By Avery Jones, Community Organizer, BikeWalkKC
In the realm of social changemakers, we often hear people label themselves and their work by a variety of names that may, at first, seem interchangeable. Aren’t organizers and advocates all the same archetype of person beyond a few minor differences we don’t need to concern ourselves with? No, actually! The distinctions between these terms are important because they chart the course for how work is done, who does the work, and what the intention and goal of the work will be. There is a web of ways we can approach community improvement, and the differences between those two define the journey.
Defining Advocacy and Organizing
Advocacy involves lifting up the interests of a person, group or community in order to influence decision makers to act upon their demands or desires. Organizing can be defined as harnessing community power in ways that give impacted people the platform to push for changes themselves. A simple way to think of the difference is that advocacy involves working with people and getting their input in order to strategize FOR them, while organizing involves engaging people in ways that allow them to strategize and be leaders in the solutions themselves.
If you’re like me and always prefer a visual, you can also think of it like this: advocates come to the table representing impacted people, while organizers carve out a space at the table for impacted people to sit and scheme themselves. Let’s look at an example. Say there’s a city plan being developed that residents of a neighborhood within the plan’s scope feel neglects their needs and instead caters to developers. An organization interested in advocating for the residents’ wishes could choose to hold a listening session and use the residents' opinions, experiences and concerns to push decisionmakers to change course. On the other hand, the organization could meet with members of the neighborhood and provide them the tools to set up a meeting with the planning group themselves or show up at the plan’s meetings with a strategy to voice their opinions. Both of those strategies have merit, can be effective, and can coexist. Yet, the choice between approaches can create vastly different playing fields.
When should we organize? When should we advocate?
There are several reasons why one approach is chosen over the other at the organizational level and for individual projects or campaigns. It's not about the perceived "importance" of the issue you're tackling. Rather, in both advocacy and organizing, capacity and intention are central factors.
Organizing builds deep, sustainable community power
When you want to build lasting power in an area that reaches beyond your organization and sprouts additional movement work, you want to organize. Building leaders within neighborhoods or within issue areas who go on to bring others into the work is a goal that is fitting for organizations who have the capacity and time to delegate tasks, hone leadership, forge relationships and keep up with projects that are not centrally located. These are steps that are beneficial for building broad community power, but they are still work in and of themselves.
All that to say, organizers sometimes choose the seemingly slower and less straightforward route if it means leaders will be developed along the way. This is where you’ll see organizers choose to delegate tasks in ways such as having a person new to leadership lead a meeting rather than relying on someone who is already experienced, or having several hands touch a project when it could’ve been done on one person’s laptop in less time.
Advocacy can move faster
If you do not have the capacity to take on that extra responsibility of building others up and providing a platform for more and more people to plug in, advocacy is probably the better route. In this scenario, your capacity may be constrained by time (the issue is coming to a vote faster than you can organize and train leaders), money (you don't have the funds to build a broader community base), or other resources.
You’ll still strive to forge deep relationships with the impacted group and rely on them to guide any actions taken, but you can take that guidance and go on to execute the strategies primarily yourself or within your central team.
Here's an example
City Council is considering a measure that will affect a neighborhood. An outside organization wants to help the neighborhood speak up for its priorities. Here are some approaches the organization could take:
While advocacy and organizing are often distinctly different, sometimes practices overlap. The examples in this table are representative of many scenarios, but don’t get hung up on categorization. The distinctions serve as a guide, not a rule book!
BikeWalkKC’s advocacy and organizing goals
So, why did BikeWalkKC decide to get into the organizing game? Because we need to build community power around transportation equity! Hiring me, their first community organizer (but not the last) to focus on the East and Historic Northeast of KCMO, is the beginning of introducing a dual advocacy and organizing approach. As we witness how deeply a lack of equitable transportation impacts the most vulnerable people in every area of our life and, unfortunately, in some deaths, it becomes ever clearer that we need to completely shift how we practice our collective ability to shape our communities. That kind of shift requires power that lies not just in our offices and community engagement efforts, but also within every neighborhood in the city and every neighborhood advocate ready to take change into their hands.
Putting people above speed and believing that we can create cities that meet the needs of everyone is currently a radical idea. It’s a radical idea that, once people think about their wants and needs and see that they directly align, isn’t so radical after all. So, focusing those conversations within the community will mobilize power in a new way that shows decision makers that Kansas City wants safer streets that cater to everyone’s needs, no matter the ZIP code. And residents, beyond just the transportation-crazed people at BikeWalkKC, are going to stand for it.
Opportunities to learn more about how to lead with your own power
- Neighborhood Leadership Training from UMKC Center for Neighborhoods
- Community Engagement University from the City of Kansas City, Missouri
- Citizens Leadership Academy from the City of Lee's Summit
- JoCo Academy from the Johnson County, KS County Manager
- Civic Connect from Livable Neighborhoods Task Force in KCK
- Kansas Leadership Center
- Community Transportation Academy from BikeWalkKC (applications are closed for Fall 2024, but stay tuned!)
Avery Jones walks and buses in Kansas City, and she hopes her work will make that more possible for others in Kansas City to safely do the same. She loves the color pink, fashion and a good dance class. This is her first year with BikeWalkKC.
Stay connected with BikeWalkKC's advocacy and organizing work! Check out our 2024 Policy Platform (updates published in May), subscribe to Advocacy Alerts for important news about safer streets and better transportation options in your corner of the KC metro, or email Michael and Avery with your questions at policy@bikewalkkc.org.