Strengthening Digital Advocacy to Win Policy Change in Colombia
In 2019, a Colombian advocacy coalition reached out for support to strengthen their digital campaigning capacity. That request sparked a multi-year partnership focused on deep, hands-on capacity building, including training communications teams, developing strategy, and embedding digital advocacy at every stage of their advocacy campaign.
Building Digital Capacity
We kicked off the collaboration by asking partners about their capacity, including strengths, weaknesses and areas of interest, and importance to help support their advocacy. Based on that and feedback from the in-country team, we launched a two-part training program focused on:
Strengthening partners’ understanding of digital advocacy concepts and tools, and
Guiding them through strategy development to immediately apply these skills to their campaign.
Throughout the campaign, we continued providing technical assistance, from analytics review to ad strategy and design, to ensure partners could consistently refine and elevate their tactics.
Types of support included:
Digital advocacy training & strategy development
Facebook and Twitter ad strategies
Email development and list management
Petition tracking tools
Twitter mobilization tools
Creative tactical recommendations
Growing Online Engagement
Social media became a cornerstone of the effort. By training local partners to optimize engagement and use targeted advertising, they saw engagement rise by more than 50% in 2019 and over 100% in 2020. This growth strengthened their ability to mobilize audiences and influence decision makers.
Boosting Petition Support
To increase signatures on a key petition, we recommended ad optimizations, tracking tools, and strategic integration into the broader communications plan. These improvements drove a 48% increase in petition signatures in the first half of 2021.
Expanding Grassroots and Grasstops Mobilization
With stronger digital infrastructure in place, partners dramatically expanded their grassroots pressure tactics:
Multiple email mobilizations encouraged supporters to directly contact undecided legislators and, later, the President.
Thousands of advocates engaged—over 8,000 emails sent to the 7th Commission, another 8,000 to Senate members, and over 2,000 to the President.
Grasstops outreach engaged key opinion leaders to elevate visibility and apply high-level pressure.
High-Impact Senate and Presidential Pressure
Twitter emerged as one of the most powerful channels. Advocates were mobilized to tweet directly at undecided Senators, generating:
Hundreds of retweets and likes on sustained message streams
A top tweet was reshared over 300 times
Multiple Twitter Spaces that drew hundreds of listeners
Hashtags that regularly trended nationwide
This public pressure continued all the way to the President’s desk—culminating in the bill’s signature in July 2021.
Key Lessons
Digital grassroots pressure across multiple platforms can generate enough pressure on decision makers to force action.
Short, urgent, targeted messaging is critical when engaging online.
Twitter played an especially influential role in Colombian political discourse.
Once public engagement reaches a tipping point, an issue can break into a broader national conversation—intensifying pressure on policymakers.