Talk:Advocacy

Define & Clarify the Difference Between Advocacy & Lobbying
Could someone please introduce a new first paragraph that better defines and clarifies the difference between advocacy (advocate) and lobbying (lobbyist); to make it clearer for the reader that these two words are not interchangeable.

(1) An advocate is someone who pleads in favour of; supports or recommends publicly, typically on behalf of others or to help others in a social context, and importantly; acts not for personal or financial gain or for others to gain financially or personally. Many advocates are unpaid, uncompensated volunteers who contribute knowledge, skills, expertise and time to societal (community, equity, public/human interest, patriotic) causes.

(2) A lobbyist is someone who is enlisted and compensated (financially or otherwise) to influence and achieve an outcome (typically a political outcome) on behalf of other persons or entities. The lobbyist gains personally from being compensated for their lobbying actions, and the persons or entities who enlist the lobbyist stand to gain personally or professionally from the lobbyist's successful actions or outcome/s.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.171.186 (talk) 23:48, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Where are these definitions coming from? My understanding is that advocacy doesn't have to be public, and doesn't have to involve a social cause. I have no reason to think that financial gain has anything to do with the definition of advocacy -- as a matter of fact, I went to school to be a private, paid advocate, there are plenty of us, we're called lawyers. Furthermore, your definition of lobbyist is completely incorrect -- lobbying has nothing to do with payment, either, it's simply the process of trying to affect policy by speaking to legislators. Plenty of people lobby on their own, independently, for causes they believe in. Lobbying is just a very specific case of advocacy. Actually, you can call your congressman and schedule a meeting any time you want if you want to try out lobbying. I would recommend having one very specific thing you want to talk about, and never, ever changing the topic. If you go in asking for A, you might really make a difference. If you go in asking for A, B, and C, and the politician was already planning to do C, he's not going to think about A or B at all, he's just going to send you an email about how he did C and you are amazing. Daniel J. Hakimi (talk) 18:25, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Less US centric please
Would it be possible to have a slightly less US centric take on this term? Here in the UK, advocacy generally refers to a very individual process of representation (not least in the mental health and disabilities fields), professional legal stuff (Scotland) or rights based campaigning. Don't think this is necessarily reflected in the current version. Maybe teh topic needs to split? GraemeE17 00:56, 23 July 2005 (UTC)


 * See advocate. I added a disambiguation to both articles. Hyacinth 08:23, 23 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This disambiguation does not respond fully to Graeme's point. I have added a page on Independent Advocacy, but really this is just advocacy practised by independent people through advocacy schemes that are set up in certain ways.  What I want to ask is, is it right to separate 'independent' advocacy in this way, or should key parts of that definition be included in this article? Visctrix 22:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I do not remember nor read above having claimed to fully address GraemeE17's point. However, this is a wiki, and GraemeE17 could address his own points. Hyacinth 23:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * imho Advocacy is an ok title in the UK for this subject, an advocate is different and there is now a link to the appropriate article from the lead and elsewhere.

I was going to write a simple disambiguation page for this - but decided on a slightly different approach. This should help with the points by Visctrix and GraemeE17 (I hope). Also, it should respond to the proposal to merge this article with 'Interest group'. Rowmn (talk) 13:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not just cultural but one about the scope of advocacy. I don't have time to suggest changes now except to say the definition adopted here is a very limited one. USAID has a much broader definition that locates advocacy within the context of a politically active society. This is linked to notions of advocacy as part of a 'democratic space'. The purpose of advocacy is to bring about change - not just to impact on policy and there are many strategies that can be used to bring that about - see Dan ChurchAid 'The ABC's of ADVOCACY for a simple explanation and a starting point for discussion. Mysteryrare (talk) 06:26, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

publicprivatedialogue.org
This link: Public Private Dialogue A resource for advocacy practitioners wishing to promote policy reforms through dialogue (sponsored by World Bank, IFC, OCED, DFID, GTZ) was added by an IP address registered to the World Bank Group (publicprivatedialogue.org is a World Bank project). In keeping with our conflict of interest and external links guidelines I've moved it here for consideration by regular editors of this article who are unaffiliated with the site. -- Siobhan Hansa 18:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Article wording
Is some of this copy and pasted from somewhere? Does no one else think the wording is atrocious and strange? Beach drifter (talk) 05:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It reads like an academic paper to me - I have pretty much replaced the lead para but the rest of the article needs some work to make it less academic and more encyclopedic imho. PeterEastern (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Might add some more information on the example of advocacy in the WASH sector
I've just added a link to water and sanitation issues to the article, including a reference by UNICEF. Advocacy is really important in the WASH sector... Hopefully, if I get around to it, I could flesh this out a bit - as one example of advocacy. If anyone has concerns about this or suggestions, let's discuss it here on the talk page. EvMsmile (talk) 07:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

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