Professional Advocacy - How Do Advocacy Organizations Avoid Polarizing Politics?
Business
Working with clients in the nonprofit and advocacy spaces can be both professionally and personally rewarding. Creating tools for these clients can feel easy when supporting their cause seems obvious – or, at least it used to be. As politics has become more polarized, crafting the right tools to support clients in the advocacy sector has become increasingly challenging. These days, the work requires more strategy, nuance, and precision. In this episode, we talk about supporting clients with advocacy-based missions in our current political landscape, and what navigating that process looks like in the creative industry.
When it comes to supporting client’s whose mission, if accomplished, would make the world a better place, strategy has shifted over the years. The divisive nature of politics today requires much stricter demands for how we can effectively create tools for clients who do advocacy work. Now more than ever, the tools you create must lay the groundwork for your audience to understand an issue before you start advocating for change.
This work demands more transparency and nuance than ever, but that’s not a bad thing. The struggle lies in the strategy needed to help clients walk the tightrope between advocacy and lobbying, and crafting messages that remain true to the client’s mission and spirit without opening them up to a maelstrom of vitriol. In this episode, we talk about the ways the culture surrounding advocacy work has changed over the years, and the ways we've adjusted our work to meet these demands.
