It’s the time of year when nonprofit organizations should be turning to their legislative agendas, preparing the documents that will state to their public, their staff, and their elected official targets what priorities they will pursue for the coming legislative session. Legislative agendas, as a product, serve several purposes:
Communicate to policymakers who are interested in your organization’s legislative priorities–they might want to express support for other issues that are of concern to you as well, or, if you are in opposition on one issue, you might find another on which you can collaborate
Outline the parameters for your advocates’ energies, especially when you will run multiple campaigns simultaneously
Explain to potential allies the limits of your organization’s advocacy, which can be helpful when you are asked to divert attention to other matters
Serve as a tool for dialogue with donors, volunteers, and staff members who have questions about what the agency’s advocacy will look like
Provide important background information for press packets and legislative visit materials, putting your lobbying in context and illustrating connections among your issues
Viewing legislative agendas as a product, though, is a mistake, because they are actually far more valuable as a process. I have worked with nonprofit organizations whose legislative agendas are developed by one person, working in isolation, and I have been around organizations who do lobbying without the aid of any formal agenda at all. I have encountered organizations whose legislative agendas are prepared months and months before the start of the session, when they can’t possibly have good intelligence about what the opportunities might be, and I have seen organizations whose agendas are not finalized until weeks after the session starts, rendering them virtually irrelevant.
So what should this process look like, and how can organizations arrive at legislative agendas that are, as they should be, helpful tools around which to organize their advocacy? I have prepared eight different legislative agendas for three different organizations where I have worked, and I have also assisted numerous other organizations in drafting or refining their agendas. Each organization’s process, and, of course, product is different, as they should be, but here are some general guidelines for success. Let the process begin!
Involve your key stakeholders in the development of the agenda, but don’t attempt to solicit everyone’s opinion; you’ll always leave someone out, and it can be paralyzing to try to bring all of those views together. Your precise list of stakeholders will be determined by your organization’s structure and culture, but you will likely want to include some members of your Board of Directors (trust me, they don’t like surprises on the legislative agenda!), staff leadership, some direct service staff (they often have the best ideas about relatively manageable legislative changes that will impact the lives of those you serve), and your client population/grassroots leadership. It can be a fairly small group; I’ve found that about 6-10 people works well, or, if you have a large organization and a lot of people to include, break into subcommittees to deal with each policy area.
Be creative about this process; it can be a terrific way to involve more people in your work. At El Centro, Inc. I hosted a public meeting every fall (around now) to provide updates on what we expected in the coming year with Congress and the Kansas Legislature and to invite people to participate in ranking our priorities and offering other issues for consideration. We held it in a large gymnasium, and about 200 people came usually. We broke into smaller groups, and people had colored dots they could use to ‘vote’ on key priorities. I was able to incorporate this into the draft agenda and then share with the Board, elected officials, and our staff that the agenda we were contemplating had been shaped by people we serve. I also held roundtables with our direct service staff to get their opinion and to provide information about how the legislative process works. Sometimes this was challenging, especially with our childcare staff, but we learned to talk quietly during naptime at the centers!
The people helping to craft the agenda need to understand what the agency’s process is for making the ultimate decision, so that they don’t feel unduly cheated if the product changes. In most organizations, the Board of Directors has final approval of the legislative agenda.
To facilitate the process, it’s often helpful to prepare a draft based on your expert information regarding the political climate in your jurisdiction, other agencies’ priorities (because you might want to partner with them or you might want to avoid overlap), and your capacity to take on issue campaigns. Then, your team can make changes, add items that were omitted, and veto items that they think don’t belong.
If you have more than about 3-4 issues on your agenda, unless you have a large advocacy staff (lucky you!), you need some sense of prioritization. On some issues, your organization might be the sole or primary voice; on others, you’ll be part of a coalition; and on others, you might just be lending your name or reputation to someone else’s campaign. These priorities need to be fluid, though, because you need to respond to political openings as the session moves forward.
Likewise, you need a process that is nimble enough to allow you to respond to requests for positions as the session unfolds. At El Centro, Inc., our Board approved the legislative agenda, and I had full authority to take positions on legislation that were consistent with those priorities. Once the agenda was approved, though, if I wanted to work on any legislation beyond that list, I needed the approval of the President/CEO and a majority of the Executive Committee of the Board (by phone or email), with the full Board receiving an update at the next regular meeting. In practice, this allowed me to respond to requests for endorsements or testimony within about 6 hours at the most, which worked pretty well.
You will want to think through your process for making your legislative agenda public. Obviously you’ll want it on your website and in your lobbying materials, but some organizations hold a press conference or release them to the media in some way; others have a special meeting with legislators or their community; others include them in a donor mailing. At El Centro, Inc., we made copies available in English and Spanish through all of our locations and programs and also included them in the last policy newsletter for the year, so that the grassroots leaders and clients not involved in the development process had a chance to comment on them.
Keep your mission foremost in your mind while developing your agenda. It is a sad fact of life that there is no shortage of social justice issues on which we could take a stand. It’s also true that you will burn yourself out, and burn through all of your credibility, if you attempt to advocate on all of them. Instead, you need to focus on those issues that are meaningfully connected with the work you do and where you have some legitimate chance to make change. This requires an analysis of how policy advocacy layers on top of your program work and how the politics line up for your agency. Some examples: an organization that provides childcare to low-income families might care a lot about HIV/AIDS, but, unless it affects a lot of their families, they might focus their advocacy energies on childcare subsidies and early childhood education instead; an agency whose Board Chair is neighbors with the State Insurance Commissioner might add a priority around health care, given this relationship; and a public housing complex for older adults might decide to focus on a state housing trust fund if there are several other aging advocates doing good work in the state.
If your organization has adopted a legislative agenda, I’d love to see it! What tips do you have to share from past years? If you’re just beginning this process, what questions do you have?
Materials:
El Centro, Inc.’s 2007 Legislative Agenda
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