What do advocacy groups do when there’s no advocacy to do?

What is the role of advocacy organizations, their resources, and their supporters in a politics that offers little power to Congress and federal agencies? There's a lot that can be done, starting with organizing, advocacy and communications work at state and local levels.

Additionally, advocacy organizations have vast resources, information, and support that can be delivered to individuals. They need the leadership, financial freedom and guidance on how to change their systems to make that direct support possible. Here are some ideas on why a shift is needed and what can be done.

The advocacy surplus

Congress has been leaking power for years if not decades. The increased inability of the institution to agree on budgets, bills, nominations and more has ceded authority to the President.

In his first term, Trump more or less chose to seek Congressional support when it came to passing budgets and running federal agencies (e.g. the Environmental Protection Agency). This time around the approach is "lead everything from the White House." There is little role for Congress and almost no role for a pliant Democratic party.

Laws, and the rules that implement them (aka regulations), are the constructs that move and distribute power across the local, national or global structures we commonly call government and the economy.

Corporate leaders can make big decisions about the use of company resources. They can decide whether or not to build a chemical plant next to a school, for instance. But much of their power is used to influence, you guessed it, those who make and implement laws.

Same goes for the public. As consumers, we hold buying power which can influence corporations and thus lawmakers. As the public we can also vote, which still influences lawmakers. And we organize protests big and small. We can even organize revolutions.

In general, though, power as Americans have come to know it has been largely defined by the Constitution’s granting of legislative (law making) and appropriations authority to Congress. States, cities and counties have similar dynamics though there are tens of thousands of those jurisdictions and almost as many flavors of power distribution.

What if there is no more demand for advocacy?

Nonprofit advocacy organizations are built around the premise that the legislature creates and amends laws and appropriates money. The executive branch develops rules that interpret laws so they can be implemented.

Given that assumption, a large (if rarely sufficient) supply of advocacy resources have been built across the sector.

These resources - communications, policy expertise, tech, fundraising, and the leadership to guide it all - combine to create a supply of advocacy organizations designed to influence Congress and other legislative (and executive) leaders and systems.

Congress, across decades of growing two-party competition and polarization, has slowing been ceding its power to the President. Can’t pass a bill? Toss out an Executive Order. This isn’t new and isn’t just done by presidents of one party. Executive authority has been normalized across several presidential terms (though typically within certain norms and bounded by judicial, aka constitutional, oversight).

We can debate which party is more responsible for getting us to this point. But that’s tangential to the situation at hand. And more or less irrelevant to nonprofits. Because, well, this is the hand Congress is dealing. And it’s pretty crappy hand.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration sees the hand and this time around has chosen to throw in all its chips. It helps that everyone in the GOP is so bold or so scared that they’re going along with the bet.

Centralizing power in the executive drops the demand for a vast supply of advocacy resources. To make it worse, the hollowing out of executive branch agencies means that there are far fewer regulations to influence and much less public spending for Congress to ostensibly direct.

Does advocacy demand drop to zero? Of course not. But it's fallen and much of what's left has shifted locations.

The problems facing organizations

There are two big, potentially existential, problems facing many organizations.

Irrelevant supporter comms and fundraising

Audience/list building, fundraising and external communications are built around the existence of legislation to pass or oppose, congressional or agency policies that need action, and candidates that need to be supported or stopped. Supporter acquisition and fundraising is driven by building emotion and action around tangible actions.

There are few meaningful actions that members of Congress, particularly Democrats but also Republicans, can take in the course of their days spent legislating.

How organizations are built

We can shift communications, fundraising and acquisition strategies. But there’s infrastructure, staffing and ways of working that are built around legislative and executive advocacy. One can say “shift to the states” and many have been saying it for years. But that is neither simple nor necessarily welcome/needed by organizations already doing state work.

In addition, the audiences (subscribers, members and, yes, major donors) of advocacy organizations are trained to expect action aimed at Congress and federal agencies.

The issue here is not that organizations may need to start building a different kind of house with some new tools. They may need to get out of homebuilding altogether. There’s no demand for it.

But the mission!

Yes, there’s still work to be done (and we can do it).

Thousands of organizations exist to protect the environment, education, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants, workers and teachers. Organizations work to stop hunger in the US and abroad, advance clean energy and fight for climate action, improve health care, research disease and so much more. These are all built, at least in part, as organizations that secure federal funding and legislative action.

Fact is, the mission will be more important and needed than ever. But the way we influence policy is likely changing, the role of people is changing, and there are ways besides advocacy to meet the needs of our communities and supporters.

A preliminary step: Differentiate between what your organization can do to directly meet its mission (and how that work might change) and what your organization can do to contribute to and help organize political and social resistance.

Your organization may also need to consider more direct participation in community organizing and mutual aid to hep meet the needs of supporters.

Trump’s leadership isn’t strong. The damage that he’s done to the government’s ability to be a supportive and stabilizing force for good isn’t permanent.

But the administration and its political support needs to be weakened. This means helping supporters engage in community organizing at the congressional district level. I don’t just mean political and candidate (and c4 or PAC) organizing.

Here’s an example. A national environmental group, with a list and research and staff, could help supporters in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional better understand and be able to talk about the impact of the EPA on clean water supplies, clean air, chemical pollution and cancer rates.

The result may be a large group of people who are more connected to the topic and the organization. They can more confidently talk about the issue and convey talking points in their own words.

A c3 can do this work. Building and supporting a network of people who can lead on your issue with local relevance will have downstream impacts on Congressional races. And the GOP’s margin in the House of Representatives is only a few votes. In Iowa’s 3rd district, the Republican won in 2024 with only 51.8% of the vote, a margin of less than 4%.

Shifting demand for advocacy resources: States, stories and people

Most advocacy organizations position their Congressional and agency influencing on top of data analysis, studies, and other research. They help write bills, amendments and regulations. They call on supporters for leverage during decision making processes (e.g. “Ask your Rep to support HR 1234”).

Advocacy research is written for experts and decision makers: the professional staff of agencies, legislative aides, and legislators themselves. And it is often written for other high-level influencers: funders, think tanks, other lobbyists and pundits.

If these audiences, including Congress, lose their strength then why are we creating research, content and supporter mobilization (emails, mostly) directed at them?

So where do we go?

States

A lot of the content could be redirected at state-level decision makers and influencers. Creating this content isn’t hard. It’s already happening and organizations have content creation resources.

But there are distribution and relevance problems. The US government is enormous and complicated. But there is only one of them. There are 50 states and tens of thousands of jurisdictions. And there are state and local organizations doing some of this work.

National organizations can still be useful in state policy given their access to and familiarity with macro-level data on economic, environmental, educational and other issues.

National organizations also have huge, if often stagnant, audiences on email and social media. They also have internal capacity to segment their lists. Communications can be pivoted to a regional, state or even local focus.

There can be more partnership with state level organizations along with news organizations, newsletters and content creators.

That said, I don’t expect national advocacy organizations to shift many resources away from Congressional, agency and other DC-driven audiences. At least not soon. Most will wait it out.

But there’s been a long decline of Congressional relevance. That won’t change due to an implosion of the Trump administration and/or big shifts in the 2028 midterms. Both of which are possibilities, not certainties.

Stories

More than ever, policy is shaped in the press, the tone of TikToks, and the volume of Reddit posts. The journey from TikTok to the Washington Post to Fox News to Trump’s short attention span can take just days or even hours.

It’s policymaking by vibes. Nothing shapes emotion like personal stories. People connect with other people. Make the story real and show your role in it.

Last summer and fall I helped a national organization develop a quarterly fundraising centered around the story of the results of their successful multi-year work in on Colorado county. But it was the voice and face and personal story of a single community member that made the story connect with people who knew nothing about the area. The personal story made it relevant: ”sure, this can happen here and to people like me and my family.”

The role of people

You’re falling well short of potential if you’re only asking supporters to send emails to Congress and give money. Especially now.

Give people work to do

Most organizations can't (and probably shouldn't) rely on staff to run programs, comms and organizing at the state and local level. It becomes too much staff, too much centralization, too slow, and too disconnected from the reality of local communities and their needs.

So put your supporters to work.

• If you want to connect your research and data to a local audience then give people the data or the questions you’re asking about and ask for their answers.
• Ask people to take on leadership roles. Start small if needed. Find a set of engaged online activists in a city or congressional district (Iowa CD 3?) and invite them to a zoom event or local meeting. Ask them what they need, how your issues affect them, where they get their information. Tell them your goals, and what you need to get there.
• Develop a cohort of information distributors and mini-influencers. Many people have the capacity be local influencers. But they don’t have the support and tools to use their time efficiently, speak confidently or see the value of their efforts. If you had just 50 people spread across the US (or a state or region) who could be counted on to post in their local Facebook groups, TikTok accounts, Reddit or BlueSky threads you would be having more impact and more aware of how the broader public is engaging with your message.
• Give people a structure within which to organize, connect with others, recruit other supporters themselves, and see their impact. Use staff (and/or volunteers in leadership roles) to be the face of the program. Set up and moderate a community on Slack. Create a calendar of events, host zoom calls and office hours. Gather results data and give it back to people.
• If you can’t or won’t build an organizing program, partner with other groups to build something or just actively encourage supporters to connect with groups like Indivisible, 5 Calls or local organizing and mutual aid programs.

Helping people access meaningful work and connections is not a threat to your organization, its impact or its fundraising success. It is always good to be relevant.

Meeting the needs of communities and supporters

One upside of bringing supporters together, asking questions and listening is that you have a chance to hear about the relevance of your work to their goals and lives.

For example, instead of talking in general terms about the value of public education you hear from families whose lives are changed by access to a school with an organized 504 plan process and funded services it provides. You can not just talk about funding those plans but also how and why to access them.

The data and research you already have can be distributed directly through newsletters, social media and local news. Other examples:

• Get very local: Give people talking points and messages for social media. But also help people get into real space with tools to download, print and distribute flyers and posters that can be handed out, dropped at libraries, given to local groups.
• If you’re already tracking issues, legislation, news articles and policy by state turn that into state specific newsletters. Bring in a staffer (or volunteer) to give it some editorial voice. You could even use ChatGPT to create state-specific summaries and perhaps cut down on editorial time. Open these newsletters up to anyone, not just people already on your list. This is a list building activity as well as useful info for local communities.
• Help people connect to others interested in and working on your issues at local and state levels. Distribute contact info for local and state organizations and mutual aid groups. Set up state or local sub groups on Slack or other online community if you’re running one. Link to sources and groups in any state or local newsletters and social media you’re doing.

Making the space for the work that’s needed

Risk is the big obstacle to shifting communications and advocacy focus. Organizations don’t have the financial cushion to try new ways of working even when what they’re doing isn’t performing. Leaders don’t have time for research, partnership and making a compelling case. And donors and funders aren’t good at investing in experimentation, testing, and program changes.

So what’s needed? A few ideas for funders, donors and nonprofit leaders:

• Funders need to realize the threat to advocacy requires changing our targets and shifting how and where we work. Fund the staffing and resourcing of those changes in existing organizations that already have the communications, research and leadership capacity to do the work.
• Take the initiative to create connections that help groups to learn and shift at speed. Advocacy organizations aren’t necessarily built for influencing local and state policy. Nor are they necessarily good at identifying and communicating directly with local audiences. So build the piping needed to connect advocacy resources with more specific information and advocacy needs.
  
  For example, bring nonprofit fundraising and communications leaders into nonprofit news organizations to help them support news fundraising and also explore ways to use nonprofit research resources in news stories.
• Support communications infrastructure that meets the needs of individuals, not donors, agency heads, legislative staff or “the public.”

It’s possible that the accelerated centralization of power by an authoritarian President will be stopped. Maybe even reversed.

It’s possible that Trump and his policies will be so unpopular that Congressional power changes in 2026. This possibility assumes there will be fair elections in 2028. It also leaves us with a divided government that may be able to stop some of Trump’s excesses but has little capacity to get things done (or build back what’s been set on fire between now and January, 2027.

It’s also possible that the judicial challenges to Trump orders and DOGE firings will drag on for months with, in the end, the Supreme Court refusing to challenge strong, even authoritarian, executive power.

We can’t predict what will happen but leaders should have seen enough from Congress and Presidents in the past decade to know that there’s an oversupply of federal advocacy. It becomes a vast mismatch if we enter a sustained era of authoritarian rule.

Stop asking people to sit alone and take actions that won't change a thing.

Hope for the future lies in the work of local communities and leaders. When people see local and state governments working they learn to trust each other and their institutions.

By building collaborative and trust-based relationships, people can rebuild civic power and democracy. They can fight together for clean air and water. They can advocate for clean energy and policies that improve climate resilience.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash