Advocacy Resource Library
Scholarship, Leadership, Service & Fellowship
Getting Started
Welcome to Phi Theta Kappa's Advocacy Resource Library! For the full skill-building experience, we encourage you to complete Advocacy Edge, which will prepare you to take confident action on the issues that matter to you. Need a place to start right now? This library is your quick reference.
What you’ll find: Resources and examples at every level of advocacy: grassroots, legislative, and self-advocacy.
Where to start: Begin with this simple advocacy framework:
Find Your Issue
There are so many important issues to consider personally, locally, nationally, and globally and it's likely you care deeply about many of them. With so many choices, it probably feels easier to just not decide and let others do the advocacy. However, this leaves your voice out of the solution!
UNICEF, the United Nations' agency providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children around the world, published a straightforward “Finding Your Advocacy Issue” guide and encourages advocates to begin their advocacy journey by asking, “What specific change do I want to see [in my life/at my college/in my community] in the world?” Your initial answer to this question might be too broad, so you'll need to ask, “what/how do you mean?” questions to refine it.
Asking these kinds of questions can help translate “I want to help people” into something that can be advocated for like, “I want to make sure elementary school kids in my community (the people you want to help) have healthy and affordable after-school meals (how you want to help).”
After you identify something to advocate for, there are many levels from which to approach advocacy:
Choose Your Approach
Legislative Advocacy
Educating political leaders to enact policy change.
- Who represents you? Find your representative
Grassroots Advocacy
Raising awareness of an issue in your community. Grassroots advocacy can, and often does, evolve into legislative advocacy.
Goals of grassroots advocacy may include:
- Shifting public behavior: When We All Vote
- Changing social norms: Community College Month
- Building support for a specific policy or initiative: PTK's Pell Grant Advocacy
There are many ways to approach grassroots advocacy that range from connecting with existing groups in your community to building your own campaign or coalition.
Self Advocacy
The act of identifying your needs, communicating them clearly, and seeking support from others. Sometimes, we need to advocate for our own needs in relationships and within the institutions we participate. Many organizations provide resources for those beginning with self-advocacy:
- Self-Advocates Being Empowered (SABE): Self Advocacy Resources and Technical Assistance Center (SARTAC)
- National Technical Assistance Center on Transition: Self Advocacy Strategy for Student Involvement in IEP
- The Gottman Institute: Setting Boundaries with Others
- Essential information for International Students: