Grassroots & Grasstops Development
A well-trained and prepared network of volunteers gives your organization its best opportunity for influencing lawmakers at all levels of government. Our team at Daniels Advocacy Group has decades of experience building strong grassroots movements from the ground up and providing advocates with the right tools to share the right messages at the right time, ensuring the biggest impact in state capitol buildings or the nation’s capital. Our skilled team will work within all levels of your organization to develop or strengthen your volunteer network, identify stakeholders, assess and build your staff capacity to best support your grassroots and grasstops activists, and connect advocacy to your fundraising efforts to optimize participation in both. We will help you build and implement skills training for your advocates and staff on successful campaign planning, effective tactics, and impactful communications. Our passion is helping advocates find their “voice” to use their personal stories to move policy. We are proud to help organizations build advocacy communities armed with the skills and tools to influence legislators. We will help your organization prepare to participate in a critical movement, if not lead one.
Lobby Day/Event Planning
Whether your advocates are meeting in your state’s capitol or traveling long distances to Washington to lift their chorus of voices, our experts at Daniels Advocacy Group can help you maximize your virtual and in-person lobby day impact by helping you define your objectives, develop a strategic plan and curriculum, train your volunteers, and coordinate your event’s logistics, including legislator meeting scheduling. We will be there to help you develop materials as well as teach your volunteers how to tell their own story, make “asks” of lawmakers, and learn how social media can enhance the legislative visit. As you work with Daniels Advocacy Group, we will help you think about the advance preparation you can do with volunteers even before they arrive. And we will also work with you on post-Lobby Day volunteer follow-up and activities, as well as help you evaluate the impact of the event.
Advocacy Training
Because policymakers speak with dozens of constituents on a weekly basis, the most compelling and memorable advocates are the ones who make their personal story the centerpiece of their conversation with legislators. At Daniels Advocacy Group, we provide dynamic and engaging in-person and online training to advocates to help them think through their powerful personal stories and how to share them with legislators through one-on-one meetings, letter writing campaigns, social media, town halls, in-district visits, or letters to the editor and op-eds. Whether your advocates have five or 50 minutes with a lawmaker, we ensure they are prepared, confident, and know how to make the most of that time. We work closely with organizations to make sure that there is a robust communications process set up post-training to keep volunteers updated on campaigns and political trends.
Coalition Management
Coalitions by their very nature bring together organizations with different missions, resources and levels of commitment to particular issues. Our Daniels Advocacy Group team works with coalitions as an independent, impartial third-party facilitator/manager to infuse best practices into planning and ensure that decision-making is strategic. We are ready to support you from the very first spark of an idea throughout the entire life cycle of your coalition. We have the expertise to help you with initial recruiting from your network, coalition convening, developing mission, defining goals, establishing roles and responsibilities, helping establish 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, creating a budget, facilitating meetings, recruiting a board of directors, staffing coalition leadership, and day-to-day management of operations.
Strategic Planning
Most organizations have huge missions and stretched resources, so it’s not unusual if your organization finds itself with an uneven balance of “doing” versus “planning.” Some organizations have too many meetings, too many quick conversations and not enough time to step back and look at big structural and mission issues. The team at Daniels Advocacy Group works side-by-side with your team to take a step back, learn about your company’s unique culture and identity, identify goals, create a customized strategic plan and roadmap for realizing your organization’s mission, and train leadership and staff on implementation. Our team provides a 30,000-foot analysis of your organization, helps facilitate the strategic planning process, and works with you to identify stakeholders that need to be involved (or “bought in”). Once your strategic plan is in place, we continue to support your organization in implementing your plan, updating it regularly and evaluating its effectiveness.
Staff/Leadership Coaching & Training
Effective leaders bring everyone together toward a shared dream or vision and set the direction for the organization, ensure resources are appropriated effectively and efficiently, and hold staff accountable for performing their respective roles. The best-run organizations set aside sufficient time for strategic planning. At Daniels Advocacy Group, we understand that each organization has its own personality and we work with leaders to find the unique leadership approach that suits the organization best through executive retreats, staff surveys/interviews and 360-degree audits. Whether you are looking for executive coaching, board training, or want to tackle a specific challenge or group dynamic, our experts will design a custom plan for your organization to identify the best tools for your development and growth. We advise you on the adjustments necessary to reach your staff’s performance goals and can include updates on coaching/training for key stakeholders.
Democracies around the globe are more responsive to their constituencies today than ever before in history, and the role of civil society has never been more important. Daniels Advocacy Group offers services to international clients seeking public policy interventions with an appreciation for the diversity of approaches required to influence policy in the global sphere. Our team has an unmatched international network of institutional contacts, thought leaders, decision makers and public affairs specialists, including experience collaborating with multi-lateral institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank, and the World Health Organization.