The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Grassroots and Grasstops Advocacy

Grassroots and grasstops advocacy are two different approaches to advocacy that are often used in the political and policy-making spheres. While both are important in their own right, they have different goals and methods. Understanding the differences between these two approaches is crucial in order to effectively advocate for your cause.

What is Grassroots Advocacy?

Grassroots advocacy involves mobilizing individuals and community leaders at the local level to bring about change. A grassroots advocacy strategy is often characterized by its bottom-up approach, as it starts with ordinary citizens and works its way up to elected officials. It typically involves engaging and mobilizing a large number of people, often using social media and other digital tools to build a movement around a specific issue or cause.

The goal of grassroots advocacy is to create a groundswell of support from grassroots advocates and community leaders in order to impact policymakers.

A Grassroots strategy is often driven by a desire to effect change at the local level. This type of advocacy is often seen as a way for grassroots advocates to have a voice in the policymaking process, as it provides an opportunity for people who may not normally be involved in the political process to get involved and make their voices heard.

What is Grasstops Advocacy?

Grasstops advocacy is usually led by opinion leaders and organizations and focuses on influencing targeted decision-makers at the top, such as elected officials, legislators, and corporate leaders.

A grasstops strategy is often driven by the need to influence policy and legislation at the highest levels. This often involves building personal connections with decision-makers and using those relationships to influence their views and decisions on specific issues. Grasstops advocates may also use their expertise, resources, and connections to educate opinion leaders and the public about an issue and to build support for their cause.

The power behind grasstops advocacy comes from people's natural inclination to listen to those they perceive to have status. Grasstops advocates can help build support for a cause by using their connections, resources, and expertise to influence decision-makers at the highest levels of government and the private sector. 

This type of advocacy is often characterized by its top-down approach, as it starts with influential individuals like community leaders and works its way down to the general public.

Advocacy for Change: Understanding the Differences Between Grasstops and Grassroots Approaches

Choosing between grassroots or grasstops advocacy can seem difficult at times. While both play important roles in advocacy campaigns, each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses.

To choose the right approach for your grassroots advocacy strategies, consider grasstops when approaching decision-makers who are more swayed by a single, strong voice of influence, and a grassroots approach for decision-makers who want to meet the needs of their constituents and are more likely to be swayed by crowds.

If you choose a grasstops approach, be sure to consider who your grasstops representatives are and their relationship to your cause and the decision-makers you hope to convince.

When to Leverage Grasstops vs Grassroots Strategies

While both advocacy strategies have their place in an advocacy program, there is a clear distinction. Grassroots advocacy is focused more on volume, while grasstops advocacy is focused more on a specific group or individual with significant influence. That said, in many cases, you don't need to choose one approach or the other but can instead leverage both forms as needed.

Influencing Policy at the Top: How Grasstops and Grassroots Can Impact Policy

Grassroots advocacy can build public support and pressure lawmakers to take action.

By mobilizing a large group of people around a particular issue, grassroots advocacy campaigns can draw attention to the issue and foster a sense of urgency. Grassroots efforts can also provide lawmakers with a clear understanding of what the public wants and what they are willing to do to achieve it.

Grasstops efforts, on the other hand, can influence policy by directly engaging with elected officials and decision-makers.

By targeting individuals in positions of power, grasstops campaigns can provide decision-makers with information and resources that they may not have otherwise had access to. Grasstops efforts can also help to shape public opinion by providing decision-makers with a clear understanding of the issue and its implications. This form of advocacy leverages the personal and political connections of current and former leaders, celebrities, and other individuals with significant social clout.

Effective Advocacy: Avoiding Challenges of Grassroots and Grasstops Advocacy

Just as both forms of advocacy have their strengths, they also come with challenges and weaknesses. One of the biggest challenges these strategies face is campaign fatigue, which can occur when advocates and constituents are overused or over-relied on. People get worn out after a while, especially since they have their own lives outside of your campaign and other issues they must attend to.

To avoid campaign fatigue, consider assigning varying roles for advocates over time. That way, each person involved can make an impact without constantly feeling like they are the last line of defense.

Another challenge for organizations can be a lack of authenticity in approach, lack of communication, and lack of advocate training which can leave advocates ineffective, particularly when it comes to one-on-one interactions. Therefore, it is important to seek out a way for each supporter to use their own passion and voice when delivering your message. Also, consider offering crash courses for your community on advocating effectively.

Final Notes on Grassroots and Grasstops Campaigns

Both grassroots and grasstops campaigns have a role in effective advocacy. By understanding the differences and similarities between these two approaches, you can better align your strategies to effectively address the issue at hand. Choosing the right approach will depend on the specific goals and needs of your cause, but leveraging both forms of advocacy can be a powerful tool in your advocacy program.

While both approaches can be used separately, they can also be combined in a complementary way to achieve a more effective advocacy campaign. For example, a grassroots campaign may focus on mobilizing local citizens to put pressure on their elected representatives, while a grasstops campaign may simultaneously target key business leaders or other influential individuals to push for policy change from the top down.