Advocacy Vs Lobbying: Which Is More Beneficial?

Advocacy and lobbying basically refer to the argument or debate on some issue to find a meaningful and fair end to the problem. But both the concepts have a very slight line of difference between them which most people are unaware about.

Advocacy (such as the non-profits) refers to the argument of any kind of idea or issue without any limit on the amount of advocacy. However, lobbying refers to the attempt of influencing the public or any political body in an official manner.

Lobbying Can Be Of Two Types

Direct Lobbying

The direct attempt of influencing a member of the legislative body who has a direct say in the legislation

Grassroots Lobbying

This includes convincing the people to contact their legislative member to take their stand on some legislative issue. Non-profit bodies do not have the right to tell people to convince or contact any legislative member.

Now, following are the points of differences between Advocacy and Lobbying:

Discussing the non-profit advocacy first; this is the most engaging job. Anybody can easily convince people through social media to speak to their contacts and raise their voice in favor of your flow. Collecting information about the most relevant topics and then using the proofs and information along with the officials who get ready to speak in winning an argument is not a very difficult task to be performed.

Here Are a Few Important Points Which Explain Advocacy More Clearly:

It visibly explains to the govt. Members that how some policy or new rule affects the constituents of the whole party.

Advocacy cannot use official means to spread something hence it makes use of social media to spread their word about any cause of or issue.

They have to personally meet the govt. Officials to explain how a respective policy would affect them. Also, they have to provide proofs to confirm their statements.

Lobbying does not require much effort. Because the people involved in lobbying are much aware of whose presence would influence the most at what situation. The lobbyists are present in the main capitals of the country so that their voice can be easily heard and the people who can help them out are easily influenced to contact the legislative that can help. So following are the points that will explain Lobbying effectively:

Directly asking a member of the Govt. to vote for or against any particular legislation or to amend new legislations according to their requirements.

They can contact the other group members to contact the Govt. officials or legislatures to give their views on some pending regulations or legislation decisions (Grassroots lobbying).

They can even generate an online petition regarding their request to the public (Direct lobbying).

Asking the elected officials of some respective party to convince the legislature to implement or improve some rules or policies makes Advocacy switch to Lobbying. Sometimes it becomes necessary to involve some part of the legislation to resolve a particular issue and hence we have to transfer from advocating and chose the lobbying option. So lobbying could be considered as the better one amongst the two.