WIC Advocacy Toolkit

No one knows WIC as well as WIC staff! That knowledge and experience present you and your colleagues with the unique opportunity to be a voice for WIC. This toolkit from the National WIC Association walks you through a variety of advocacy activities with tips, worksheets, and examples of how you can elevate your WIC voice.

In this toolkit you will find:

• Why Advocacy Matters: Explains why it’s important to talk about WIC on a local, state and national level.
• What is Advocacy: Lists all of the ways you can advocate for WIC. 
• When Does Advocacy Become Lobbying? Describes the differences between advocacy and lobbying and how you can advocate without stepping into the territory of lobbying. 
• WIC Funding Basics: Provides an explanation of how WIC is funded.
• Building Support for WIC in Your Community: Engaging Partners and Forging Coalitions: Describes the importance of partnerships to your advocacy work and how to go about building strategic partnerships. 
• Developing Strong Advocacy Messages: Describes how to create effective advocacy messages. 
• Contacting Elected Officials: Provides tips for contacting policymakers, leading effective WIC advocacy meetings, hosting site visits, and other activities involving elected officials.
• Engaging the Media to Promote WIC: Provides tips on how to engage traditional press as well as social media to advocate for WIC.
• Telling Your WIC Story: Why and How: Provides guidance for effective WIC storytelling, through verbal and written stories as well as photography and videos. 
• Evidence-Based WIC Advocacy: Explains how to effectively use data and statistics in your advocacy messages. 

Where Can I Learn More About Current WIC Policy Issues?

• WIC Funding Basics (process of funding program)
• Educating Washington: Why Engaging with DC Matters for WIC
• Support the Wise Investment in our Children (WIC) Act

Our publications page has links to many other NWA-produced fact sheets, papers, and reports about the WIC program that provide background and context for current WIC policy issues.

What Can I Do to Help?

• Email, call or visit your representative. Use this search tool to find your elected officials and their contact info.

What Should I Say to My Representative?

• Share your State’s WIC profile for state-specific data and participant stories.
• Watch what other NWA members had to say about talking with policymakers in the video below.

Is This Advocacy or Lobbying?

• This is a lobbying activity. If your job is funded through the government, you can send the email during your break time or after work.
• Not all advocacy efforts are lobbying. Advocacy is not lobbying when you’re informing members of Congress about WIC and highlighting WIC’s achievements: You are educat­ing policymakers about WIC. This helps promote a positive image of WIC and hopefully translates into favorable WIC policies in the future.
• Examples of non-lobbying advocacy: clearing up misconceptions about WIC; explaining the positive impacts of the improved WIC food packages; describing the importance of breastfeeding peer counselors; and conveying WIC successes.
• For more specifics, read When Does Advocacy Become Lobbying?

Other WIC-Related Advocacy

We engage in various public health-related advocacy issues. Check back for updates on other ways you can take action to support WIC!

How Can I Learn More About WIC Policy?

Contact our Public Policy team:

• Christina Chauvenet, cchauvenet@nwica.org, Senior Manager of Research and Policy Analysis
• Nell Menefee-Libey, nmenefeelibey@nwica.org, Manager of Public Policy