Our Programs and Trainings

The Advocacy and Leadership Center offers programs, trainings, and tools that are customized in length and content for each context and set of participants. We recommend a series of trainings that also includes opportunities for practice, and offer ongoing coaching and mentoring to help participants apply trainings within their own circumstances. We bring in local trainers and resource persons to work alongside master trainers in delivering curricula, thus expanding the number of skilled advocacy practitioners and trainers around the world. We then help these local leaders form networks of advocacy practitioners who are able to sustain an advocacy movement beyond specific projects.

Advocacy Leaders Fellows Program

The Advocacy Fellows Program brings together up to twenty participants for an intensive one- to three-week course designed to deepen understanding of the role of advocacy in setting and achieving an agenda for reform. Advocates examine a range of advocacy tools, applying both established standards and innovative new approaches toward their real life challenges. Participants acquire a sophisticated understanding of how to design complex advocacy campaigns—and leave a much stronger team, returning home ready to collaborate at a whole new level. The Fellows training is consistently cited by participants as having dramatically improved their ability to achieve results.

Advocacy, Leadership, and Organizational Development Training

The Center offers a wide range of trainings designed to help both leaders and organizations advance their causes while strengthening their organizations. Our approach to capacity building challenges nonprofits to rethink fundamental organizational development topics from the perspective of the nonprofit's overall added value to the community.

A core set of transformational trainings borrows principles from many sources, including the business world, and applies them to issues commonly faced by nonprofits. Because effective advocates must lead, and effective leaders must advocate, the Center incorporates leadership training with the premise that true leaders act from a place of authenticity and vision. All Center trainings make the most of new and emerging technology tools to help advocates research, develop and disseminate their message.

Sample topics include:

• Fundamentals of Advocacy
• Strategic Planning for Advocates
• Strategic Project Management
• Message Strategy
• Leadership in Coalition
• Building Effective Coalitions
• Leadership: Foundation for Results
• Monitoring & Evaluation for Management
• Advocacy Issue Life Cycle

The Angie Martin Public Interest Fellowship

In the fall of 2006, ISC's long-time partner, the Advocacy Institute, made the decision to transfer its assets and programs to us. This included the Angie Martin Public Interest Fellowship, which was created to memorialize the life and work of Angie Martin and to promote citizen advocacy. Angie Martin was a pioneer in grassroots organizing and in leading progressive political campaigns. She created the first 'citizen's lobby,' a model now used nationwide in grassroots and political campaigns. She raised awareness of hunger and homelessness through 'Hands Across America,' promoted women's rights, and managed child safety and education reform campaigns. Throughout her career, she mentored countless young organizers. Her organizing expertise helped build leadership and grassroots support for a number of diverse organizations. Angie Martin died in 1997 after a five-year battle with breast cancer. She was 50 years old.

Since 2006, the Institute for Sustainable Communities has been proud to carry on the legacy of Angie Martin by awarding paid fellowships to young leaders looking to broaden their experience. ISC is grateful for the opportunity the Fellowship has given us to develop both our programs as well as the leadership potential of the Fellows themselves.

Measuring for Results

Our work in monitoring and evaluation is considered among the best in the field. We offer courses to help organizations measure their own progress, and have developed a rigorous system for compiling and reporting qualitative data and the use of surveys and indices to track organizational progress. In addition to our customized Advocacy Index, we offer ISC's signature Seat at the Table Index, an innovative way to measure organizational progress from the perspective of partners and beneficiaries. Organizations regularly cite the assessment process and resulting indices as instrumental to their success.