Almost every aspect of a nonprofit's work is touched by public policy in some way. And sometimes we come to the realization that the way to achieve a particular goal or to solve a particular problem is that we need a new or different public policy around that. 

But here's the thing. The landscape is littered with well-intentioned policy that did not succeed at doing what it was intended to do. Because the language was not crafted in such a way as to generate the desired result. Sometimes that's because the policy is a product of so many cooks in the kitchen and so much compromise that the final [00:01:00] product is unrecognizable relative to the original idea that was behind it. And sometimes it's because the policymakers didn't have enough clarity about how the thing would work on the ground. 

You don't want any of that. You want policy that will actually do what you need it to do. Getting there takes a lot of things from you as an advocate. And the theme of it all is, the devil is in the details.

In this week’s episode, the first of a 2-part series, we take you through the complete process of preparing a policy proposal that will have everything you need to achieve the results you want. 

In this episode, we share:

• The top two reasons many advocate-led policy initiatives wind up yielding disappointing results
• The three sets of policy you need to have on your radar to make sure you get your desired results
• How to triage and prioritize the problems you’re trying to solve through policy change
• The four most important questions to answer as you develop your policy proposal
• Which key details your proposed policy actually needs to contain 
• The most common blind spot that causes nonprofit leaders to miss critical policy details
• The essential skill you need to craft successful public policy, and how to build or increase that skill 

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

As advocates and leaders, a big part of our job is to successfully engage both decisionmakers and members of our own teams to join us in pursuit of a goal.  And when we’re at our most effective, we can feel that we’re operating from a place of strength and assuredness and confidence that others can feel and respond to. 

But sometimes events happen that can undercut all of that in an instant. We get pulled into reactive emotions, and suddenly we’re no longer operating from that place of assuredness and confidence. What’s helpful to know is that it happens to everyone. Even the most powerful and impactful leaders experience this from time to time. But part of their secret sauce is that they know how to restore and return to their personal power very quickly. The good news is, that involves a skill set and a practice that anyone can develop. 

In this episode, we share:

• What is personal power and why does it matter
• The most common ways we get pulled out of our personal power
• How to re-regulate your emotions when you experience an “emotional hijacking”
• How to uncover and shift your default interpretations of negative events
• How to avoid the hidden trap that will keep you from getting the result you want
• The most common way we undermine our own personal power, and how to fix it

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Even when you've figured out the most effective messaging in the world, sharing that with the rest of your team and helping them to use it to produce the results you want can be a huge challenge. What definitely does not work is to simply provide all those talking points and say, here's everything in our messaging that works. Go do it. That's valuable information to have, but it is not enough. 

You may already have in your head all the details about when and where and how to most effectively deploy which pieces of that messaging. But you cannot assume that the rest of your team already knows that. In fact, they probably don't. 

In order for your team to effectively deploy your best messaging, they have to understand why it's the best. What each component is designed to accomplish, and when and how to use which pieces of it to greatest effect.

In this episode, we share:

• Why your team may be struggling to use your messaging effectively with decisionmakers
• What your team needs to know about the strategy behind the messaging, and how to teach them 
• How to help your team practice key messaging and engagement skills in a low-risk environment
• The easiest way for your team to integrate all your key messaging so they can call it up from memory at will
• The best way to improve your messaging and empower your team at the same time 

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You've identified what you want from a decision maker and you're ready to make your case. You got your facts all lined up. Your logic flow is great.  You’ve got your slide deck and your one-pager all set. Your infographics are brilliant. And then you lay it all out for the decision maker. And it falls flat. They don't buy what you're selling. They don't engage. Maybe they don't even fully pay attention to your whole pitch. And you're left wondering what the heck happened. You gave them every piece of information they need to make the right decision. The facts are all there. The logic is all there. How come they're not getting it? 

If anything like this has ever happened to you, you know how frustrating it is. And it's easy to think that the problem is the decision maker. But the reality is, it's very likely that your messaging strategy is flawed. That you skipped some critical steps in the engagement process. And it's very possible that your informational materials are missing some key content. The good news is you can fix all of that. 

In this episode, we reveal:

• The hidden assumptions we make when delivering information, and how they create friction with our audience
• Why the method you were taught for how to build a case will fail to persuade most decisionmakers
• How to structure your conversation with a decisionmaker to get them to engage
• How to use informational tools successfully as part of an engagement strategy (and what not to do!)
• How to improve the effectiveness of the informational tools you’re already using
• The key questions you must answer if you want to successfully persuade a  decisionmaker to help you
• The critical step many nonprofit leaders skip when persuading a decisionmaker to act

I'd love to hear about how you’ve fine-tuned your informational tools using the principles we shared in this episode.  Connect with me on LinkedIn @The Nonprofit Power Podcast, or on the podcast website.

If your nonprofit receives any sort of program-specific federal funding, you are likely subject to at least three levels of decision-making about that money and possibly more. If you don’t know exactly what the decision-making process looks like at all three levels – and how to influence it – you could be at risk of losing funding or having adverse decisions made about your funding without your knowledge or input.  Here’s a case where knowledge really is power.  

In this episode, we reveal:

• The two key elements of decisionmaking around federally-funded programs that most affect your program and the people you serve
• The most important set of rules and policies that can make or break your service-delivery model
• How to know when a decisionmaker is misleading you about who’s responsible for a decision
• The most critical decisions to pay attention to at the federal level, and how to do that without it turning into a full-time job
• Your best and most productive opportunities for influence at the federal, state and local levels
• Your secret weapon for staying on top of key developments and leveraging the knowledge of peers in other communities and states

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

The right wing is generating and amplifying a lot of fear-based, demonizing messaging that is driving polarization. And for many of the purveyors of this messaging, polarization is part of the point. It's one of the strategic objectives. It can be very tempting as a nonprofit leader to say that doesn't have anything to do with us. We're a nonpartisan organization, that's all political stuff and it doesn't affect us. But the fact is it does affect all of us in a number of significant ways. And if we don't counter it, it could do lasting harm to the work that we do, the people we serve and our ability to build support for that work.

In this episode, we reveal:

• The key themes of right wing messaging that can undermine support for your work and the people you serve
• How nonprofit leaders are uniquely positioned to undo the damage of polarizing and demonizing messaging from the right
• What you should never do when countering damaging messaging
• The number one question to ask to set up your successful counter-messaging
• Why you should avoid using “myths and facts” messaging
• How to build in successful counter-messaging throughout your advocacy messaging system

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

One of the most underrated and underappreciated tools in the toolkits of the most effective nonprofit leaders is vision. The truth is whether it's in nonprofit land or anywhere else, nothing big ever happens without a vision. Whether it's at the community level or worldwide, big ambitious things take vision in order to bring them about. And it also requires the ability to transform that vision into reality.

Chances are you have a vision of how you want things to be. But if you want that vision to become a reality, it's going to require some very specific things from you. Just having the vision isn't enough.

In this episode, we reveal:

• How to go deep on your vision to create a rich rendition that goes far beyond a verbal description
• How to share your vision with others in a way that inspires them to join in your vision
• Two essential daily practices you can establish to help you stay focused on your vision in the face of distractions
• A key element of self-awareness that visionary leaders cultivate
• The question every visionary leader asks whenever opportunities and challenges appear
• The secret to operating consistently from your vision

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

You probably already know that client voices can be a key part of influencing decision makers. But it's not automatic. How that messaging is structured has a huge impact on how effective it is and whether it helps cause decision-makers to take action. For your client voices to be as impactful as possible, that messaging has to be as strategic and targeted as all the rest of your advocacy messaging. 

In this episode, we reveal:

• Critical strategy questions to answer before you begin gathering client voices and stories
• The four core elements at the heart of high-impact advocacy messaging
• How to help clients share the parts of their story that will match your messaging strategy and have the greatest impact on your targeted decisionmakers
• When and how to use composite client stories
• How to integrate client voices into your overall advocacy messaging for maximum impact

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks 

Having a strong cadre of powerfully influential champions is a huge asset that can dramatically accelerate your advocacy success. And when you have a key decision maker themselves operating as your champion, that takes things to a whole other level of impact. Imagine how powerful the impact would be if you had an entire cadre of money and policy decision makers who are operating at champion level on your behalf.

In this episode, we share:

• Powerful examples of nonprofits who have developed true champions – and the results that has yielded for them
• The five key behaviors that mark a true champion
• Where and how to find potential champions 
• Five critical things to focus on when developing a champion
• The most common hidden barriers to developing champions, and how to get past them

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Anyone who's been part of the coalition knows that it can be a complicated set of relationships. Some coalition experiences are fantastic. Others not so much. The best thing is when you and your coalition partners are fully aligned and everyone is pulling their weight and working together to get the results you've all agreed you want. The worst is when you get involved in a coalition and it becomes a huge headache without any of the results you wanted. To keep your coalition experiences in that happy zone, it's important to ask some very strategic questions before you leap.

In this episode, we share:

• The number one thing that will determine a coalition’s prospects for success
• Three strategic questions to ask about a coalition to determine if it’s worthy of joining
• The key internal strategic questions to answer in your organization, to determine if joining this coalition will be worth your time and effort
• How to determine your organization’s ideal role and level of involvement in a given coalition
• How to evaluate when and whether you should convene a coalition yourself

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!