Top Six Reasons Nonprofits Should Advocate
Treehouse is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is simple: Giving foster kids a childhood and a future. Yet despite years of providing effective direct services for children and youth that addressed significant gaps in both the foster care and education systems, it sometimes felt like we were rolling a rock up a hill when working with our state agency and school district partners on behalf of youth.
We had countless examples of systems that did not support the educational needs of kids in foster care. Agencies were not coordinating programs, sharing data or partnering effectively. In many cases, there were no laws to protect their educational rights. The systemic challenges reduced the power of — and often served as a significant barrier to — our ability to achieve our mission.
At Treehouse, we realized that we could work smart, long and hard, and our youth still might not be able to succeed in school due to factors outside of their and our control. Those factors include placement changes, special education and discipline practices, school moves and staff turnover in child welfare. If individual youth were struggling to succeed, our ambitious goal of population-level impact was not going to be achievable. It became clear that our organization needed to develop and implement a proactive strategy to influence laws, funding, services and practice.
How we got started
When we first waded into advocacy, our CEO Janis Avery led the way, identifying barriers and needs that could be addressed through legislation, as well as advocating with state agency leaders for practice change. She represented our organization in child welfare and education coalitions. She also visited our state capitol to testify on bills or to advocate with legislators for funding. As she experienced small wins, we began to realize that they were the tip of the iceberg. Treehouse had the potential to be a critical statewide voice for youth in foster care.
In 2018, Treehouse was honored to receive BoardSource’s Stand for Your Mission Award recognizing our longstanding efforts to engage our board in advocating for our mission. We have come a long way, and I now view our advocacy role at Treehouse as creating the conditions for children and youth in foster care to be successful in school. We amplify the voices that must be heard and convene the players that can make meaningful change — change to the foster care system, the education system, and school district practice. Sometimes, that means partnering with our government to make change from the inside. Other times, it means applying pressure to create change from the outside. Here is why I believe this work is mission critical:
1. We are the experts
Take Treehouse, for example. We work at the intersection of the child welfare and the education systems daily. We provided educational advocacy, navigation and coaching support services to more than 2,300 K-12 students in foster care in the last year alone. We understand the strengths and the limitations of the systems, and the barriers they often create for our youth.
The child welfare system in Washington State is stretched unreasonably thin. While caseworkers are responsible to ensure that children make reasonable educational progress while they are in foster care, their top priorities are ensuring child safety and identifying a permanent placement. Caseworkers are not experts in supporting and motivating kids at school, addressing academic deficits or missing credits, or navigating the ins and outs of special education law.
You might ask, isn’t that the school’s job? Teachers and school counselors want to provide effective educational supports to children and youth in foster care, but they are not necessarily experts in meeting the needs of children who have experienced significant trauma, loss and transition. Youth in foster care make up less than 2% of an average school’s population. With such low numbers, it can be a challenge for school administrators to focus their limited time and resources on specialized training for staff or arranging the individualized academic supports and coaching that youth in foster care often need to stay on track in school.
Like Treehouse, nonprofit organizations across our communities are likely the experts in their particular field, whether it be animal welfare, arts education, or diabetes research. They know what is working, what the needs are, and where laws or “the system” is failing. They are in the best position to inform elected officials and government agency leaders about needed investments and policy change.
2. We are allowed, and increasingly, expected to
Sometimes, nonprofit executive directors or board members have misconceptions about whether taking a position on an issue, educating lawmakers or activating our networks could jeopardize their nonprofit status or alienate donors. There is a misconception that getting involved in politics is somehow dirty or beneath the role of a nonprofit organization at worst, and confusing and risky at best.
On the contrary, as nonprofit organizations we have a critical role to play in shaping the public policy debate around issues related to our missions. Nonprofits can advocate in a variety of ways:
- Educate the public and lawmakers
- Register people to vote
- Propose and advocate for or against legislation
- Advocate for administrative rules
- Ask for executive orders
- Propose, endorse or oppose ballot measures
- Lobby elected officials and government agencies
As long as nonprofits are clear about the spending limits and parameters imposed by federal law, they can have an active voice in public policy advocacy. The only thing nonprofit organizations clearly cannot do under their nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is endorse or oppose candidates. See how to calculate an organization’s limits for grassroots advocacy and lobbying here.
Increasingly, institutional funders, individual donors and our larger communities expect nonprofit organizations to engage in effective advocacy to magnify the impact of their programs. It is vital to communicate a nonprofit’s public policy advocacy work as it is integral to their organizational outcomes to build donor awareness, enthusiasm and support for this work. In addition, asking supporters to engage in grassroots advocacy is a powerful way to engage them in our mission.
3. We amplify the voices of those most impacted
When nonprofits are at the table with elected officials and state agency partners, one of our critical roles is to ensure that they hear the voices of youth who are or have been in foster care. We arrange for young people to speak directly with legislators and state agency leaders. We have begun to ask youth and caregivers for their input on our legislative priorities. They know what they need, and they are the most effective advocates for themselves and others who will come behind them. We also ensure that we lift up voices that are not at the table, and call attention to disproportionate outcomes that our youth of color experience in both the child welfare and education systems.
4. We leverage our unique role as nonprofits
Federal and state agencies hold a lot of power in determining the outcomes nonprofit organizations are able to achieve. They decide who will and will not receive services or supports. They determine how laws get implemented and make rules that shape our clients’ lives. They determine which community-based organizations with whom to contract. They report outcomes to elected leaders.
Business and labor have long invested in public policy advocacy as key strategies to achieve their short and long-term objectives, but nonprofit organizations have been slower to come to the public policy table. But nonprofits have special powers, too. We can do things that government agencies cannot. We can educate lawmakers and the public. We can illuminate current conditions. We can register people to vote. And we can call for change — loudly, frequently, and passionately. We can even partner by underscoring the needs that are being articulated by our government agency partners to legislators. If we are intentional and effective, we can leverage our expertise, our brand, and most especially our deep connections in our community to magnify the power of our mission and services through systems change.
5. We secure resources for our sector or our organization
One of the key reasons nonprofit organizations begin allocating resources to public policy advocacy is to secure government funding, either for our sector — think advocating for arts funding — or for our own organizations in the form of contracts for service or funding for capital projects. This is a critical role, and at Treehouse we spend quite a bit of our time making the case for needed government investment. If we did not speak up, lawmakers might not know that youth in foster care fall behind every other peer group in terms of their educational outcomes. Lawmakers are people, too. They are moved by stories and by data, but with so many competing interests, they won’t be moved to action if they don’t hear from the local experts, and more importantly, from people with lived experience.
6. We hold elected officials and government agencies accountable
As Treehouse got more involved in advocacy, we realized that it isn’t just about educating lawmakers to pass laws and secure resources. It is about ensuring those laws are implemented effectively and in accordance with community need and legislator intent. Within big systems, this is more difficult than one might think. Large bureaucratic institutions are slow to move and inherently protect the status quo, so innovation often has to be motivated from the outside. With state agency leaders who are appointed by elected officials and who may be replaced every time there is an election, there is limited capacity for sustained transformation efforts. I have been at Treehouse for a decade, and Washington State has gone through four child welfare leaders in that time.
Through intentional, sustained partnerships, we can help bring new leaders up to speed quickly and serve as a critical feedback loop on whether what the agency is trying to do is working in practice. Through these efforts, we hold up the mirror and illuminate the impact of state agency efforts with stories and data, educating and activating our communities when something needs to change.
When Treehouse started our work in policy advocacy, I don’t think we knew what was possible. We are so proud that Washington now has some of the most comprehensive laws supporting the educational success of children and youth in foster care, thanks in great part to Treehouse’s leadership and the partnership of colleagues. This work has been a key strategy in working toward our five-year strategic goal for youth in foster care across Washington State will graduate from high school at the same rate as their peers with support and a plan to launch successfully into adulthood.
I hope you will join us in being a voice for youth in foster care. Sign up to receive advocacy action alerts here: www.treehouseforkids.org/advocate.
