy and changing world. Many times, though not always, creatives steer away from traditional forms of media and marketing and instead focus on alternative ways to capture the audience’s attention and invoke the desired emotion from the community. Though more traditional methods are important and should comprise some part of most any campaign mix, intentionally adding a disruptive “creative spark” can often aid in creating a more successful and memorable campaign.

A key component of creative advocacy campaigns is understanding the relative level of cultural capital one has in a community. This assessment allows relationships with creatives to flourish, helping to build, design, and create tactical elements of campaigns. For campaigns to work, creatives must balance curatorial, artistic, and programmatic development with marketing and communication tactics. It is typical that these roles are distributed across a few partners in a campaign.

...we believe that every person is a creator. It’s just the birthright of being a human.

Pamela Rossi-Keen Executive Director of The Genesis Collective, Creative Advocacy Advisor

Attributes of Creatives

Not all creatives will be the best fit for creative advocacy campaigns. Similar to assessing community partners, it is important to consider the attributes of creatives before inviting them onto the campaign team. It takes a special type of creative to meet the established campaign goals of community organizations. The most ideal creative partners will generally demonstrate some mix of the following characteristics. Exercises to help you understand the ideal creative traits and roles for your campaign are included later in this playbook.

Passion: Creatives are passionate about what they do. No matter what creative avenue they’re pursuing, they are dedicated to their craft and are always searching for the next new idea or next trend within their specialty. When they find new ways to inspire others using their creative passion, they find joy and happiness by witnessing the influence that their work had on the broader community.

Resourcefulness: Creatives are generally very resourceful, making their ability to understand constrained campaign and organization budgets quite valuable to the process. They can help brainstorm the best ways to make use of a budget in order to maximize the engagement with the audience and the community. Chances are, they’ve had to be resourceful for decades.

Knowledge of the Audience: Understanding the audience of your campaign is one of the most important prerequisites for success. It’s difficult to engage with your audience without understanding them. Creatives can help bridge that divide by disrupting the media monotony and capturing attention in novel and artful ways.

Open-Minded: Having an open mind is an important attribute for everyone involved in a campaign. Open-mindedness tends to come more easily to creatives. Many creatives are used to free-flowing ideas and concepts. This is useful in the campaign process because creatives are able to evolve one concept into another as things unfold, without feeling stuck on one aspect of the campaign.

Curious: Curiosity is not only an important part of life, but it is also one of the features that can drive audience engagement. Creatives are typically curious about the newest trends and the next new ideas because of their passion to communicate through their medium of choice. This attribute allows creatives to expand on already existing ideas and explore new possibilities in creative advocacy to break through the white noise of media to engage audiences more effectively.

Risk-Taking: Creatives tend to be risk-takers. They aren’t afraid to do something different or experimental. They will push the envelope. They embrace the unknown. If organizations are willing to listen to out-of-the-box and unique ideas, the results can often be quite impactful. Taking risks is part of the campaign process. There is no campaign without a risk. Creatives help define those risks and turn them into opportunities to be brave and appealing in the eyes of the audience and community.

Engaging Creatives

When engaging creatives, finding those within your community who have a passion for the issue or geography of your campaign is key. Think about what motivates you to get behind this specific campaign. Are there people within your community who might feel the same way? Passionate people, creative or not, are going to be more willing to dedicate time and energy to your specific project.

As we have noted time and again, creatives generally offer a perspective that cannot be provided by other assets. It is therefore critical to recognize and value creative partners for the work they’re contributing. Find a time early in the process to discuss this recognition. As part of formalizing such recognition, we strongly encourage fair compensation for the expertise and work creatives provide. Often this includes financial compensation. In other instances, if mutually agreeable, this can mean providing alternate forms of recognition that have value for those working alongside you on a project. Whatever the arrangement may be, begin early in the process to ensure that catalysts and creatives have a proper understanding of expectations from both sides. Such clarity and role differentiation will be most likely to provide a healthy working environment and a more cohesive and creative campaign.

When working with creatives, it is also critical to allow ample time for brainstorming. Brainstorming and open thinking allows creatives to bounce ideas off of the campaign team to develop a strategic direction. Creatives may need more time to conceptualize certain ideas around a campaign. Creativity doesn’t always “just happen” on demand. It often takes time to develop the right idea for a campaign by considering a bunch of wrong ideas. Often, the best way to support creatives is to give them ample space to communicate their ideas and provide feedback. Patiently engaging with creatives not only creates a healthy environment for the campaign, but also creates conditions most likely to move a campaign toward success.

It It is important to note that there are often multiple stages of creativity needed throughout the lifecycle of campaign planning and implementation. Therefore, creativity shouldn’t fall on one individual, or be expected to happen all at one time or all during one gathering. While one creative can support a campaign, multiple creatives can accelerate it. So, whenever possible and appropriate, consider including multiple creatives in your process so that a variety of perspectives may be represented.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the form, structure, and size of campaigns are as beautifully diverse as the communities who envision them. There is no one size fits all. Over time, and in different contexts, consider experimenting with when you bring creatives into the planning process. Of course, there is no one right time or place for creatives to enter a Creative Advocacy Campaign. Undoubtedly, adding them at different stages will produce different opportunities, challenges, and results.

Creatives are your campaign messengers and need ample time to brainstorm and refine their ideas.

Things to Consider Before Launch

When considering whether to use your limited capitals towards a campaign, it is critically important to consider a number of factors that will help to ensure that your time and resources are well spent. While the following list is certainly not exhaustive, we have found it important to reflect carefully upon the matters below before undertaking such an endeavor.

Relevance of the Campaign

Before starting the creative process, it’s necessary to reflect honestly on the issue at hand. The subject at the heart of your campaign should be something that matters or something that can be made to matter to the community. This observation is critically important and should not be passed over too quickly. In many cases when campaigns fail, they do so because of an overly optimistic assessment about how community members will respond to the issue. In a world that is increasingly vying for our attention through all kinds of channels, we must be sure that the issue at hand is truly of concern to those whom we seek to engage through a creative campaign.

Cost vs. Benefit

At the beginning of the campaign development process, a cost-benefit analysis should take place. Ultimately, the amount of resources put into a campaign must be worth the expected outcome. Along with your team and using the exercises provided in this playbook, spend time discussing what features of your campaign will require time and effort, and do your best to determine the cost both financial and otherwise of each piece of the campaign. After having that discussion, talk about what impact you want your campaign to have on the community. Is the amount of time, resources, and money worth the expected outcome? Is the community impact advantageous even if lack of funding forces

you to forfeit portions of your campaign? Is there inherent value in enacting the project that extends beyond the success or failure of the campaign? Put a bit differently, can you identify value that will result from conducting the campaign even if you ultimately fail to achieve your central persuasive appeal? These are difficult conversations, but having them at the beginning of the process will allow you and your team to have realistic expectations throughout the campaign process.

Timing of the Campaign

Timing is another key factor to consider when discussing whether or not you should launch a campaign. By this we don’t mean the amount of time required to complete the campaign. Instead we are referring to what is going on in the community at the time of your launch. For instance, if your plan involves the use of an ice cream truck to help spread your message, then launching your campaign in the middle of winter probably doesn’t make sense. Or, if your campaign involves extensive outdoor meetings, it may be most sensible to schedule your project during the late spring and early summer. As another example, suppose you are seeking to enact a campaign that will culminate in a particular event, vote, or public gathering. In such instances, it will be critical to plan the timing of your message to align with these key events. Although predicting community dynamics and optimal timing is always a tricky affair, the wise planner will do all they can to ensure that their campaign is as well poised as it can be for success.

Location of the Campaign

Location can be every bit as important as timing. Launching your campaign in the right environment could make or break your campaign. Once again, consider the subject of your campaign and what you hope to accomplish. Is your location optimal for what you want to do? Is the size and functionality of a given space well-suited to your needs? Is it better to have an event indoors or outdoors? Do all possible stakeholders have adequate visibility and access to your event? Should you conduct an in-person or virtual gathering? Carefully considering these kinds of questions should help you to connect with your target audience more effectively, more efficiently, and more persuasively.

Limitations of the Campaign

Every campaign is going to have limitations. Identifying those potential limitations on the front end of your project may help you to avoid lost time, frustration, unutilized resources, and more. Limitations can come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes we are limited by time, money, or personnel. Our message may also be constrained by the comfort level of our board of directors. Or, we may be limited by the assumptions, education level, or ideological composition of our target audience. And, despite our best efforts to understand such limitations ahead of time, challenges often arise in unexpected ways. Doing your best to identify predictable challenges before your launch will help to make your process as smooth as possible.

Campaign Goals

Every campaign should identify a specific goal that the project is seeking to accomplish. Without clearly stating this goal, a campaign may easily become lost along the way and find it difficult to stay focused on its central priorities. While perhaps not an exhaustive list, we have found it useful to call out the following five goals undertaken by the vast majority of creative advocacy campaigns: to inform, inspire, connect, mobilize, and resource. Though most campaigns will undoubtedly take a measure of inspiration from each of these goals, the most effective campaigns are generally those that intentionally focus their efforts on primarily accomplishing one or two of these identified priorities.

To Inform

Raising awareness of a subject is often the starting point of a campaign, even if it’s not the main goal. Skillfully informing your audience can give the community a reason to care and help your audience to advocate alongside you by educating them about your subject’s value. This educational component helps the audience more fully comprehend the reasoning behind your campaign, preparing them to become more active advocates.

Informing the audience can be done in a variety of ways. Coming up with creative ways to raise awareness of the subject of your campaign can often generate more of an impact than traditional comments and data points. While writing a press release might get some media coverage, strategically combining that with a creative intervention like a flash mob is likely to increase engagement with the media and community.

To Inspire

Inspiration and passion are paramount. Sometimes a campaign’s main goal is to inspire the community. This could mean inspiring them to take the campaign further, to take action on an issue, or to envision a better future. No matter what inspiration is behind your campaign, if the people behind it are passionate, that message will capture the attention of your audience.

Passion and inspiration can naturally steer a creative avenue for a campaign. By considering ways that people with different personas are emotionally connected to the issue, you can build a creative strategy that will inspire engagement. When appropriately inspired, a community can often take on a life of its own, generating movement and results that could never be achieved otherwise. The wise campaign designer will both encourage such inspiration and feed off of it as much as possible.

To Connect

Strengthening connection between stakeholders matters. When building movements that affect systems, networking is often more valuable than what any one individual or organization can do themselves. In order to build connectivity, there often needs to be some kind of relationship and communication established between the campaign and the community. People are more likely to engage with your campaign and your organization if they feel connected to it, and they recognize you.

Often, community movement fails due to a lack of connectivity among aligned stakeholders. Particularly in communities that have suffered from various forms of trauma and decline, organizational silos and the duplication of effort is often more common than not. In such contexts, the very act of connecting like minded parties can itself be a revolutionary act. When done creatively, a campaign aimed at forging community connections can generate multiple , cross-sector, and unanticipated synergies that can fuel all kinds of community movement and passion.

To Mobilize

Many times campaigns are started with the intention to compel the community and audience to do something. This could be spreading awareness about a topic or issue, signing a petition, raising funds, or a multitude of other activities. Using a campaign is one of the most effective ways to mobilize the community to take action.

In our experience, community members often understand key elements of an issue and want to do something to make a difference. However, we have also learned that many of those same individuals often struggle to know where and how to step into an issue. Campaigns focused on community mobilization can help to generate a specific call to action that clearly engages the audience and helps to translate their knowledge and passion into tangible action.

To Resource

Sometimes the goal of a campaign is to raise additional resources for the community. This could be anything from funding, volunteers, supplies, food, or staffing. One way to identify necessary resources is by considering the surplus or deficit of community capitals around the issue. Helping people to acquire resources can build capacity and accelerate progress towards goals. Campaign activities can provide many important ingredients for successful fundraising, such as increased visibility, demonstrated community support, better understanding of the issues, and contextual expression of community need.

Securing resources is ultimately based on your ability to connect with someone who has what you need, who can communicate your story, and who can compel those resources to invest in your effort. Creatives can serve a critical role in connecting your audience with issues in a personal and experiential way, which can help move towards action.

Catalysts will use these five primary campaign goals to determine the focus of their effort. Once identified, the primary goal(s) become a common thread to establish initial baseline parameters, limitations, goals, creative interventions, and measures of success.

Catalysts consider five campaign goals to determine the focus of their effort. Once identified, the primary goal(s) become a common thread to weave together baseline information, creative actions, and measures of success.

How to Build a Campaign

As we have suggested, creative advocacy campaigns offer an intentional and strategic approach to engaging a wider group of people in discussion about their future. When catalysts take the time to use exercises from the following portion of this playbook they will foster a more effective environment for their advocacy efforts. Detailed step by step worksheets for each exercise are included later in the playbook. The purpose is to help get your team’s ideas onto the Campaign Canvas in order to take informed action.

The following section is the workbook for developing your campaign. Exercises are broken down by three implementation phases: ignite, launch, and grow. Although completing the recommended exercises with your team will best prepare you to build an effective campaign, it is likely not necessary to complete them all. At a minimum, the purpose of each section should be considered while filling out your Campaign Canvas, whether you formally use the exercises here or not. Catalysts should begin to build their creative advocacy campaign by reviewing each section and identifying which exercises are best suited for their team’s current level of development, capacity, and goals. The exercises are listed in the recommended order to be completed.

Before you can launch and grow a campaign, you need a plan. Activities in the ignite phase help you collect baseline information around your team, issue, and audience to inform your creative action. Let’s start with an overview of the exercises that catalysts and creatives can use to develop their campaign. The information collected

Launch

Now that you have developed a campaign plan, it’s time to put it into action. In the launch phase, catalysts focus on activating the team of creatives, marketing professionals, and partners necessary to deploy the creative action and marketing strategy. Much of this effort is centered on project management, ensuring that the effort put into the ignite phase is executed to the best of your team’s ability and gives you the best chance for reaching your goals.

Create the Content

Creative deliverables can be visual, audio, performance, or any mix of formats. Working closely to support your creative(s) during content creation is critical to a high quality campaign. Frequent communication and adherence to timelines will help make sure that their message and engagement approach connects with the audience.

Deploy the Campaign

Project management is key to navigating a successful launch. Are the roles and responsibilities of your campaign team clearly identified, documented, and agreed upon? Have you executed contracts with outside partners? How often will you meet?

Monitor Progress

Consider the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) established for your campaign goals. Who is responsible for collecting qualitative and quantitative data? How will that be shared and analyzed internally? How will KPI’s be shared with your community?

A partner’s Creative Advocacy video was unveiled at a national conference recently. I’ve never sensed such a palpable shift amongst conference attendees before — it was like everyone leaned forward in their seats, concurrently head-nodded, and suddenly had light bulbs going off above themselves all at once. It was clear that people all over the country are trying to figure out how they can augment and reframe their work.

Heather Sage | Periscope, LLC

Grow

Once the campaign has publicly launched, it will likely take on a life of its own. In order to increase the depth, breadth, and height of its impact, you need to truly hear what your audience’s engagement is telling you. In the grow phase, catalysts are encouraged to stay adaptive in their approach, take note of emerging threats and opportunities, and set the stage for future avenues to advance their advocacy goals.

Update & Adapt Strategy

Analyze and discuss progress on your KPIs. What are you learning from the public? What adjustments need to be made to your campaign activities?

Identify Catalytic Opportunities

What new or deeper relationships have emerged during the campaign? How will you nurture and build upon them?

What new capital was developed due to this campaign - natural, cultural, human, social, financial, political, and/or built? What opportunity or catalytic project is possible now that wasn’t before?

Reflect & Share

Reflect on your Campaign Goals, KPIs, community response, and catalytic opportunities to create a Campaign Report.

Based on what you learned, how would you update your advocacy priorities, goals, or strategies? What information from the Campaign Report should be shared back out to the community, and in what format?

Congratulations, you have implemented a creative advocacy campaign! Now what?

Depending upon the nature of your issue and resources available to the catalyst, there are a few options for next steps. If the campaign resulted in new opportunities or information, this could be the seed for the development of a new creative action or an entirely new campaign. Creative assets and community feedback can be captured and remixed in ongoing ways. The community may be ready to set new goals while moving along the participation scale from being ‘informed and inspired’ to ‘mobilized and resourced’. It is also completely reasonable to catch your breath and pause in order to fully analyze the impact of the campaign. Some issues require campaign urgency while others benefit from the wisdom of reflection time and the space for organic growth.

Final Thoughts on Creative Advocacy

Everyone has the potential to be a creative advocate in their own way. As such, the processes and exercises shared in this playbook are intended to be adapted and refined to suit your unique needs. Whether you are an individual grassroots community member or an established nonprofit with paid staff, get started in the way that makes the most sense to you, and then make a full commitment to taking action.

Admittedly, putting yourself and your organization out there in a more visible, creative way can be scary. Engaging in creative advocacy requires trusting yourself, the people around you, and relying on a broader community you have not yet fully met. Taking the time to build a campaign plan as outlined in the playbook will help your likelihood of success. We strongly encourage catalysts to stay open to new ideas, possibilities, and relationships that emerge. As for many collaborative efforts: the process is the product.

We also acknowledge that our attempt to distill an entire field of practice is imperfect and incomplete. We invite and welcome feedback from people who read or implement the Creative Advocacy Playbook. Undoubtedly, we will be learning alongside you as New Sun Rising and RiverWise support and launch campaigns in the coming years. We will share those findings and use them to refine our thinking in an ongoing manner.

For additional information, insights, and campaigns in progress visit: https://www.newsunrising.org/creative-advocacy/.

Campaign Planning Tool & Exercise Worksheets

This portion of the playbook includes two primary sections to help get campaign ideas out of your head onto paper (or onto your screen).

The first section contains what we call the Campaign Canvas (pages 48-53). These sheets provide space to document and organize important information about your campaign. They are designed to work directly with the 17 numbered exercises. The Campaign Canvas is organized by the following pages: Assess the Catalyst & Creative, Explore the Issue, Understand Your Audience, Design Creative Action, Create a Marketing Strategy, and Budget Template.

The second section contains the Exercise Worksheets (pages 54-92). These 17 exercises are designed to help you and your team explore and build the necessary elements for a successful campaign. As stated earlier, it is not required to complete all exercises. But to some extent, campaigns should consider them all at some level during planning and implementation.

CAMPAIGN CANVAS

ASSESS THE CATALYST & CREATIVE

The Campaign Canvas is included here for reference and planning purposes. There is an editable version available for download here.

Describe the desired traits of creative partners you are seeking to join the campaign team

EXPLORE THE ISSUE

Campaign Issue (Ex. 3, Ex. 4)

Briefly describe the issue that your campaign will address.

History of the Issue (Ex. 3)

• Take away 1

• Take away 2

• Take away 3

Issue Statements (Ex. 4)

Add your five “How Might We” statements here…

• Statement #1

• Statement #2

• Statement #3

• Statement #4

• Statement #5

Campaign Goals (Ex. 5)

Enter your Campaign Goal Statements (inform, connect, inspire, mobilize, resource)

Campaign Timeline (Ex. 3)

• Campaign Start:

• Campaign End:

Campaign Geography (Ex. 3)

Describe the targeted geography for this campaign.

Cost & Benefit (Ex. 4)

Considering the issue above, what must happen for the campaign to be worth it? Are these possible? If not, draft new outcomes that are possible and address the issue.

• Outcome 1

• Outcome 2

• Outcome 3

Actions (Ex. 5)

What activities will move the needle on the issue and the goals to the left? Make them measurable, if possible.

• Action 1

• Action 2

• Action 3

Possible Obstacles (Ex. 5)

• Obstacle 1

• Obstacle 2

• Obstacle 3

Issue Disruption Opportunities (Ex. 5)

• Opportunity 1

• Opportunity 2

• Opportunity 3

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE

Campaign Audience Description (Ex. 6)

Describe who the audience is for this campaign.

Audience Themes (Ex. 7)

• Theme 1

• Theme 2

• Theme 3

• Theme 5

Supporting Data (Ex. 8)

Add data related to your “How Might We” statements here:

• Data #1

• Data #2

• Data #3

• Data #4 Data #5

Audience Disruption Opportunities (Ex. 8)

Opportunity 1

Opportunity 2

• Opportunity 3

DESIGN CREATIVE ACTION

Personality & Tone (Ex. 10)

Add the descriptions that will most resonate with your audience.

Headline (Ex. 11)

Add the headline concepts for your “How Might We” statements here:

• Headline #1

• Headline #2

• Headline #3

#4

•

CREATE A MARKETING STRATEGY

BUDGET TEMPLATE

1. Catalyst Capacity

The purpose of this exercise is to help catalysts explore their preparedness to launch a successful campaign.

To assemble an effective Creative Advocacy campaign team, catalysts should start by understanding their own strengths and weaknesses. This self-assessment tool helps catalysts consider the various capacities needed to implement a successful campaign. Areas where you lack capacity will be opportunities to bring in partners, contractors, and/or creatives to help round out your team and make your campaign as successful as possible.

The Exercise

The self-assessment below can be completed by an individual, by a team (as a group exercise), or by multiple members of a team. Generally, if there are multiple team members involved with your project, we recommend having each team member complete these exercises independently before comparing results. In instances where the team is very small (less than 3 people), it may be appropriate to complete this activity as a group exercise.

Once you have determined whether you will complete this activity individually or as a team, consider the following statements. Either individually or collectively, rate how much you agree with the following statements about the catalyst’s capacity.

Notes:

15-30 minutes

- Pens/Pencils

1. Catalyst Capacity (continued)

Collaboration

We collaborate frequently and deeply with other organizations. We often partner with artists and creatives.

We have a history of successfully advocating for the things we believe in and resources we need.

We have identified community advocates who can help to amplify the message of this campaign.

We have experience managing complex projects.

Communication

We consistently produce high quality graphic designs to communicate our work.

We have high quality photos that communicate the goals of this campaign.

We produce written communication in a clear and compelling manner. We have established channels and digital platforms in place that we use to disseminate messages to the public.

We have clear processes in place for disseminating messages to the public.

We have people and systems committed to disseminating information on a regular basis.

Social, Intellectual, Financial, and Creative Capital

We are known and trusted in the community. We have quantitative data (Census, CDC, EPA, etc.) to support the need for our issue.

We have qualitative data (experiential, stories, self-reporting) to support the need for our issue.

We have expertise, or have close partners who are experts, on the issue being addressed.

We have the financial resources necessary to design and implement this campaign.

We have a network of creative partners who would be interested to work on this campaign.

We have people, processes and resources to follow through if this campaign is successful.

Total Capacity Score (out of 90)

1. Catalyst Capacity (continued)

72+ You are ready to lead this campaign!

54 - 71 You have some key capacities covered, but will need partners to make this a success.

18 - 53 Your campaign will benefit from a more experienced, higher capacity partner.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» What areas did you score the highest and lowest? How critical are your identified strengths and weaknesses to the success of your campaign?

» Are there ways to craft your campaign that maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses?

» Who are your direct, closest partners and what can they bring to the campaign?

» To which organizations are you indirectly connected through a partner, who could be helpful?

» Consider your weaknesses, do you have direct or indirect partners that can help to address them?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 1 next to the heading title.

» Catalyst Capacity Score

» Strengths and Weaknesses (internal)

» Opportunities and Threats (external)

» Direct and Indirect Partners

2. Creative Persona

The purpose of this exercise is to determine which creatives best suit the needs of your campaign.

To ensure that a campaign accomplishes a catalyst’s goals, it is important to reflect on the role that you imagine a creative playing in your campaign. Getting the catalyst and creative on the same page is foundational to your success. This is accomplished by exploring desired creative traits and roles, how they might impact the campaign, and when it may be best to engage them in your effort. Below, you will find a ‘creative spectrum’ that will help you to identify and communicate desired traits that your ideal creative partners should possess.

The Exercise

Each of the pairs of terms below seeks to describe two different ways of approaching one’s work as a creative. After reading and carefully considering each of the pairs of terms provided below, identify where your ideal creative partner would fall on each spectrum by circling the number in each row that is most appropriate for you and your campaign.

15-30 minutes

- Pens/Pencils

2. Creative Persona (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» What does your preferred creative persona tell you about the person(s) you are looking for?

» How is this profile similar or different to what you learned from the Catalyst Capacity exercise?

» Does the creative persona point you towards any disruptive opportunities or ideas to engage your audience (outside of the normal or expected approaches)?

» Based on this information, review the remaining sections in How to Build a Campaign. During which exercise would it be best to bring the creative into your campaign?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 2 next to the heading title.

» Campaign Persona

» Disruption Opportunities

3. History of the Issue

The purpose of this exercise is to understand the history and timeline of the issue you have chosen to address with your campaign.

Considering the historical ‘roses, buds, and thorns’ around the issues at the heart of your campaign will help you to identify and reflect on other ways that this issue may have previously been addressed in your community of focus. This knowledge helps to deepen the context and logic in which you develop the campaign messaging and plan.

The Exercise

1. Begin by taping a string horizontally (about six feet across) on the wall. Add a sticky note to the left side that says “Past” and another one on the right side that says “Today”.

2. Introduce the exercise by explaining that participants will be conducting timeline-based research on the campaign issue. There are four colors of sticky notes that will be used in this exercise to identify important historical information about the campaign.

» Yellow / Milestones - Use yellow notes to identify major events that have happened around this campaign/issue in the past. Specific dates are not as important as the sequence.

» Pink / Roses - Use pink notes to identify positive historical events or actions around the issue. It can be related to previous legislation that was passed (or which failed to be passed), a successful public event, a speech someone gave to establish the issue, or any other relevant public treatment of the issues at the heart of your campaign.

» Blue / Thorns - Use blue notes to identify negative historical events about the campaign. What has caused derailment or counter-action against the issue? What have been some weaknesses in the history of the issue?

» Green / Buds - Use green notes to identify opportunities or ideas. These could include a potential partner, a relevant piece of data, a creative idea, a possible funding source, or something else that can help you with the current campaign.

75 minutes

- String

- Tape

- Sticky Notes (pink, yellow, green, blue)

- Markers

- Computers or mobile phones

Notes:

3. History of the Issue (continued)

3. Ask the team to conduct some Internet research on the issue. Note: although this exercise is designed to be accomplished in a single setting, it is possible to assign targeted research tasks to participants prior to coming together to complete this exercise. There are numerous types of online research you can conduct, including the following:

» Broad - Start with general resources like Wikipedia to understand the issue or issues.

» News - Try to understand what has been written about the issue in the past, but also look at news stories that have been written over time (sort by recent stories). Headlines and stories will give you angles that have been used in the past.

» Images - Look at images around the issue and understand how this issue has been portrayed over time.

» Social Media - Look at what has been published in the past about the issue. What are people saying about it? Who is saying it? Where has the public been particularly responsive or disapproving of a given approach to this issue?

» Interviews - Reach out to people who are affected by the issue, who advocate regarding the issue, or those who are representative of the population experiencing the issue to learn about their experiences.

4. As the team is conducting the research, ask them to provide stickies of historical elements (one per sticky note) on the appropriate colored sticky note. Sometimes it is helpful to have a chart of the colors and meanings displayed for quick reference. As they fill out stickies, place them on the timeline in an appropriate location.

5. Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

3. History of the Issue (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» What can be learned about the successes related to this issue throughout history?

» What can be learned about the challenges related to this issue throughout history?

» What do we need to do to avoid any of the previous pitfalls and maximize historic successes?

» What additional research is needed to inform our campaign?

» Considering the timeline of the past, our present environment, and where we can see things heading with this issue, is this the right time to launch this campaign?

» Does our present historical context call for a reconsideration of how we address this issue?

» Based on this historical information, what is a logical timeline for our campaign?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 3 next to the heading title.

» Campaign Issue

» History of the Issue

» Campaign Geography

» Campaign Timeline

4. Issue Mapping

The purpose of this exercise is to establish the key issues at the heart of your campaign.

Completing this exercise will help your team identify items related to the issue, establishing a background for the entire campaign. Think of it like an evidence board that a detective might use to solve a case, showing relationships between elements with string. This relational mapping helps to identify themes that will be used to generate your issue statements.

The Exercise

1. As a team, brainstorm a list of items related to the issue, with one item per sticky note. Think broadly about your campaign and include people, places, and things connected to the topic at the heart of your campaign.

2. When brainstorming is complete, begin grouping the stickies in a logical way. Note that this part of the process is subjective to the group, so there are no incorrect answers. This is primarily intended to bring to light the logic and relationships that make the most sense to the group.

3. Draw arrows between categories showing the relationship between grouped items. Label the category or relationship in a way that makes sense to the group.

4. If there are any natural groupings or sub-groupings, circle them with a marker and label the grouping.

5. Take a few moments to ensure the map looks complete and accurate. If you need to rearrange, add, subtract, or redo anything, take a moment to do so. Again, this will be a living foundation for the campaign.

6. Provide each person 5 sticky dots, which will serve as 5 votes. Ask the participants to survey the map and identify the 5 areas where the campaign should focus. What has the team identified that should be the focus of the campaign or will have the greatest impact on what the campaign is trying to accomplish? Each person can place one sticky dot per sticky note or grouping. Ask them to decide their votes in their heads before releasing them as a group (diminishing voting bias) to add the sticky dot to their votes.

7. This exercise can also be completed virtually using an online collaboration tool, like Miro.

60 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large Roll of Paper

- Sticky Dots

- Online Collaboration Tool (like Miro) optional

Notes:

4. Issue Mapping (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Where do concentrations of votes exist?

» Using the top 3-5 Issue areas as identified by the voting, create one Issue Statement for each area.

» State the issue in the form of a short phrase, starting with “How might we….?”

» For example: “How might we help people understand why trails are important to our economy?” or “ How might we get people inspired about a new vision for their community?”

» Do the “How MIght We” statements align with your mission? If not, would including a partner help this statement make sense in the campaign?

» Refine the statements as needed.

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 4 next to the heading title.

» Campaign Issue

» Issue Statements

» Cost/Benefit

5. Campaign Goals

The purpose of this exercise is to determine which of the 5 primary Creative Advocacy goals are most important to your campaign.

Launching a campaign will likely require you to juggle a considerable amount of information and relationships. So, it is critically important that you clearly understand what you intend to accomplish. Identifying clear campaign goals will make it easier to establish priorities and make intentional decisions. These goals will also inform important milestones like your creative action and measures of success.

The Exercise

As we have described in the Creative Advocacy Playbook, each of the five primary goals will likely be present to one degree or another in every successful campaign. The important point is ensuring that you are clear and thoughtful about the weight you are assigning to each of these five goals. Without doing so, your campaign will undoubtedly lack focus and clarity.

For this exercise, you have 100 total votes to cast or allocate. After reviewing the goals of Creative Advocacy Campaigns in the playbook (pages 37-39) with your team, allocate your 100 votes as instructed below. When doing so, there are only 3 rules that you must follow:

1. Be sure that the total score across all purposes does not exceed 100 points.

2. You must assign a score of 40 or higher to at least one of the options below.

3. Each goal should receive a unique score (none of the goals should be scored the same).

To Inform

To Inspire

To Connect

To Mobilize

To Resource

Total Score (should add up to 100)

15 minutes

- Pens/Pencils

Notes:

5. Determining Campaign Goals (continued)

4. Once each member of your team has completed the exercise, add up all points from all participants.

5. Choose the goal with the largest number. Insert it the sentence below and then complete the sentence as clearly as you are able:

The goal of this campaign is to <<insert goal with the largest value above>> people in order to <<state the action that you want them to take related to the issue>>.

6. You may choose to create additional campaign goal statements for the top 2 or 3 scores.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» With the primary goal(s) of your campaign now identified, does your organization have related experience or capacity required to undertake the project? If not, how might you augment your team to address identified needs?

» Think about the partners and community that will be involved in your campaign, what is their experience or capacity around the stated goals?

» What outcomes would best demonstrate success in reaching your primary campaign goal(s)?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 5 next to the heading title.

» Campaign Goal Statements

» Actions

6. Identify the Audience

The purpose of this exercise is to describe the audience your campaign will seek to address.

One of the most critical requirements of any marketing and communications strategy is ensuring you fully know and understand the audiences with whom you are looking to connect. This is no different for Creative Advocacy campaigns. Since issues and communities are complex, there are likely multiple audiences to consider and new audiences may present themselves throughout the campaign itself.

The Exercise

1. Give a sticky pad and marker to each participant.

2. Introduce the activity by placing a large sticky note or piece of paper in the center of the wall with the campaign issue (and, if determined, the primary campaign goals) written on it.

3. Introduce the exercise by providing some context around the campaign issue.

» Share why this issue is important.

» Share why this issue is important right now.

» Share that you are exploring this issue as a campaign for creative advocacy.

4. Ask participants to brainstorm (one per sticky note) the audiences, organizations, or individuals that engage (or need to engage) with this issue. Allow 20 minutes or so for this step, with natural discussion occurring throughout. When complete, the facilitator should place each sticky note on the wall around the issue, reading each one and consolidating any similar notes.

5. Once this step is accomplished, take a moment to ensure that the group has considered all angles. This includes public individuals and organizations that you may be asking to participate in the campaign but are not doing so already, as well as groups who may be against this issue — this can be a critical audience for consideration. If necessary, refine your sticky notes as a team, adding any other groups that may be important to this issue.

30 minutes

- Large wall or white board

- Sticky notes

- Markers

- Sticky dots

- Online collaboration tool, like Miro (optional)

Notes:

6. Identify the Audience (continued)

6. Add a sticky dot to flag any person or organization that can support this campaign as a ‘creative’. This will help you to note creative assets that could be beneficial to the campaign.

7. With all of the stickies on the wall, discuss as a team how these various audience members should be organized and grouped. You might decide to group audiences by age, education level, geography, degree of sympathy for your cause, occupation, or a number of other possible distinguishing characteristics. Since groupings can occur based on a wide number of possibilities, the most important thing is to ensure that audiences are grouped in a way that makes sense to your team and helps to direct your campaign.

8. Reflect on these groupings and draw a circle(s) around the primary audience(s). These should be groups of people and organizations with similar characteristics and motivations. Label these audiences, as we’ll need them for future steps.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» How should these notes be grouped around this issue?

» What are any natural collaborations or overlaps that already exist?

» What actions are similar amongst these groups?

» How do these groups currently act around this issue?

» In what ways could they act around this issue?

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 6 next to the heading title.

» Campaign Audience Description

7. Get to Know Your Audience

The purpose of this exercise is to build empathy and deepen your connection around what matters most to your audience.

Building empathy helps you to create a connection with your audience, which is critical to build relationships grounded in trust. Conducting an audience empathy exercise will help to increase insight into any audience you are asking to conduct an action (like signing a petition, making a donation, etc.) or any audience you will be asking to absorb your message. Sometimes, the general public will be the audience (as in the case of a mural), however the audience still has a general geography and other characteristics that segment them and allow you to explore them from an empathetic viewpoint. When developing complex messaging, it is easier to picture a person in your mind and develop messaging as if you are speaking to that person. Creating an audience persona can help you better understand an audience’s mindset and behaviors, including those who may be against your issue.

The Exercise

1. Using seven different flip chart pages, write each of the following categories across the top in large letters: Think, Feel, Do, See, Goals, Barriers, Opportunities.

2. Distribute sticky notes and markers to the team.

3. Present the first category and ask the team to brainstorm ideas for five minutes on that category. Proceed in this fashion for each of the categories, presenting the following questions for consideration, relative to the campaign issue.

» Think - What does the audience think about? What are their beliefs? What are their attitudes? What questions do they have? What do they value? What do they ponder?

» Feel - What does the audience feel about this issue and in general? What do they want? What are their motivations? What are their triggers? What are their worries? What makes them happy? What gets them excited?

60-90 minutes

- Flip charts

- Sticky notes

- Markers

- Online collaboration tool, like Miro (optional)

Notes:

7. Get to Know Your Audience (continued)

» Do - What does this audience do? Describe their day. What actions do they take? What are some of their behaviors? What activities do they do that align with the campaign issue? Where and how are they likely to encounter your campaign messages?

» See - What does this audience see? Describe their environment. What tools do they use? What trends are in their lives? Who do they see? What tools do they use to get through their day?

» Goals - What are the audience’s goals? What do they want to accomplish? What are they seeking? What does success look like for them, both relative to the campaign issue, and in general?

» Barriers - What barriers exist for this audience? What keeps them from reaching their goals? What barriers may keep you from connecting with the audience?

» Opportunities - What opportunities exist with this audience? In what ways does this audience align with the campaign issue? What opportunities exist to engage with them considering the campaign issue? What opportunities does this audience have that other audiences may not?

4. After the group has considered one of the categories above, have them present their notes aloud, consolidating any duplicates. Repeat this process until all seven of the categories have been considered.

5. (Optional, time permitting) To deepen your understanding, an Audience Persona can be developed. An Audience Persona is a detailed description of your typical target audience member. To create an Audience Persona, after completing the activity described above, work to address the following considerations below.

» Name - Name your sample person. It is much easier, more natural, and more realistic if you pick a name for that person. Throughout the rest of the exercise, only refer to this person by name.

» Typical Day - Identify 5-6 actions that the person takes throughout the day that could be relevant to your campaign. Think about things like career, transportation, free time activities, family, and any other elements that help to define their typical day.

» Behavior - Identify 5-6 behaviors that are typical for this person. What behaviors do they have that help to contribute to their passions? Think about adjectives that describe the person and then the behaviors which contribute to those adjectives.

7. Get to Know Your Audience (continued)

» Triggers - List 3-4 triggers that, no matter the circumstance, the audience member is likely interested in engaging. Think about a crowded room with lots of conversations, and your person is walking around the room. What words and issues does your person hear that make them want to join in a conversation? These can be passions, work-related, etc. Triggers can be positive or negative.

» Media - List 3-4 different forms of media as well as the likely channels through which your audience will encounter such media.

» Empathy - Summarize the Think, Feel, Do, and See sections from the Audience empathy exercise into a single statement for each.

» Challenges - Identify 5-6 challenges or problems that this person faces. What are the top challenges facing this person, especially relative to the campaign issue? How does this issue impact their life? What other indirect challenges do they have?

» Motivations - Identify 5-6 motivations for this person. What keeps them moving? What does success look like, and how are they motivated to get there? What gets them out of bed in the morning, or what do they appreciate?

» Issue-specific Consideration - It is important to link this person to the campaign issue in some way. For example, if you are planning a community campaign, it may be important to link this person to the community, discussing their community-based behaviors and engagement. How does the person engage with the issue, and what behaviors in this engagement contribute to a deeper understanding of this person?

» Biography - Draft a paragraph or two about this person in a biography format. Write a story that helps to support all of the details that you’ve noted above. Consider their background and what got them to this point, and where they are headed.

» Photo - Like a name, it is much easier to talk about a person if you have a picture of that individual in your mind. Find a photo through a basic internet search that supports and reinforces the narrative described above.

7. Get to Know Your Audience (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» What are the top five themes identified related to this audience that will be most impactful for the campaign issue?

» What barriers or opportunities come to mind when you consider these themes?

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 7 next to the heading title.

» Audience Themes

8. Data Mining

45 minutes

- Sticky notes

- Markers

The easiest way to address opposition to your campaign is by creatively engaging data that supports the message you are trying to convey. Often, in data exploration, other narratives and related issues are uncovered that can provide a foundation that strengthens the campaign even more.

The Exercise

1. In preparation for this session, write down the five “How Might We…” Issue Statements from your Campaign Canvas on large sticky notes. Place these sticky notes at the top on your wall in a header row, as if they were the titles of five columns.

2. Write the words “Behaviors, Triggers, Challenges, Motivators” on large sticky notes and place them on the wall as if they were titles of rows down the left-hand side of a table.

3. Using the Audience Themes developed in the “Getting to Know Your Audience” exercise (Ex. 7), have the team brainstorm data points at the intersection of each of the themes and the audience’s specific behaviors, triggers, challenges, and motivators. Use your audience’s behaviors, challenges, etc., not just general behaviors. Try to complete each intersection with as many sticky notes as possible, with one data point per note.

4. Use the Internet to perform preliminary research that supports your data points. There are many publicly available reports and tools like the Vibrancy Portal that can make this research easier. Your partners working on this issue should also be a good source of quantitative and qualitative information.

Notes:

The purpose of this exercise is to research data that helps you to understand the behaviors and motivations of your audience.

8. Data Mining (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» What are the ‘leading data’ points that will connect most with your audience? Select 1-3.

» What new themes emerged from the data mining that can strengthen your campaign?

» Which data points do not appear to be supported by research? Where else can you look?

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 8 next to the heading title.

» Supporting Data

9. Review the Campaign Canvas

The purpose of this exercise is to refine the campaign’s key foundational components before designing the creative action.

At this point in the campaign building process, your team has ideally taken time to assess the catalyst and creative, explore the issue, and understand your audience. Next you will formulate creative strategies to engage people with messaging around your issue. Before beginning that section, let’s review your campaign canvas to make sure the team is building from a strong foundation.

The Exercise

1. Ideally this is completed as a team, but feedback from the Campaign Canvas review can be shared independently as well. If you have already identified your creative team member(s) they should be invited to participate in this exercise as well.

2. Assess the Catalyst & Creative

» Look over your weaknesses, threats, and partners. Are there any new insights or partners that weren’t originally listed?

» Consider your campaign issue, goals, and audience. Have the desired traits of your creative partner changed at all?

3. Explore the Issue

» Read the issue description. Consider all that you’ve learned about the history of the issue. Does this description need to be revised for clarity or to make it as easy to understand as possible?

» Based on where you are with the pace of building your campaign, do you need to update the start date and end date?

» Have any new obstacles come up? Have your anticipated outcomes changed? If so, add or revise them at this time.

» Read the “How Might We” issue statements. Make any adjustments you feel are necessary.

» At this point, you should be forming a deeper understanding of your campaign’s desired outcomes, goals, and potential actions to achieve them. How does your team feel about the way these are captured on your canvas?

30 minutes

- Campaign Canvas

Notes:

9. Review the Campaign Canvas (continued)

4. Understand Your Audience

» Review the themes and data related to how your audience experiences the issue. Does this accurately reflect all aspects of your audience? Add anything that may be missing.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» External partners are almost always necessary for a successful campaign.

» Who else has been identified to join the team? What is their role? When should they join?

» Teams should stay adaptive to new insights and strategies throughout the ignite and launch phases of their campaign.

» What parts of your campaign are you most sure about? What feels the least certain?

» Creative advocacy campaigns are based on disrupting prevailing narratives.

» What are the accepted stories around the issue and audience that are opportunities for disruption?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 9 next to the heading title.

» Assess the Catalyst & Creative

» Explore the Issue

» Understand Your Audience

10. Craft the Tone of Your Message

The purpose of this exercise is to define the attitudes, traits, and characteristics of your campaign.

The goals and audience of your campaign will determine the tone of the messaging. For example, a campaign that is intended to inspire can demand a very different tone than a campaign meant to mobilize. Understanding the persona of your audience makes it more likely that they will engage with your message. The more relatable you can make your campaign, the more impactful it will be to others.

The Exercise

1. Draw several stick figures on a large piece of paper. These figures represent the target audience you identified for your campaign.

» Give them a first and last name.

» Discuss the traits that would describe this person.

» Write your responses on the paper below each stick figure.

2. Imagine this person walking into the room and asking the “How might we…?” questions from the issue section (Ex. 4) of your campaign canvas.

» State each question to your group.

» What are their interests, goals, motivations, and/or pain points?

» Write each down on a sticky note and add it around the stick figures.

3. Next, take a large piece of paper and draw a speech bubble that takes up the entire page. Consider the person who represents the audience for your campaign.

» What is the person’s voice like? Describe how they talk and their tone of speech.

» Write down each on a sticky note and add it in the speech bubble.

4. Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

30 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large paper

Notes:

10. Craft the Tone of Your Message (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Take a step back and review the persona that you have created to represent your audience.

» Is there anything that you would like to add or revise?

» Draw a star next to the persona and tone descriptions that you feel will best resonate with your broader audience.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 10 next to the heading title.

» Personality & Tone

11. Communicate the Message

The purpose of this exercise is to build messaging that resonates with and sparks action from your audience.

Your messages are the cornerstone of your campaign. Being intentional about the words you use and how you use them will help audience members resonate with your issue. When your message connects deeply with your audience, there is a greater likelihood of them taking action.

The Exercise

1. Ask each participant to take a piece of paper and fold it to create six columns and six rows. This can be done by folding the paper in half, then in thirds. Open the paper, turn it 90 degrees, then fold it in half and thirds again.

2. To set up the exercise, have each person draw an X in the upper left corner box and then write the five Issue Statements (aka “How Might We” statements from Ex. 4), one in each box across the top of the page (as if they were column headers), skipping the first block with the X. Then, underneath the X down the left side, have the person write their name.

3. Ask each participant to write a headline or slogan, as if it were something you would see on the side of a bus, or on a billboard, or as a headline to a news story. You don’t have to worry about getting creative, just capture a message about each statement and write it in the row with your name on it, underneath the corresponding “How Might We” statement. You should have one slogan under each statement. Consider including some data in your slogan if it feels right.

4. After everyone is complete, ask participants to pass their paper to the person on their left. Have each person write their name underneath the name of the person from whom they just received the paper.

5. Ask the participants to consider descriptions from the personality and tone exercise (Ex. 10). Can you rewrite the headline or slogan so that it better reflects the Personality & Tone that you’ve identified? Write your concepts in the row with your name on it underneath the corresponding statement.

6. After everyone is complete, repeat the cycle of passing papers, adding names, and trying to improve upon the headline concepts three more times (or until everyone has had a chance to contribute).

7. When finished, return the paper to the original owner of the paper.

30 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Regular copy paper

Notes:

11. Communicate the Message (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Spend a couple of minutes reviewing your headline concepts individually, noting any common themes or powerful messages. Then briefly report out as a group with your findings.

» While all of these slogans and messages could likely be used for the campaign, prioritize at least one headline for each Issue Statement for potential use on social media, on creative assets, and in campaign messaging.

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 11 next to the heading title.

» Headline

12. What’s the Creative Action?

The purpose of this exercise is to determine the most effective actions to reach your goals.

At this point, you should have researched and mapped the history of your issue, identified goals, and defined the tone and headlines of your campaign. Now it is time to turn these ideas into creative action by determining how the campaign should be implemented. In this step, you will focus on identifying the top actions to accomplish campaign goals. Then, in subsequent steps, we will refine these actions against other considerations.

The Exercise

1. The entire campaign team should participate in this exercise, including all creative(s) involved in the planning of the project.

2. On a whiteboard, large piece of paper, or virtual collaboration tool, write your organization’s mission large enough for the room to read it. Below the mission add your five Issue Statements (aka “How Might We” from Ex. 4).

3. Split the room into groups, assigning one or two How Might We statements to each group depending upon the number of participants.

4. Next, each group will brainstorm creative actions to support the statements and answer the How Might We questions. The goal is to brainstorm as many ideas as possible within 10 minutes, with one idea per sticky note. Every two minutes, introduce a new prompt from the list below:

» Brainstorm as many creative actions/answers to your statement as possible. Don’t hold back.

» Consider the audience themes and campaign tone. What actions might intersect between your statement and the audience?

» Consider the history of the issue or previous, similar campaigns. What actions might apply to your statement?

» Consider the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Ex. 1). What actions might build upon assets and mitigate risks?

» Imagine that your team has unlimited time, money, and resources for this campaign. Now, what ideas might you consider?

90-120 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large paper

- Timer

Notes:

12. What’s the Creative Action? (continued)

5. After brainstorming is complete, have each group draw a horizontal line across the bottom of a large piece of paper. Along the X-axis line, write the words “Importance & Impact”. On the left end write “Low” and on the right end write “High”.

6. Have the groups rank their ideas across this axis, placing those items with low importance/impact on the left and those actions with the greatest importance/impact on the right side of the line. Force decisions to be made on ranking importance/impact. There should be no ties.

7. After all actions are ranked, ask each group to draw a new Y-axis up from the left side of the X-axis, labeling this new axis “Difficulty / Cost to Execute”. At the top of the line write “High” and at the bottom write “Low”.

8. Ask the groups to consider each action and move it up depending on the team’s assessment of its difficulty/cost.

9. After this ranking is complete, have each group bi-sect each axis with two new lines, creating quadrants. The groups should already be seeing which actions will be prioritized. The bottom right quadrant should have the highest-impact, lowest-cost actions, and should be considered the first priorities of the campaign. Let’s call this quadrant A. Above quadrant A is quadrant B. Quadrant C is located on the bottom left and quadrant D is above.

10. Aggregate all of the actions from quadrant A from each team. At this point, the catalyst should share a reasonable estimate for the budget, start and end dates of the campaign. This is the first time any potential budget should be discussed to allow for the most unbiased campaign development process possible.

12. What’s the Creative Action? (continued)

11. Looking at all of these potential actions, discuss with the entire group if the actions represented can be supported by the budget.

» If the actions can be supported, then great! Conduct another importance/difficulty exercise to gain a priority for your campaign actions (priorities will be quadrant A, then B, then C, then D).

» If the actions can’t be supported, then conduct the same importance/ difficulty exercise with this new set of actions as an entire group to narrow the focus of the plan (priorities will be quadrant A, then B, then C, then D). Along the way, only eliminate actions entirely from one or more of the How Might We statements if you have discussed as a group how an idea’s removal will affect the focus of the campaign.

» If you feel like your budget can support more actions, then begin taking strategically from the team’s quadrants in the B, C, and D order until you have an appropriate number of actions that the budget can support. Conduct another importance/difficulty exercise to gain a priority for your campaign actions (priorities will be quadrant A, then B, then C, then D).

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Organize your identified priority actions in a logical order based on the importance/difficulty ranking (and considering any time-sensitive actions, like an upcoming community fair).

» Discuss whether each action is intended to inform, connect, inspire, mobilize, or resource. Force decisions towards one primary goal for each action. Label them accordingly.

» Do the goals identified for your list of actions align with the defined goals of the campaign? If not, should anything be adjusted or refined?

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 12 next to the heading title.

» Creative Actions

13. Asset Mapping

The goal of this exercise is to identify assets that support your actions.

It’s important to understand how the assets you have available align with the critical actions of your campaign. While you’ve identified assets in previous exercises, it is now time to see how they support the intended creative action. This helps to determine any additional gaps and shows the associated levels of support before launching your campaign.

The Exercise

1. Begin by brainstorming using the five prompts provided below. For each community asset, use a separate sticky note color. Introduce the prompts separately, allowing for about 5 minutes of brainstorming for each.

» Human & Social Assets - What individuals or organizations can help to support the campaign? What skills exist amongst this group? What personal experiences may help to support this campaign? Who are aligned advocates and partners? Think about agencies, for profit, nonprofit, foundations, etc.

» Cultural Assets - What cultural assets exist? What creative people, places, media, and other connections can support the campaign?

» Political Assets - What political assets exist? Has any political capital been identified? Think throughout all aspects of government, as local campaigns can also be supported at many different levels.

» Financial Assets - What financial assets already exist? Where can financial resources be acquired? Where can in-kind support aid the campaign?

» Built Assets - What physical assets do we have that will support the campaign? Think of things that you can see and touch. Consider your environment and built spaces. What equipment exists to help your effort?

2. After all of these areas are brainstormed, draw two lines to make a giant “plus” sign on your paper. On the vertical “Y” axis, label the top “Most Influential” and the bottom, “Least Influential.” On the horizontal “X” axis, on the left side, add a label “Strongly Oppose Issue” and on the right side, “Strongly Support Issue”.

45 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large piece of paper

Notes:

13. Asset Mapping (continued)

3. Category by category, plot the sticky notes on the axis where the group feels they should go. As the plotting unfolds, note those assets that will have the greatest influence, with the greatest support. Use this plotting to prioritize assets and resources.

4. Using the ranked assets, place those sticky notes in a column with the most influential and most supportive of the campaign being at the top. This should be a single column of sticky notes with assets (the most influential and supportive asset at the top).

5. Next, take the Creative Actions (Ex. 12) that you have prioritized and add their sticky notes in a separate column alongside the assets. Keep the columns at least a foot or so apart.

6. Begin to draw lines between the assets in the left column and the actions in the right column. You should connect any asset that can help to support an action. There will likely be multiple dependencies in either direction.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Look at the connections between the assets and actions.

» Does the most influential asset support a highly prioritized action?

» Do the actions need to be rearranged to support higher influence and opportunity with an asset?

» Remind the group of the budget for the campaign by writing it on the wall.

» Discuss and write down a high and low budget estimate for each action.

» Discuss how the campaign is impacted by the budget and what steps the organization can take to attract additional funding, or reduce the number of actions to align with existing resources.

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 13 next to the heading title.

» Creative Actions (revised)

» Assets

» Budget Estimate

14. Amplifiers & Advocates

The purpose of this exercise is to name the people and organizations with the most influence on your issue.

Voices amplify campaigns. By identifying leaders on all sides of issues, you can better understand your environment and incorporate as many perspectives into your decision making as possible. Leaders who represent various sides of your campaign can greatly influence your outcomes. For instance, there are likely advocates who are already working on or in some way against your issue. Engaging amplifiers and issue advocates can greatly increase campaign reach.

The Exercise

1. Write the Issue Statements (“How Might We” statements from Ex. 4) across the top of your page.

2. Add a second layer of sticky notes underneath that identify leaders throughout the ecosystem. Leaders can be individual people, organizations, or networks.

3. Show groupings of leaders and Issue Statements by using circles and arrows. Use a different colored marker to represent relationships with each Issue Statement. As these are brainstormed as a group, consider the following prompts:

» Who are considered the leading voices on this issue?

» Where are people convening in person around this issue and who is leading them?

» What about online communities? Who is leading conversations there?

» What about other sides of the issue? Who is leading those conversations?

4. Consider the primary Campaign Goals (Ex. 5). What role do the Amplifiers & Advocates play in achieving these goals? Note any goals that do not have an Amplifier or Advocate identified, adding new names on sticky notes as they are brainstormed.

5. Review the Creative Actions (Ex. 12) to identify which of these overlap with your list of leaders. Take note of where these overlaps exist and which leaders do not align with an action. Update your Creative Actions as necessary to include the role of these Amplifiers & Advocates.

45 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large sheet of paper, whiteboard, or online collaboration tool

Notes:

14. Identify Amplifiers & Advocates (continued)

6. Have large groupings of Amplifiers & Advocates been identified? If so, name them and consider developing a campaign media kit for similar organizations. Think of ways you can help these Amplifiers & Advocates to share your message. An example might be providing a media kit to a group of community churches, which all have a similar relationship with their audiences, including text and image content to include in their social media, bulletins, or website.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Identify the top 3-5 Amplifiers & Advocates who are critical to your campaign. Does your campaign team have existing relationships with them? If not, are there partners who can get you connected to these identified individuals?

» Read the Creative Actions that you’ve developed. Should anything be tweaked or changed with the Amplifiers & Advocates in mind? Did you identify any large groupings that would benefit from developing a campaign media kit? If so, add developing a media kit to your list of actions.

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 14 next to the heading title.

» Amplifiers & Advocates

15. Content & Tools

The purpose of this exercise is to specify the creative content, supporting tools, and people who are responsible for implementation.

This step is all about preparing to launch. Most campaigns will benefit from a variety of marketing content and tools. The approaches can vary widely but should align with the actions that have been identified. The more that you can customize tools and content to the audience, the more your audience will feel invested in the campaign. So, it’s important to make it easy for them to engage and help amplify the message especially influencers and advocates.

The Exercise

1. As a group, brainstorm a list of content needed to complete the Creative Actions (Ex. 12). Be very detailed, with one idea per sticky note. Consider the following prompts:

» What type of content is needed? Consider things like print, video, petitions, web content, social media posts, social media images, hashtags, etc. Be sure to include both analog and digital content.

» What content will best connect with your audiences? For example, a social media image that you ask a resident to post may be different from a social media image that you ask a partner to post.

» Have you identified the marketing content needed for each Creative Action?

2. Now that you have identified all necessary content, which ones are the top priority? Mark these with a star.

3. Next to each priority item, add a different color sticky note to determine:

» Who is responsible for creating this item?

» What tools are required to manage or deliver this content?

4. Brainstorm any specific instructions for use, imagery, and content that supports the campaign

45 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large wall space

Notes:

15. Tools & Content (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Look back at the disruption opportunities identified on your Campaign Canvas. Have you identified the content/actions/tools and people necessary to capture your audience’s attention in creative ways?

» Does your marketing plan incorporate the Assets (Ex. 13), Influencers & Advocates (Ex. 14)?

» Can you implement the prioritized content and tools within your Budget (Ex. 13)? If not, discuss how you will adjust either your budget or content accordingly.

» Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 15 next to the heading title.

» Marketing Plan (Content/Action/Tool)

» Person Responsible

16. Timed Delivery

The goal of this exercise is to determine your campaign marketing plan start and end dates.

There has been a lot of work completed to date. You are almost ready to launch! Considering the timing of the campaign is important it can make or break your success. Impacts on optimal timing can be internal or external. Some influences you will have control over, while others may be dictated by environmental events.

The Exercise

1. Take a step back with your campaign team and look over the Creative Actions (Ex. 14) and Campaign Goals (Ex. 5) to discuss your planned timing.

2. Using one sticky note each, write down the priority Content (Ex. 15), Creative Action (Ex. 14), and Tools (Ex. 15) from your Campaign Canvas.

» Organize them in a vertical column with the first content/action/tool at the top and the last at the bottom.

» Next to the content/action/tool list, use another sticky note to determine a start date and an end date for each.

» Discuss the pros and cons of your proposed launch timing with your team. Reorganize as necessary.

3. Review these dates with your group. Set an overall campaign start date and end date.

» While the campaign may be ongoing, it is good to have an end date for the initial phase so you create a window of concentrated activity. If stakeholders can understand the campaign window, there will be a greater incentive and urgency to act.

4. Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Notes:

30 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large wall space

16. Timed Delivery (continued)

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Is the marketing plan timeline appropriate based on local, regional, state, national, and international states of affairs?

» Are there any unrelated environmental factors (such as a major news event) that may make your campaign more or less impactful?

» How does the capacity of your team and partners line up with this timeline? Are there any competing or conflicting commitments?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 16 next to the heading title.

» Marketing Plan (reorder list of Content/Action/Tools based on this exercise)

» Start Date

» End Date

17. Measuring Impact

The goal of this exercise is to develop key performance indicators that monitor progress towards your goals.

Understanding how your campaign performs will be critical to making adjustments during implementation, reporting impact to generate more interest and action, or informing a future phase of the campaign. To understand performance, you will identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to track throughout the campaign.

The Exercise

1. Using your list of content and actions in the Marketing Plan (Ex. 15-16), brainstorm what key performance indicators (KPIs) may be important to track throughout the campaign. Write each on a separate sticky note. Consider the following prompts:

» What outputs should be tracked? These are counts of things that are done as part of your campaign, such as the amount of visual art pieces produced or number of people attending a pop-up performance.

» What outcomes should be tracked? This measures changes in your audience as a result of your campaign, including things like knowledge, attitudes, awareness, or skills gained.

» Have you considered KPIs that are outside of your campaign plan? Perhaps there is something that could be tracked unrelated to the actions, but may help to support understanding around the campaign issue or goals. Include both qualitative and quantitative information.

2. Write your Campaign Goals (Ex. 5) using one sticky note each. Place these at the top of the wall.

» Group the KPIs by moving the sticky notes under the goal that is the best fit. KPIs will likely support multiple goals. Do you best to choose the single KPI that is most aligned.

» Sub-groupings may also occur, such as a group of KPIs associated with social media.

30 minutes

- Sticky Notes

- Markers

- Large wall space

- Sticky Dots

Notes:

17. Measuring Impact (continued)

3. Provide each person five sticky dots, which will serve as five votes.

» Ask the participants to survey the map and identify the five KPIs that will provide the greatest information on campaign performance.

» Each person can place one sticky dot per sticky note or grouping. Ask them to decide their votes in their heads to diminish voting bias.

» Invite them as a group to add the sticky dots to the KPIs.

4. Determine KPIs your campaign will track by discussing patterns in the voting.

» Where do concentrations of votes exist?

» Ideally you should select between three to five KPIs to measure. Depending on your resources and experience, you may track more or less. Pull these sticky notes out and list them in a column.

5. Determine your baseline level for each KPI.

» If known, list the current value on a sticky note next to each KPI. For example, if you’ve determined that one of your KPIs will be an increase in social media followers, then list the current number of followers.

6. Consider a reasonable target to reach by the end of this campaign (as determined by the end date). List this next to the KPI on another sticky note.

7. Capture the work completed with a series of photos.

Reflection

Discuss the following with your campaign team.

» Does our campaign team have the capacity and experience to implement this measurement plan?

» What tools or processes do we have or need to support the plan?

» Will knowing the information from these KPIs help to advance progress on the issue?

Update the Campaign Canvas

Build your plan by completing sections of the Campaign Canvas that have Ex. 17 next to the heading title.

» Key Performance Indicators

» Creative Advocacy Goal (supported by each KPI)

» Baseline (value for each KPI)

» Target (value for each KPI)

References & Inspiration

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Aristotle, and Richard McKeon. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Modern Library, 2001.

Beaver Falls Children’s Museum Project, https://bfchildrensmuseum.myportfolio. com/

Black’s Run Bridge + Trail Project, https://blacksrunbridge.myportfolio.com/.

Boom & Bust, https://boomandbust.movie/.

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Heimans, Jeremy. New Power: How Anyone Can Persuade, Mobilize, and Succeed in Our Chaotic, Connected Age. Anchor Books, 2019.

Human City Creative, https://www.humancitycreative.com/.

“Introduction to Net Contribution.” Heron Foundation, 31 Aug. 2022, https://www. heron.org/introduction-to-net-contribution/.

Jacobs, Cheryl. Measuring Success in Communities: The Community Capitals Framework. Extension Extra. Paper 517.

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Lasn, K. Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge: And Why We Must. Quil, 2000.

Local Nonprofits to Release “Boom & Bust”. 15 July 2022, https://www. newsunrising.org/the-blog-of-nsr/local-nonprofits-to-release-boom-bust-a-documentary-posing-questions-about-the-future-of-petrochemicals-in-beaver-county/.

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New Sun Rising, https://www.newsunrising.org/.

Packard, Vance, and Mark Crispin Miller. The Hidden Persuaders. Ig Pub., 2007. Path to Power 2018-2033 - Community Change. https://communitychange.org/ wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CC_Path-to-Power-2019-doc.pdf.

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Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2020.

RealTime Interventions, https://realtimeinterventions.org/.

Reed, T. V. The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Present. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Regional Resilience in Beaver County during COVID-19. RiverWise, 10 Mar. 2021, https://tinyurl.com/32zc2vs9.

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RiverWise, https://getriverwise.com/.

Russell, Cormac, et al. Rekindling Democracy: A Professional’s Guide to Working in Citizen Space. Cascade Books, 2020.

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Sustainable Steps toward a Regional Identity for Beaver County. RiverWise, 11 Aug. 2020, https://tinyurl.com/mrx43nr2.

Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press, 2017.

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