1.4 What is covered in the guide?

Building on the experiential insights of the cases, the guide is centered on a practical tool called the Advocacy Planning Framework or APF developed to support practitioners in planning advocacy campaigns. Founded on an important outcome of the Global Development Network and Overseas Development Institute project¹, and operating on the principle that context is key, the APF provides you the means to gain in-depth insight into the people and process you are targeting and in parallel, develop a nuanced and targeted advocacy strategy that has the best chance to engage both the target audiences and process, therefore achieving influence. The need to target your advocacy strategy to fit the specifics of the decision-making process is central to APF and mapping and planning for that target context are at its heart. Indeed, the APF planning process is one where key decisions and insights in your advocacy strategy deepen and sharpen through the iterations of each element of the tool.

More specifically, the following is an overview of the manual:

• Chapter 2 — The Policy Advocacy Challenge — The manual opens by defining policy advocacy, explaining the common role of research in the policymaking process elaborating on the challenges for advocates, and closes by arriving at a point to illustrate the centrality of the two-way approach to effective advocacy.
• Chapter 3 — Overview of the Advocacy Planning Framework — This chapter provides an overview of APF tool and the core strategic focus at the heart of planning your advocacy campaign. This is when you will weigh up the obstacles with an assessment of the leverage you have in order to define a feasible advocacy objective in the target policy context. We also provide a short introduction to the four case studies drawn on throughout the manual.
• Chapter 4 — The Way into the Process — This chapter introduces and provides a detailed explanation of the most important mapping element of the APF. By going though the six elements that make up this pillar of the tool, you should arrive at a point where you have an in-depth picture of the players and playing field and an idea of how you will literally find your way into that process with your advocacy campaign.
• Chapter 5 — Your Messenger — This chapter provides insight into the choices you need to make about who will be the spokesperson or face(s) of your campaign as well as the support you will need from others. Without support and a credible messenger, advocacy efforts can easily fail at the first hurdle.
• Chapter 6 — Your Message and Activities — The chapter details the numerous interrelated elements that need to be considered in planning to develop the advocacy messages, activities, and communication tools for your campaign. The focus throughout this planning stage is engaging and moving your chosen audiences to policy action. We also introduce an advocacy communication model to guide this engagement of target audiences from understanding to ownership to action.
• Chapter 7 — Using the APF Tool — This chapter introduces the complete APF tool in a format ready for photocopying. The final section of the manual provides practical advice on how to organize an advocacy team to effectively use the APF tool.