Policy Engagement

Engage with decision-makers, policy practitioners, and the public to advance changes that further your impact goals

Introduction

How can we advance our intended impact by developing effective strategies to engage in policy processes?

Generating positive social impact often requires working with stakeholders outside your own organization or collective, including partners, decision-makers, and the public. Policy Engagement strategies can be an effective pathway to advance sustainable change and address the root causes of the issues you are trying to solve.

If your organization or collective has an idea of how engaging in policy processes could fit your overall plan to reach your impact goals, there are a variety of methods that can help you work with other stakeholders in order to influence that shift.

Policy Engagement can lead to important outcomes through collaborative work at the local, provincial and national levels. There are many ways of doing so.

For instance, you may want to engage a school board to advance the adoption of a program in their curriculum. Maybe you plan on working with your municipal council to develop a strategy to address food security issues in your community. Or perhaps you intend to engage several governments stakeholders and organizations. The latter was the case of the Coalition for Change to the Disability Gifts and Assets Limits, whose engagement process eventually catalyzed an important regulatory amendment to the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, providing long-term income security for thousands of people with disabilities.

What is Policy Engagement?

Policy Engagement helps leaders of community-sector organizations understand, communicate, and work with policy-makers, practitioners, organizations, businesses, and/or segments of the public to promote policy changes that will advance the outcomes that their community seeks.

There is no one-size fits all in policy engagement processes. These are variable and impacted by numerous factors, including unpredictable changes and windows of opportunity in the political landscape. In addition, the intended impacts of such processes can take a long time to achieve.

Policy Engagement coaching can help your organization or collective:

Define the barriers and opportunities to advancing your policy engagement mission.
Design a plan for advancing policy solutions that further your impact goals.
Learn how to engage key policy makers by understanding their priorities, beliefs, and constraints and determining potential areas for success.
Work with others—including partners, policy champions, and/or decision-makers—to advance shared policy engagement goals.

This stream was formerly titled Constructive Engagement.

The Innoweave self-assessment tool is designed to help you determine your organization's readiness and whether your initiative or program model is well suited for Policy Engagement.

Self-
assessment

This assessment has 5 questions.

Please respond to each of the questions to the best of your ability by choosing the option that most accurately reflects your organizational context.

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Is addressing a clearly identified issue, practice, or policy challenge a part of your organization’s strategic plan/Theory of Change (i.e. part of your plans require you to create change by engaging stakeholders such as policy maker(s), practitioner(s), organization(s)/business(es), and/or segment(s) of the public)? Please note that the Policy Engagement stream is not designed to address funding issues.

We have not identified a specific issue, practice, or policy challenge we would like to address as part our organization’s mission, but believe that we need to do so.

We have not yet identified specific changes to policies or practices that need to take place, but have some ideas of how addressing an issue, practice, or policy challenge might fit our strategic plan/Theory of Change and/or how specific stakeholders could play a role in this.

Yes, we have clearly identified an issue, practice, or policy challenge that is key to advancing our organization’s strategic plan/Theory of Change, and intend to engage specific stakeholders in order to address it (e.g. a promising solution to a policy challenge, a policy goal, a specific policy making process, etc.).

Do you know which stakeholders (e.g. policy maker(s), practitioner(s), organization(s)/business(es), and/or segment(s) of the public) you need to engage to advance the changes to policies or practices that would help create your desired outcomes?

No, we do not know who we need to engage. We need to figure that out.

Yes, we have a general sense of which stakeholder(s) we need to engage. For example, we know what level of government to engage, but not the specific policy maker, or we know we need to engage someone in hospitals or schools, but do not know at which level.

Yes, we know which specific stakeholder(s) we should engage, and understand their policy processes and decision-making capacity.

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Do you have an understanding of how relevant stakeholders (i.e. policy maker(s), practitioner(s), organization(s)/business(es), and/or segment(s) of the public) view your issue?

No, we have no idea and/or do not believe that any stakeholder and/or decision-maker is really thinking about this issue at all.

We can guess what they might think, but are not really sure and have not spoken with them directly.

Yes, we understand where they are coming from and want to work to change that and/or move them toward action.

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What is your organization’s capacity to secure the human and financial resources needed to advance efforts to influence the actions of decision makers, policy practitioners, and/or other relevant stakeholders?

Our organization has capacity limitations due to lack of time among the management team, resource challenges, organizational instability, and/or inflexible working structures.

Our organization has some capacity to take part, but faces challenges relating to resources and/or work process flexibility. However, these can be overcome.

Our organization has the flexibility and support to invest time and money in effective engagement.

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Does your organization have a clear idea of which other actors (if any) are working to advance similar intended policy engagement outcomes (e.g., organizations, networks, policy champions, community initiatives, etc.)?

No, our organization has not identified other actors working towards a similar goal or we believe that no other actor is thinking about this.

Our organization has general knowledge of other actors working to advance similar goals, but has not engaged in conversations or identified synergies.

Yes, our organization has mapped other actors working to advance similar goals, and has begun identifying potential collaborators and/or begun engaging in conversations.

For groups interested in Innoweave’s Policy Engagement stream, we encourage you to watch a recording of our Policy Engagement Info Session:

Watch a recording
Download the slides

No upcoming events.

Relevant Resources

Additional Resources

Coaches

Innoweave offers coaching support to organizations that are well positioned to implement a Policy Engagement approach. You can connect with an Innoweave coach to help you explore and implement your initiative. Then apply to Innoweave for funds to support that coaching engagement.

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Apply for support

Your organization is eligible to apply for Innoweave coaching support if you have submitted an Expression of Interest and it has been approved.

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FAQ

These are our most frequently asked questions.

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Are there limits to the amount of policy engagement and advocacy our organization/collective can engage in?

As of 2019, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) removed limits on the amount of public policy advocacy allowed at Canadian charities. As a result, “a charity may devote up to 100% of its total resources to Public Policy Dialogue and Development Activities that further its stated charitable purpose.” (Government of Canada Guidance CG-027).

We need to engage with governments to get better funding for our work. Is Policy Engagement the right approach?

No, Policy Engagement is not about fundraising. It focuses on engaging in policy processes or advancing policy solutions that can help lead to greater impact.

Our organization/collective is small, but we want to engage on big policy issues. How can we use Policy Engagement?

Coaching in this stream may help you identify how you can get involved in large policy issues, but you may need to consider acting through a broader coalition. Policy Engagement approaches may be able to help you plan how to do this. We also recommend visiting our Collective Impact coaching stream to learn more about how groups of organizations can work to advance shared impact goals.

Can Policy Engagement help us rally the general public behind our cause?

This stream is not focused on raising general public awareness of an issue. Policy Engagement focuses on targeted approaches to engaging decision-makers and policy practitioners (in public or private sectors) to work towards making changes to policies or policy-making processes that can advance your impact goals.

Policy Engagement

Introduction

How can we advance our intended impact by developing effective strategies to engage in policy processes?

What is Policy Engagement?

Self-assessment

Info Session

Relevant Resources

Coaches

Apply for support

FAQ

Self-
assessment