A growing number of countries have joined the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and its vision for a world free from malnutrition in all its forms, as outlined in the SUN Movement Strategy and Roadmap (2016–2020). As part of this vision, many countries in the SUN Movement have developed, adopted and costed a multisectoral nutrition plan (MSNP). A critical component for the success of MSNPs is securing the required resources to implement activities at the proposed scale and coverage to achieve the set targets. Resource mobilisation (RM) for nutrition refers to the process of raising and leveraging financial and nonfinancial resources, domestic public funding and funding from external partners to support implementation of the interventions and activities detailed in the MSNP. RM is a long-term and collaborative process.

Advocacy plays a role in the entire RM process, to raise awareness, get buy-in, build coalitions, generate accountability and, eventually, create a favourable environment for policy and practice change. But, when taking the process for effective RM as a starting point, advocacy tactics would be particularly efficient at the point of engaging with resource partners—to influence policy, practice or behaviour change—and at the point of communicating results, to foster trust and accountability from these partners. This guidance note, developed by MQSUN+, highlights the key advocacy and communications steps in this process and outlines corresponding tools and resources to support countries in undertaking advocacy for RM. The included tools and resources are primarily taken from existing advocacy or RM materials from other sectors and, where necessary, are adapted for the context of nutrition.