Advocacy shouldn’t be a standalone topic, separate from the rest of running a nonprofit. It’s woven through leadership, governance, programs, finance, communications, and fundraising—whether we name it that way or not.
In the nonprofit sector, though, we often talk about advocacy in ways that don’t actually help people advocate.
- We say it matters, but leave it out of conversations about boards, finance, fundraising, or philanthropic practice.
- We stay vague in talking about it: Engage in advocacy. Use your voice. Stand up for your mission.
- We get very specific—and very scary to the uninitiated: Lobbying. Politics. Testifying.
And context matters. Right now, advocacy is often collapsed into lobbying, lobbying into politics, and politics into something divisive or risky. Advocacy can feel radioactive—something to avoid, handle carefully, or leave to someone else.
If 2025 was about getting our feet under us, 2026 is about braiding advocacy into our everyday practice. Here’s how we’ve been doing that…
📕 Margaret Schulte and I just published 12 Ways to Build Your Influence, a 24-page booklet. Please download and share it.
🎙 Sarah Brooks and I recently recorded a Nonprofit Radio Show episode on advocacy habits—subscribe to hear it when it drops. We talked with advocacy expert Bethany Snyder last year.
🧭 We have refreshed Powerhouse Boards, being delivered next on January 14 & 21, to make sure it includes meaningful conversation about advocacy.
📍 I’m looking forward to talking at the Tennessee Nonprofit Network Nonprofit Advocacy Summit in Nashville this February 24.
Underneath all of this work is a focus on how people actually change behavior. At its core, advocacy is about behavior change. As much as we may want people within nonprofits (and philanthropy) to engage in advocacy, people don’t change their behavior when expectations are vague or feel risky. They take action when the next step is clear, doable, and supported by their context.
Vagueness stalls action.
When people don’t know what a next step looks like—or how risky it might be—they pause, even when they care deeply.
“Use your voice” sounds inspiring, but it leaves people with unanswered questions, and that stops progress.
When nonprofit leaders don’t engage in advocacy, it isn’t a personality flaw or motivation problem. It is a design problem.
We can think about advocacy as behaviors and habits, not just actions.
An action is something you do once. A behavior is something you do often, because the system around you makes it possible—and expected. Actions are moments. Behaviors are patterns.
When we make this mental shift, several important things change.
- Advocacy stops feeling like a leap. If advocacy is an action, it feels like a big moment—high-stakes and visible. If advocacy is a behavior, it becomes something you practice in smaller ways, over time.
- Fear gives way to design. A behavior lens invites us to ask: What in the system is making this hard right now? Time pressure, unclear signals, risk aversion, or lack of permission all shape behavior. Changing those conditions—even slightly—often matters more than urging people to try harder.
- Advocacy becomes shared work. Actions are easy to assign to individuals. Behaviors are shaped collectively. When leaders model advocacy, boards make space for it, and staff and volunteers reinforce it, advocacy stops resting on one brave person and starts living in the organization.
- Small steps start to add up. Behaviors create feedback loops. Practice builds confidence. Confidence makes the next step easier. Over time, what once felt uncomfortable starts to feel normal—and normal is what gets sustained.
That’s the promise of thinking in behaviors and habits instead of actions. Advocacy becomes practiced, shared, and built to last.
We can name what advocacy habits look like.
Advocacy habits start with practices nonprofit people already recognize:
- Making time for advocacy in regular board or staff meetings
- Capturing stories from the field and sharing patterns, not just anecdotes
- Building relationships over time, not only when there’s an urgent ask
- Paying attention to policy without needing to become an expert
- Repeating one small outreach or learning behavior consistently
[Download 12 Ways to Build Your Influence for specific information on these habits and the tools that support them.]
When larger advocacy moments arise, organizations are far better prepared to respond when they have advocacy habits.
An invitation
Let’s go all in on advocacy together! Not to get specific, but we have an election coming up. Let’s…
- Integrate advocacy across all aspects of our work, rather than isolating it as a special topic. If you are a consultant or association, do a sweep through your trainings or learning tools to ensure advocacy is included.
- Embed advocacy even deeper into conference planning. Whenever people gather, you have an opportunity to build collective power.
- Apply what we know about learning and behavior change to advocacy—celebrating what organizations are already doing—and focusing on specific, doable actions, small habits, and practice over time
How are you prioritizing advocacy in your work? We would love to know.