Advocacy Funding The Philanthropy of Changing Minds

At its best, collaboration results in progress towards deep change. 

Many people believe that private foundations are prohibited from funding advocacy — and there are, to be sure, some kinds of advocacy that are legally impermissible. But these are few and relatively easy to avoid. “I don’t think the principal constraints are legal ones,” said one grantmaker, reflecting on attitudes he encounters in the field. 

Among the earliest choices facing grantmakers in advocacy - and a question that may recur many times - is how an advocacy campaign should be organized: What kind of activity, involving what kinds of relationships among people, will drive the effort for change?

It's not necessary - and it's often counterproductive - to expressly forbid lobbying in grant letters. Unless a particular grant specifically requires "expenditure responsibility" or the grant might appear to have funds "earmarked" for lobbying, there is no reason why grant letters should forbid activities that are perfectly legal for the grantee and that are not the responsibility of the funder.

Mobilizing individuals directly may be the easiest approach to understand, but it’s usually the hardest to accomplish. To stir individuals to carry out or advocate for change directly, it may be necessary to apply mass media in a sufficiently sustained and concentrated way to reach thousands or millions of people with a persuasive message.

The presence of controversy and the possibility of confronting opposition are not reasons to avoid advocacy. In fact, they may be the most important reason to engage in advocacy — given adequate precautions. Grantmakers emphasize that confronting opposition and negotiating an effective compromise are not necessarily opposite alternatives.

Types of Advocacy Evaluation:

1. Process Evaluation - intended mainly to determine whether the campaign resulted in the activities and products that were expected of it. This is the most basic kind of evaluation for any grantmaking effort.

1. It’s not necessary — and it’s often counterproductive — to expressly forbid lobbying in grant letters.
2. General support grants are a useful way to support public policy work while minimizing legal risk to the foundation.

Despite the difficulties of measuring the effectiveness of an advocacy effort or pointing to the difference made by a particular activity or grant, one experienced advocacy grantmaker argued that there are other rationales for supporting an evaluation:

Balancing Negotiation and Confrontation: One grantmaker in civil rights described her view of opposition and negotiation this way: “My portfolio was a constant combination of battle and negotiation, but the most successful work, I would say, amounted to negotiation with a very high tolerance for confrontation.