{"id":771713,"date":"2015-05-07T19:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T19:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/blog\/general\/advocacy-through-community-engagement\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T13:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T13:42:21","slug":"advocacy-through-community-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/blog\/advocate\/advocacy-through-community-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocacy through Community Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/advocacy-300.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-139730 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/advocacy-300.jpg\" alt=\"advocacy 300\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>I recently had the privilege of leading a series of discussions with a small group of Goodwill employees during a conference hosted by Goodwill Industries International.\u00a0 Our topic was community engagement and advocacy. We began our conversation by considering who makes up the community in which Goodwill belongs and how we engage the group.\u00a0 Is it just our shoppers and donors? How about program participants and their family members? Volunteers and board members? Other organizations with which we partner also play a role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our conversation about advocacy didn\u2019t just focus on political advocacy and how we engage grassroots and grasstops to strengthen public policy influence.\u00a0 Rather, we discussed how advocacy can be a vehicle to engage the community, build relationships, and strengthen the brand.\u00a0 Stakeholders in our community can be advocates on behalf of Goodwill and the people we serve.\u00a0 Most importantly, advocacy is about empowerment and we had a great conversation about how people can be advocates for themselves.\u00a0 People like <a href=\"\/blog\/blog\/impact-spotlight\/shay-felder\/\">Shay Felder<\/a> and <a href=\"\/blog\/blog\/impact-spotlight\/monique-armstrong\/\">Monique Armstrong<\/a>, who participated in Goodwill\u2019s recent Advocacy in Action event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a timely topic as we near the end of <a href=\"\/week\/\">Goodwill Industries Week<\/a>, an annual celebration for local Goodwill agencies to engage their community and educate people about the mission.\u00a0 Banquets, awards dinners, luncheons, donation drives, career fairs and other events are taking place all over the country in honor of the event.\u00a0 Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23goodwillweek&amp;src=tyah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#GoodwillWeek<\/a> on Twitter to join the celebration.\u00a0 Share how you engage with the Goodwill community, not just this week but every day and what advocacy means to you via the comments below or on our social media pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently had the privilege of leading a series of discussions with a small group of Goodwill employees during a conference hosted by Goodwill Industries International.  Our topic was community engagement and advocacy. We began our conversation by considering who makes up the community in which Goodwill belongs and how we engage the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":767779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-771713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocate","tag-volunteer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771715,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771713\/revisions\/771715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodwill.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}