Everyone deserves a chance to live up to their full potential.

At Phoenix Zones Initiative, this core belief drives everything we do in our work to advance the rights, health, and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet.

If this resonates with you, take action with us.

We’ve created this free, online effective advocacy toolkit for people to use, share, and improve upon.

The toolkit is organized to follow a particular process—just click through each section below—and you can also explore specific sections that are most relevant to what you hope to accomplish.

What Is Effective Advocacy?

There are numerous definitions of effective advocacy. Here’s how we approach it.

Effective advocacy addresses the deep roots of social and environmental injustice in ways that transform our systems and institutions so that everyone can rise and thrive.

Read about what makes advocacy effective.

Components of Effective Advocacy

While there are numerous models of effective advocacy, our model includes:

1. Building a foundation based on an ethical and strategic framework.
2. Creating a plan and process.
3. Implementing the plan.
4. Evaluating the plan and improving it based on evidence.

Explore the Toolkit

The toolkit is organized into the following sections:

Section 1: The Foundation

The Foundation: An Ethical Framework

The Foundation: A Strategic Framework

• Focus on systems change.
• Understand and use systems-oriented tools.
• Stay informed.
• Understand behaviors.
• Understand strategies for influencing and motivating others.
• Understand power dynamics.
• Develop advocacy skills.

Section 2: Create a Plan and Process

• Identify, examine, and understand the issue you want to address.
• Identify the key actors and their roles and how to build relationships.
• Understand the system, what can be influenced, and what the leverage points are.
• Develop goals and objectives.
• Develop strategies, tactics, a plan of action, and a plan for evaluation.

Section 3: Implement Your Plan

Section 4: Evaluate, Reflect, Improve

• Evaluate your efforts.
• Reflect on your work and the situation.
• Improve based on your reflection and evaluation.
• Take time to celebrate and renew.

Additional Effective Advocacy Resources

Here are a few things to know about this toolkit:

• We welcome your questions and feedback to help us make the toolkit a more effective tool.
• The contents of this toolkit are generally relevant to everyone, but some pieces may be more or less appropriate depending on whether you’re working on your own, as part of a group, or as part of a larger movement, and on what your goals are.
• Many people and organizations have done fantastic work around effective advocacy and systems change, and we have referred to their work throughout this toolkit. However, while Phoenix Zones Initiative’s mission is to advance the rights, health, and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet, and we approach effective advocacy using that framework, many of those we reference do not yet approach their work with that lens.

Contact us here to share any questions or feedback about the toolkit.