Advocacy Resources
The individual, organizations, and allies who compose Iowa's nonprofit sector are doing amazing things. Our advocacy resources help you tell those stories to build public support for your work.
What is Advocacy?
Advocates stand up for the causes they believe in. When you're advocating for your organization or a cause you care about, you're simply sharing why your work matters, to audiences that can help. Our tools help make advocacy easy and less intimidating.
Tool 1: Local Legislator Challenge
Your local state legislators are a great place to start advocating for your cause, your organization, and the impact you make. This challenge is a quick & easy way to advocate for yourself in 30 minutes or less.
Step 1. Use this story template to quickly compose an impact story highlighting an aspect of your work.
Step 2. Find the email addresses for your local state legislators (house and senate) here >
Step 3. Send each of them a copy of your impact story, either in the body of an email or as an attachment.
Bonus: CC info@iowanonprofitalliance.org on your emails so we can support your advocacy efforts.
Tool 2: INA Legislative Priorities
Every year, INA asks members to provide input on the state or federal policy challenges we identify, or add issues that limit their ability to produce positive impact for the people and communities they serve. Use the button below to share your policy challenges with us (through a simple form) and help inform our annual legislative priorities.
Tool 3: Voter Engagement Guide
The Iowa Nonprofit Alliance partnered with Nonprofit Vote and National Council of Nonprofits to create an Iowa voter engagement guide that helps get more people registered to vote.
Research proves that when nonprofits encourage voting – on a nonpartisan basis – by holding registration drives, providing information on where to vote, hosting candidate forums, giving staff time off to vote, and more, people vote at significantly higher levels than if nonprofits sat on the sidelines and did nothing.
When nonprofits encourage people to vote, it truly makes a difference.