Posted
Jun 27, 2016 10:50 AM
"Stand for Your Mission" is a national campaign led by BoardSource and a wide host of partners that is designed to build awareness around the importance of board advocacy in advancing an organization's mission. We provide you with some simple actions you can take to warm up your board toward becoming greater champions of your mission.
Are your board members putting their passions and relationships to best use? Are they standing for their mission?
"Stand for Your Mission" is a campaign designed to build awareness around the importance of board advocacy to advancing an organization's mission. Board members "stand for their mission" by being strong ambassadors to civic leaders, decision-makers, and the public at large.
Initiated by Washington's own Campion Foundation, BoardSource, and a wide host of national partners, "Stand for Your Mission" provides free resources and tools to equip board members to enact meaningful societal and policy change. The ultimate goal of the "Stand for Your Mission" campaign is to change the board so that advocacy becomes an expectation for every board member.
We will be providing you with monthly tips on advocacy. For organizations that are just starting to think about advocacy, here are two simple actions you can take warm up your board to the topic:
1. Map your connections
- Create a list of the elected officials and agency staff who are important to your mission.
- Survey board members to ask which elected officials and agency staff they know.
2. Raise the board’s comfort level with public policy
- Set aside time to reflect on the importance of public policy.
- Help people get comfortable with the discussion by focusing on the past.
- Identify a public policy decision that benefited your mission (examples: more people receiving healthcare, housing or access to higher education).
- Identify a public policy decision that made it more difficult for you to accomplish your mission (a partner organization closed when they lost a grant, regulations increased your costs, or a creek was polluted).
Once your board has these discussions you can begin the conversation about what they might do to stand for your mission. Check out this step-by-step guide on how boards can engage in advocacy.