Thanks to a $7,500 grant from Community Memorial Foundation (CMF) to Donors Forum, the two organizations partnered to develop and present advocacy trainings to the staff and board of CMF grantees.

The two trainings drew on Donors Forum's Building a Stronger Illinois (BSI) initiative as a source of information about the economic power of the philanthropic and social impact sector, and demonstrated how to use data to establish relationships with policy decision makers. Participants also learned about the critical role nonprofits play in improving communities in their geographic area, the western suburbs of Chicago.

Donors Forum worked closely with CMF and Illinois Partners for Human Services to develop the first training. The aim was to introduce participants to the basics of advocacy, show them how to differentiate between advocacy and lobbying, and demonstrate how they can use BSI data to explain their organization's impact.

Opening the first training was Tim Delany, Executive Director of the National Council of Nonprofits, who spoke on the value of nonprofits and the importance of nonprofit engagement in public policy discussions. Doug Schenkelberg, Donors Forum’s Vice President of Strategy and Policy, provided an overview on the differences between advocacy and lobbying.

A discussion followed, focused on how to approach building relationships with decision makers. Donors Forum’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Delia Colman, demonstrated how BSI data can be used to strengthen a nonprofit’s story.

Small-group discussions rounded out the event; topics were the result of a pre-workshop survey conducted by Donors Forum. This discussion led to new ideas, and showed that the training had helped many of the attendees to better grasp and articulate the importance of advocacy.

Illinois Partners for Human Services took the lead on the second training. Eric Weinheimer, Donors Forum’s President and CEO, participated in a panel discussion on the role of the sector and ways to approach advocacy. Eric shared his experience in nonprofit advocacy; particularly how his former workplace, The Cara Program, used its mission to mobilize the community to take action on behalf of the organization’s mission.

Lesson Learned
The CMF advocacy training pilot program provided valuable insights into how to structure advocacy training programs in the future. The pilot program highlighted the importance of actively engaging board members and senior leadership in the training process. It is important that board members understand the value of participating in advocacy efforts even with limited resources.

Replicating the Model
Through the communication partnership model, Donors Forum will continue to help nonprofits understand and follow best advocacy practices, actively support important policy initiatives, develop stronger relationships with legislators and funders, and be empowered to respond to local advocacy challenges.

This BSI pilot program laid the groundwork for future communications partnerships; the training structure and sharable materials developed for CMF will be repurposed for communities throughout Illinois. Donors Forum will use training elements such as the pre-workshop survey to obtain qualitative baseline information and tailor data to specific community needs. There will also be a focus on sharing regional data and providing tools that build nonprofits’ advocacy capacity.

The next training partnership will be with the Dunham Fund in the Summer of 2015.

— Garth Katner, Development Manager