PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY FOR THE LONG TERM

Any action or policy, even one that's embedded in a law or government regulation, can be changed, diluted, or eliminated in the future because of inattention or a determined opponent's action. Although the need to address your issue may have been accepted as one  the tide of public opinion could turn tomorrow, and you could find that your support has drifted away.

Unfortunately, as short as the attention span of the public sometimes is, that of legislators and other policy makers is often even shorter - for many, no longer than the time between elections. Furthermore, sympathetic policy makers themselves often disappear, either through voluntary retirement or political defeat, and may be replaced by people who know nothing about you or your issue. Once again, support that you thought solid can vanish.

The only way to make sure that your issue doesn't fall off the radar screen - and to make sure that policy makers, funders, and the public understand what is needed, and why - is to keep at advocacy indefinitely. Long-term advocacy is both similar to and different from advocacy for a specific and immediate purpose. Advocacy for the long term involves planning and organization on a different scale, and an understanding that the context of your issue - and therefore the substance of your advocacy - will change as circumstances and the world change.

Looking at the Long Term

As an advocate, you have to take the long view...but what, exactly, does that entail?

Vision: Seeing the Whole

Looking at the long term means having an ultimate goal, and a series of lesser goals along the way, the achievement of each of which will bring you closer to your destination. Reaching that ultimate goal is a journey that's as important as the destination. The long view is the view of that whole journey - of the length of it, the twists and turns, and the steps you have to take to reach the end.

Flexibility: An understanding that circumstances, needs etc. will change over time, and that your advocacy may have to change in response to them. Taking the long view means being flexible, knowing that change is inevitable, and being willing to change direction when that's appropriate.

Constant Vigilance: Maintaining your Gains

Often, changes are negative. Your issue may take a back seat to something that seems more important to policy makers at the time. Or they may think they've done enough, and that the issue is resolved. Whatever the reason, you may have to put out an enormous effort just to keep the gains you've made. As an advocate, you should always be alert to signs that the wind is shifting, and ready to act to keep that from happening. While there will be times when you'll have to respond to something that's already happened,  the best way to stave off trouble is to act before it happens. If you keep your eyes open, you won't be taken by surprise.

Patience

Taking it slow. Most change is incremental - small step by small step - and takes longer than you expect it to. You have to continue your advocacy even when it seems that nothing is happening. It's often very difficult to tell just when and why an issue seeps into public consciousness, or becomes important to policy makers. They may be reacting to something they heard from you a year ago. Just keep at it - you never know when you'll have an impact.

Perseverance

Keeping at it indefinitely. You have to see advocacy as something that never stops. Politicians won't forget you if you contact them regularly, especially if you're offering information, rather than asking for something. The same is true for the media.  You have to be there, every day, for as long as it takes - that's what makes lasting change.

A comprehensive view of advocacy as a long and complex process is important both to managing that process, and to keeping you going for the long term. Knowing that each victory is a step closer to the ultimate goal, and that each defeat is only a temporary setback makes it easier to sleep at night...and to persevere.

Even reaching the ultimate goal doesn’t mark the end of advocacy. New goals may arise, and, just with earlier gains, the final goal has to be maintained. If you allow yourself to think that you don’t have to continue to remind policy makers that your issue is important, or that the work your members does is both socially and economically crucial, you’ll find yourself facing a lack of interest. Advocacy isn’t a one-time thing- it’s forever.

Planning for the Long Term

So how does all this translate into a long-term advocacy effort? For openers, you need a plan to guide you. The plan won't be written in stone - after all, you have to maintain flexibility - but it should give you both some general and some specific direction, and keep you moving toward your ultimate goal.

A long-term plan starts, as implied above, with a vision. And a vision starts not with one person, but with many. The long-term vision for your effort may not be obvious, or there may be differences of opinion among stakeholders (those involved in or affected by the issue in question) about what it should be. It's worth it to take the time to involve as many stakeholders or stakeholder groups as possible in working out your vision for the issue. A shared vision will go a long way toward keeping people committed to an effort that may go on for a long time.

A participatory process- one in which everyone who might be involved or affected by the effort participates as an equal partner- is important in creating a shared vision. Hashing out differences and coming to an agreement about the endpoint and the goals of an advocacy effort may be difficult, but it will pay huge dividends in the long run.

Your vision will help you to identify a goal or goals to be reached over the long term, and those goals will, in turn, imply shorter-term objectives that will lead you to them. Being able to see the whole pattern over a long period will make it possible to keep your effort on track, and, ultimately, to achieve your overall advocacy goals.

Here are some important elements in developing a vision and strategies for carrying it out. 

Consider the issue in context.

What role does it play in the community? In society as a whole? Given that context, what will you have to change in order to reach the ultimate resolution you envision?

Anticipate trends and attitudes.

Looking at your issue in its historic context should also give you a picture of where it's going - in the public consciousness, in the ways it's addressed, etc. Anticipating trends and attitudes will help you understand what to concentrate on. By predicting where thinking about the issue is headed, you can aim your efforts where they can have the greatest effect. Anticipation isn't a one-time thing. It's a constant: you should continually monitor public attitudes, images in the media, newspaper and magazine articles, policy maker's statements,  to determine what you have to contend with, who your allies might be, and what your logical next steps are.

Develop short- and long-term objectives and strategies.

Considering context and anticipating trends and attitudes are both aimed at understanding the issue and its place in society as well as you can. Setting objectives and strategizing is the work of putting your knowledge and your goals together. It's mapping out a route to your long-term goals that includes the stops you'll have to make along the way.

It would be unrealistic to assume that you could start an advocacy effort today, and have your issue resolved in three months or a year. Instead, you'd plot out a long-term strategy, identifying the short-term objectives you'd need to reach on the way to your ultimate goal.

You'd also understand that, as with a long-distance drive, your route might have to change. Road construction, a short cut, a new source of funding, a change in official policy - any of these might temporarily send you off in an unexpected direction.

Some suggestions for developing objectives and strategies:

• Pick short-term objectives that you're fairly certain can be reached in a reasonable amount of time. A series of modest successes will do a great deal to keep your allies and members motivated for the long term, philosophical about an occasional defeat, and willing to put out extra effort when there's a larger gain at stake.
• For each of your objectives, develop an action plan that includes a timeline for its accomplishment. Then follow it, making adjustments as they become necessary.
• Make sure your long-term goal can actually be achieved.
• Be proactive. Don't wait for the government or someone else to come up with a programme to advocate for, or a bad suggestion to react against. Make your own proposals at each step of your long-term effort.

Preparing for the Long Term

You've envisioned the long-term prospects for your issue, you've developed a strategic plan - now you need to prepare to do the work. That means preparing yourself by getting organized; preparing your allies and other supporters by making clear that you're embarked on a long-term advocacy effort, and helping to provide motivation for it; and preparing the public and policy makers by using the media and other channels.

Prepare and Motivate Allies and Other Supporters

To sustain advocacy over the long term, it's important that everyone involved understand the nature of a long-term effort. Engaging in a participatory planning process, can help a great deal - if the people you depend on are part of the planning, they'll have a very clear picture of how long the effort might take, and what the intermediate steps are. In addition, they'll feel they own the effort, and be more likely to stay with it.

Prepare the Public and Policy Makers

Here's where having a good strategic plan can really help to guide your efforts. At every success, you have to make clear that this is only a step. The next step should be laid out in your strategic plan...and you can prepare the community for taking it. By keeping the issue in front of the community, you present it as a given - something the community will want to deal with as a matter of course. Say it enough (and persuade the media to say it enough), and it becomes true.

Policy makers are also responsive to repetition, especially when it's backed up by research. If you have a legislative champion, or if you're just trying to bring legislators or other policy makers on board, stating your vision regularly can help them start thinking in the same terms. Let your policy-making friends - legislative allies, aides, and others - in on your long-term goals and the guiding vision of your effort. After a while, it will seem second nature for them, as it does for you, to look at the long term as well as the next step.

The major avenue for getting your vision and message out to the public and policy makers is, of course, the use of the media. If you can get even one major media outlet on your side for the long term, you'll have gone a long way toward influencing public opinion and policy.

Another important channel is computer-based, encompassing e-mail and the Internet.  Electronic Advocacy, explores the use of this rapidly developing tool for advocacy. Through websites, listservs, and e-mail lists, you can not only keep in touch with your allies and stimulate action, but you can also remind them why they're doing this work, and refresh their memory about the vision that guides it.

Drive to continue the effort

The ultimate success of a long-term advocacy effort depends on the willingness of those involved to keep at it, often with no visible result, over a long period of time. That willingness comes from their personal commitment, but it also comes from the shared vision that was generated as part of the planning, and the ability of the leadership - you - to continue to articulate that vision and renew the passion that drew people to the cause in the first place.

One way to continue to reinforce the vision is to make sure that there is always a specific action for people to focus on. Your advocacy should always have  a short-term (and realizable) as well as a long-term focus. It may be hard for people to see progress toward a distant and all-encompassing goal, but it's easy to see a success in, or at least a struggle toward, a smaller and more reachable one.

Reevaluation and Adjustment of the Plan

A strategic plan is only a document, a guide for action. It must be used in order to have any effect. Thus, your plan should be constantly in play. That includes regular - at least yearly - monitoring of what you're doing. Are you following the plan? If not, why not? If so, is what you're doing effective? If not, what needs to be changed to make it effective? Just as a plan is no good unless it's carried out, monitoring isn't worth much unless it leads to appropriate adjustments. If your monitoring seems to show that what you're doing is effective and leading in the direction you want to go, then there's little to be adjusted...for now. If there's a problem - your message isn't getting out, a group you've seen as an ally opposes you, your message is heard but has no impact, you're advocating for a policy change that has unintended negative consequences, etc. - your monitoring should tell you that, and give you some direction about how to change what you're doing in response to it.

Consistent and regular monitoring of your advocacy's action and direction will also give you the chance to change direction when new information becomes available. There may be research that shows that what you were planning to work toward is less effective in bringing about your long-term goal than another course of action, or that it would make more sense to aim your advocacy at a different target. Being able to take advantage of such information can only increase the power of your message.

Maintenance of Past Gains and of the Efforts as a Whole

Advocacy is a long-term commitment by definition. Even after you've reached what you think of as your final goal, you're not finished. There may be another goal beyond that to work toward. The task of maintaining what you've won may be full-time - turn and walk away, and all your gains could be lost. Either way, your work as an advocate is never really done.