The Advocacy Canvas - An analysis and planning overview for advocacy campaigns
- Joachim Schwarz
- Feb 8, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 2
Updated in August 2025
Why the Advocacy Canvas?
Log-frame, theory of change, impact chain, business plan, or business model canvas: a whole series of standard tools have been developed for projects or businesses to analyse their environment and to plan, manage, and reassess initiatives. These tools are widely accepted and used.
Before the advocacy canvas, however, there were no comparable tools for advocacy campaigns. Sometimes, log-frames were used, sometimes action plans were developed, but more often than not, there was no comprehensive or documented plan at all.
Of course, advocacy campaigns can still be very successful without such a plan. This is especially true when the problem is highly focused—for example, a campaign to prevent the introduction of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)—and when strong campaigners provide analysis, vision, and leadership.
However, lacking a structured planning overview creates challenges, especially in advocacy alliances, coalitions, and broader campaigns. Advocacy is (almost) never done by a single organisation. Since most campaigns are collective efforts with distributed leadership, using a methodology that enables participatory and transparent analysis and planning is helpful.
The advocacy canvas provides such a methodology. It is based on the business model canvas, which Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) define as “a shared language for describing, visualising, assessing, and changing business models.” In our adaptation, we replaced the business logic with advocacy logic, creating a shared language for advocacy campaigns.
Advantages of the Advocacy Canvas
The advocacy canvas has several advantages:
It is comprehensive: The canvas covers analysis (blue part), the advocacy plan (red part), and resources (green part).
It is visual and participatory: It offers a simple overview that can easily be used in teams, helping them reach a common understanding of all aspects of the campaign. Every team member can contribute and define their role.
It builds capacity: Working on the canvas develops advocacy knowledge and skills while strengthening involvement and ownership.
It is iterative: The canvas is not a one-off plan. Teams return to each element repeatedly, testing whether it still fits and making changes where needed. Post-its, pinboards, or online whiteboards make it easy to adjust.
It enables monitoring progress. The canvas helps teams assess progress and respond to changes in context. It should be updated regularly.
The advocacy canvas is especially suitable for campaigns with a time frame of up to five years and objectives that are not too broad. It is better to plan several separate campaigns for broader mandates, ideally embedded in an organisational or advocacy strategy.
Getting Started: Context Analysis
For new campaigns, a context analysis is the essential starting point.
At the outset, discuss with key partners how inclusive you want the planning process to be. Greater inclusiveness usually strengthens ownership, but larger groups require stronger preparation and skilled facilitation. If the group is new to advocacy and the canvas, expect the process to take at least three days to work through all parts and develop a coherent campaign.
A context analysis should, at a minimum, include:
A historical analysis of issues related to your campaign (e.g. land rights, disability rights). This might be a timeline of events, policies, and patterns, identifying positive and negative developments.
An analysis of current policies, their implementation, and their effects on vulnerable groups. Often it is useful to benchmark against international standards, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
A stakeholder analysis of the ecosystem's decision makers, influencers, and potentially civil society actors whose partnership could strengthen the campaign.
A strong context analysis prepares the planning workshop. Ideally, you should enter the workshop with 10–15 potential advocacy issues and 15–20 identified decision makers and influencers.
How to Use the Advocacy Canvas
Advocacy Issues
Begin with potential advocacy issues. Discuss them, refine them, and then prioritise the most critical. Clear priorities help create campaign focus and lay the foundation for defining the goal and demands.
A good advocacy issue should connect the problem to policy and its implementation, highlight institutional accountability, and indicate underlying causes such as political will or capacity gaps.
Example:
“Child labour affects 300,000 children in the country. Child labour has been illegal since 1963, but no effective institutions exist to investigate and stop offenders. There is no political will to end the practice.”
Decision Makers and Influencers
Once issues are prioritised, identify the decision makers central to solving them and the influencers who can help shift their positions. Define what you expect from each. Planning and strategising always involve prioritisation: time and money are limited, so resources must be focused.
Many teams develop “personas” for priority actors to deepen analysis, including their preferences, history, and general characteristics. This helps the team better understand stakeholders, approach them more effectively, and increase the likelihood of success.
Advocacy Goal
The goal provides direction for the campaign over the medium term (usually 3–5 years). It should be ambitious but realistic, and ideally formulated as a single statement. Goals are generally derived from one or two of the prioritised advocacy issues.
In workshops, we often collect key terms that should appear in the goal statement in plenary sessions, then ask a more minor team to draft a formulation and bring it back for validation.
Advocacy Demands
Once the goal is clear, turn to advocacy demands. These are the campaign’s central messages—clear, repeatable, and mobilising. If issues have been well defined, demands can be created by reversing the problem statements.
Example:
“Child labour must end. Transparent and effective institutions are needed to monitor, investigate, and stop offenders. 300,000 children are still affected despite the law. The government must act now.”
Most campaigns should develop five to seven demands. These can be adapted for different audiences if needed.
Advocacy Strategies
Strategies are all about making choices. They describe how the campaign will change the behaviour of actors and ultimately reach its goal. Strategies can be collaborative or confrontational, evidence-based or people-centred.
Unless the campaign has exceptional capacities, we recommend three to four strategic priorities. Too many strategies create unnecessary complexity. Sometimes strategies can be merged during iteration to simplify the plan.
Each strategy should be defined clearly. A simple template includes:
Title
Short definition (two sentences)
Situation now (a few complete-sentence bullet points)
Situation in the future (a few bullet points)
Actions over the next six months (a few bullet points)
Partners
Partners are the campaign’s most critical resource. Funding matters, but partners matter more. Identify partners already on board and additional ones you need. Assess their capacities, influence, and passion.
Partnerships are not only about organisations—individuals often make the decisive difference. Many successful campaigns were led by passionate, capable individuals more than by formal institutions.
Funding
Before seeking funding, develop a rough idea of what resources are needed. Consider structural costs (e.g. secretariat, coordination) and activity costs (e.g. meetings, studies, advocacy engagements). Keep budgets realistic and manageable.
Encourage contributions in cash or kind from members, as they strengthen buy-in. If larger funds are needed, approach fundraising strategically, using the same kind of planning discipline as advocacy.
Risks
Advocacy is risky, and risks need to be noted explicitly. These may include institutional and political risks, safety and security risks, financial sustainability risks, or the risk of backlash. Prioritise risks by likelihood and severity, and adjust strategies accordingly.
A more detailed risk assessment is recommended for larger campaigns or those in volatile settings.
Campaign Title and Branding
Finally, never underestimate the power of branding. A strong name, logo, and slogan build visibility and identity for the campaign. If your campaign does not yet have a title, use the planning process to brainstorm. Such discussions strengthen team cohesion and the campaign's external image.
What’s Next?
Once the first draft of the canvas is complete, revisit and refine it regularly. Add elements where needed, remove irrelevant material, and sharpen coherence.
From there, campaigns often move toward building structures such as coalitions, partnerships, or secretariats to implement the plan. Yet advocacy is dynamic: reassessing plans and challenging your analysis is essential.
Make your canvas visible—hang it in the office, display it in coalition meetings—and use it as a living tool to guide collective effort.
Key Learnings from 10 Years and Hundreds of Canvases
When we first developed the canvas nearly ten years ago, it looked different. Since then, through hundreds of applications—within the academy and beyond, at local, national, and international levels—we have received feedback and iterated further. Campaigns ranged from the right to food and anti-corruption to localisation of aid and business-led efforts, such as promoting renewable energy. Here our learnings:
It works: The participatory process engages participants, and managers value the clarity. Many teams use the canvas to review and update plans regularly.
Context analysis is critical. Teams must develop expertise on policies, processes, and stakeholders. Advocacy is strategic. You must identify triggers, opportunities, and relationships. This requires understanding the ecosystem.
Coalition building goes beyond the canvas. Success also depends on the alliance's culture, governance, and management, which are not sufficiently captured in the canvas and need complementary processes.
Risks matter: Advocacy is inherently risky. Failure is common and often beyond your control. Collective discussions of risks and mitigation are essential for adapting strategies.
Impressions: Advocacy Planning supported by the Civil Society Academy in Ranchi, India
Reference:
Osterwalder, Alex, and Yves Pigneur. 2010. Business Model Generation. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
About the Author:
Joachim Schwarz is passionate about social justice and on a mission to support like-minded civil society actors and social entrepreneurs in becoming more powerful and innovative. Hence, in 2014, he left his NGO career to build the Civil Society Academy. He is an outstanding facilitator and coach with expertise in social innovation, leadership, organisational change, and advocacy. After over 20 years in Africa and Asia, he is now based in Berlin.