Advocacy involves communicating with broad constituencies, including elected officials, about what your museum does and why it is important. Too often museums relegate advocacy to the back burner because they don’t see the value in devoting time to advocacy. Advocacy needs to be an ongoing responsibility of everyone who cares about museums – staff, board members, volunteers, constituents, and the many people who value museums. Making advocacy a part of ongoing operations can help build a stronger institution. Advocacy should be embraced as a best practice of museums.

This course is intended for anyone interested in building support for your organization and being prepared in case of a proposed policy or action that could harm your institution. The course will help to dispel the myth that non-profits can’t engage in advocacy. Participants will learn how to become more comfortable with advocacy and ways to incorporate advocacy into ongoing operations. Topics will include:

• What advocacy is and why it is important
• Advocating with local, state, and federal elected officials and other constituencies
• Rights of nonprofits to advocate and lobby
• Permissible and non-permissible activities
• Similarities to donor cultivation
• Similarities to disaster planning
• How to become more comfortable with advocacy
• Tips for meetings with elected officials
• How to engage staff, volunteers, and board members in advocacy
• Opportunities and benefits of participating in broader field-wide advocacy initiatives (such as the American Alliance of Museums Museum Advocacy Day)
• Making an ongoing commitment to advocacy by doing simple things but doing them often
• Creating an annual advocacy plan