Tag Archives: lobbying

We don’t need more lobbyists, but we do need you

Posted on October 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I was giving a presentation awhile ago to an incredible group of Latino college students who have committed themselves to working as educators in under-resourced schools, mostly with Limited English Proficient students. Their presence in those classrooms, as not only highly-trained teachers but also true role models, will absolutely make a difference.

I’m honored every time I get to work with them.

Mostly, we talk about policy.

I walk them through the basics of immigration policy and how it affects their students, and what they might expect to see in their classrooms in terms of the effects on families and, by extension, on how children can learn.

I help them understand our school finance formula and what it means for at-risk students, and also how the debate over school finance is shaping how patrons view English-language-learners and immigrant students within their schools.

And, together, we think about how they can be advocates, and educators, and how finding ways to embrace both of those roles provides their students the best chance of success.

And when I talk with groups like these, my core message is always the same:

To [end poverty], [counter racism], [win fair immigration policies], [pass a truly pro-family budget], we don’t necessarily need more lobbyists. You know that I think that lobbyists play an essential role in the policymaking process, but I don’t pretend that it’s for everybody, and I don’t think it’s the key to the victories we so desperately need.

Instead, what we need is everyone, from the primary role that does feed their souls (parent, teacher, direct-practice social worker, chef, librarian), finding ways to integrate effective advocacy into that work, so that their interactions with public officials spring from an authentic and renewing place in their lives.

That would be game-changing.

If members of Congress and state legislators had to respond to millions of people who aren’t lobbyists, and certainly don’t think of themselves that way, but who are justifiably outraged by a policy injustice that affects their work or their communities, and who took the 10 minutes to contact their lawmaker to demand redress…they’d notice.

It’s the reason why students and teachers and parents who come to testify on a particular issue in the state legislature get the committee members to put down their newspapers and sometimes even applaud, the way that we lobbyists seldom do.

So my goal in talking with people like these students is not to steer them from their chosen path and make advocacy their one true calling.

It’s to make advocacy a part of their way of life, in small, seamless ways, with the assured knowledge that doing so will play a part in reshaping the policy landscape that impacts the work, and the people, that they really care about.

Relax. We don’t need more lobbyists.

But we do need you.

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My mother was right

Posted on April 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I can remember, at least twice in my life, getting a thank-you note from my mother, thanking me for my thank-you note.

Honestly.

My husband thinks it’s bizarre that I still send thank-you notes to my parents and to his, when they give a present to the kids.

We buy them in bulk, to have on hand just in case.

And I still follow the rules my mother instilled in me more than a quarter-century ago now: each thank-you note should be handwritten, no matter what; there should always be a specific reference to the gift or deed that warranted the thanks; and the thank-you note should be prompt, written no more than 48 hours after the occasion.

It hadn’t occurred to me, until I was reading Fundraising for Social Change, the extent to which these lessons in gratitude have permeated my advocacy work.

But they have; I say thank-you to elected officials all the time.

I thank losing candidates for having run good races, especially if they have raised issues that would have otherwise been overlooked. I thank my own members of Congress and state legislators for their votes on a variety of issues I support. I thank elected officials and non-elected leaders for their statements in the press, their willingness to attend certain events, and their attention to pressing problems.
And, you know, now that I think about it, they have an even higher rate than my own Mom of thanking me for the thanks. I received a very heartfelt thank you for my thank you from my member of the U.S. House after his vote in favor of health care reform, and from my state senator after she supported the Kansas revenue increase. In the latter case, she said that I was the only constituent to have thanked her for that vote. Just last week, I got a thank-you note back from a state senator (not my own) thanking me for my thank-you note for his vote against the instate tuition repeal (and, no, he’s not even related to my mother!).

I can think of several instances where my thank you resulted, later, in a stronger relationship with an elected official, an entry point on a subsequent issue, or even a slightly healed breach where there had been conflict. Especially for those who are not my own representatives, sometimes these “thank you” relationships are the start of much deeper communication and an ability to work together on issues important to me.

People, whoever they are, really do like to be thanked, especially when they’re so used to be asked, or even harassed, instead. So, in honor of my mother and her lifetime commitment to thankfulness, here are some tips for thanking policymakers in an advocacy context, with an eye towards how today’s “thank you” just might help with tomorrow’s “would you please?”

  • Promptness still does matter, especially because our requests are so often time-sensitive. We don’t want to be seen as only respecting the urgency of the policy process on the front end. Especially on tough votes, the criticisms will roll in immediately, and our thanks need to as well.
  • Hand-written notes do receive more attention, I think. I’ve often written a note out by hand for Congress but then faxed it there so that it would arrive quickly, given the delays of mail screening at the Capitol.
  • Include supplemental materials, if at all possible–one of my favorite tactics is to include supportive editorials from a local paper when thanking a state legislator, for example. You can reference this in your thank you, “I’m not alone in appreciating your stance on this issue. I’ve included for your reference a letter from the Garden City Telegram applauding your vote.”
  • Ask others to join you in thanking the elected official. This has the dual purpose of increasing the number of thank yous someone hears as well as strengthening your network (because it’s an easy ask and gets people in the habit of contacting elected officials, when they know that there won’t be conflict).
  • Be creative in your thanks. I received more than 10 personal “thank yous” for the thank yous that we generated as part of our DREAM Act campaign–student groups at universities around Kansas came up with their own thank you ideas, ranging from signed t-shirts from their school to photos where they spelled out “thank you” in a sort of human letter thing. We also generated special diplomas, signed by students, thanking people for their commitment to higher education. These ideas were nearly free, but very thoughtful, and I’ve seen at least a few state legislators with those diplomas still up in their offices, more than six years later.

    Nonprofit fundraisers tell us that thanking people for their contributions can mean the difference between continued and increasing support or publicly denigrating your organization to other would-be donors. I’ve never known of an elected official to change a vote because he/she wasn’t thanked, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be the advocate asking someone to take a courageous stance without having thanked them for their past support.

    And I think my mom would be proud.

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    Why do lobbyists get such a bad rep?

    Posted on April 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    Guess that quote origin again, folks:

    “It is of serious interest to the country that the people at large should have no lobby and be voiceless in these matters, while great bodies of astute men seek to create an artificial opinion, and to overcome the interests of the public for their private profit. It is thoroughly worth the while of the people of this country to take knowledge of this matter. Only public opinion can check and destroy it.”

    Serious stuff, hunh? Undoubtedly related to the Jack Abramoff scandal and the recent outrage over the influence of “special interests”?

    Or maybe President Obama, speaking about his Administration’s policy to bar lobbyists from working in his White House (which, then, of course, immediately included some exceptions, in the realization that, for example, crafting immigration policy without the insight of Cecilia Muñoz, former lobbyist for National Council of La Raza, would be a bit unnecessarily difficult)?

    Or, try, Woodrow Wilson, May 1913, speaking almost 100 years ago about an issue that, certainly, has not abated from the public agenda in the intervening century.

    But, as I’ve written at some points in the past, this is something I’m conflicted about.

    I mean, to me, the real problem isn’t the influence of lobbyists, who, in many cases, are knowledgeable professionals who play an integral role guiding elected officials through the myriad of complex policy issues on which they must decide (would anyone like to see what policy 90+ new Missouri legislators would come up with this year without someone around who has been there for more than a month?).

    The real problem is the oppressive, and distorting, power of money, and the fact that some lobbyists have disproportionate authority not so much because of their own influence but because of the moneyed movers and shakers they represent.

    And, so, that’s why I always get nervous with this “anti-lobbyist” talk.

    I mean, I called myself a lobbyist for many years, was a registered lobbyist, and believe(d) very strongly that my lobbying was the best way for me to serve my clients, and, indeed, my country. I absolutely influenced legislation, and legislators, and convinced people to take stands that they would not have taken without my efforts. I changed votes, on multiple occasions, and I used every tool I could think of to do so.

    Does that make me part of the creation of an “artificial opinion”? Was I distorting the process? Or, in fact, are we misplacing our angers when we take aim at lobbyists instead of those who sometimes hire them? Why do we decry the yeoman’s work of those who monitor legislation, provide counsel to confused or conflicted policymakers, and interpret the policy process for lay men and women in their home constituencies, rather than focus our energies on the campaign finance system that allows vested interests to buy their lobbyists greater access and control?

    I know that those who talk about “special interests” don’t necessarily mean low-income communities with nonprofit lobbyist representation. I certainly never had campaign contributions (or free tickets to anything) to throw around. I usually bummed a Diet Coke from a state senator friend of mine. But I did try everything I could, and worked long and hard, to change the outcomes in the legislature, and I was focused on the relatively narrow interests of my target constituency when I did that (believing, of course, that the polity as a whole would benefit, but I bet some of the corporate lobbyists would say that, too!).

    That makes me a lobbyist.

    But it doesn’t make me ashamed.

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    In search of the tipping point: Lobbying Lessons

    Posted on January 25, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    Finding a way to make it stick

    One of the first messages that social work activists learn, upon entering the lobbying arena, is that, unfortunately, the quality of our messages is not that directly related to whether people will remember them.

    Yes, it’s true.

    We can have terrific facts.

    We can have beautiful visual aids.

    We can even have heart-wrenching stories.

    And, still, sometimes, the targets of our advocacy efforts won’t remember what we said.

    Legislative sessions are starting up all around the country. Congress is heading back to work. And, so, as we prepare for the real work of building power, nurturing relationships with decisionmakers, researching issues, and constructing solid policy proposals, I have advice that seems rather trivial:

    Make your message sticky.

    I’m sure it’s a testimony to how frequently my brain turns to nonprofit advocacy, that I can find lessons for that work even in a business book. But, you knew that already.

    In The Tipping Point, there were dozens of examples of the importance of ‘stickiness’–the need to figure out two key things:

    1. The one piece of information that you want to “stick” with people
    and
    2. A trick, of sorts, to make it stick

    The latter, while seemingly more challenging, is actually the easier part. Think of every jingle you remember, every random fact that sticks in your brain, everything you may have learned in a freshman introduction to marketing class you took for general education requirements in college.

    Use juxtaposition–people remember things that are surprising.

    Use imagery–people remember pictures better than words.

    Use linguistic techniques like alliteration–people remember things that they can’t get out of their heads.

    The harder part, for most of us, is the former.

    There’s just so much we want to say, and so much we want people to learn, about these issues about which we already know so very much. We think that we have an obligation, a duty, to communicate everything.

    We use smaller and smaller margins to try to fit in everything we think people should know.

    But we know that doesn’t work. We know that we, ourselves, tend to only be able to remember a few things at a time, and we know that we tune out, are even put off by, those who try to cram in more.

    And we can’t afford to have our messages discarded like that.

    So, this legislative session, we’re going to make our messages stick.

    And we’re going to change conversations, shift thinking, and…we’re going to win.

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    Why we need a “left flank”: Reflections on the Kansas Legislature, 2010

    Posted on December 13, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    When I was reading The Woman Behind the New Deal last summer, I found myself thinking about the Kansas Legislature’s 2010 session during the section on the role of the Townsend Movement in the legislative battle for Social Security.

    Yes, that’s how my mind works.

    The book relates the story of how, when congressional support for the Economic Security Act (retirement support, unemployment compensation, mothers’ pensions, and other key measures in our social welfare system) was waning, passage was ultimately secured, in part, due to pressure from supporters of a more aggressively liberal proposal: the Townsend bill. These campaigners wanted $200 per month for retirees, and they sent letters to Congress, held events around the country, and, most importantly, influenced the debate over economic security legislation, such that a more modest pension plan like the one supported by the Roosevelt Administration was ultimately seen as a compromise measure, not a radical initiative.

    And that’s what made me think about the Kansas Legislature.

    During the 2010 debate on new revenue measures, the factions coalesced around the “no new taxes/cut and cut and cut” pole, versus the “sales tax increase to avoid further cuts” camp. The increase revenue side eventually won, and the legislature passed a budget which included a sales tax increase (and an increase in the state Earned Income Tax Credit, so all was not bad!) and no new cuts in education or social services. It was actually quite amazing how a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans came together to support the package, which none of them thought was perfect but all of them preferred to cuts upon cuts.

    But.

    Reading about this history of the role played by the Townsend Movement (whose goals were, ultimately, not all that reflected in the final version of Social Security that won approval in Congress) made me wonder…

    what if?

    What if there had been a strong, coordinated push for a truly progressive revenue package, with an increase in the income tax (especially on higher earners) and additional rollbacks of corporate tax cuts? What if there had been an effort to light a fire in middle-class and working-class households and communities, where people are feeling the simultaneous squeeze of declining incomes (which reduce their ability to absorb a sales tax increase) and the effects of reduced services? What if there had been the kind of movement that resulted in all of those letters to Congress from older adults, and the Kansas Legislature had felt some real pressure to enact a progressive revenue package? And what if that coalition, or maybe even a slightly different one, had then had to tack to the left in order to accommodate that pressure, and we had ended up with a revenue base that would have not only put us on sound financial footing for the coming budget year but also promoted the kind of just economic policy that is its own reward?

    Too often, we put forward these “reasonable”-sounding policy proposals that we think can garner bipartisan support, as though there were some kind of advocacy bonus point system for sounding reasonable, when what we really need is some outlandish proposals that make even the huge victories that we ultimately ‘settle’ for look modest by comparison.

    Townsend reportedly told his wife, who wanted him to quiet down as he was ranting about the world’s injustices (my husband could probably empathize), “I want all the neighbors to hear me! I want God almighty to hear me. I’m going to shout till the whole country hears!”

    Of course, he did. And his legacy, while perhaps unrecognizable as a shadow of his actual vision, looms huge in U.S. social policy today.

    So, for next year’s Kansas legislative session, and on the national stage too, I’m proposing a whole lot more shouting. We need to revive (and perhaps invent anew) a bunch of crazy-sounding ideas (amnesty, perhaps? guaranteed incomes? universal free higher education?) that make aggressively progressive proposals look tame and more restrictive ones look radioactive. 2011, when the deck is already stacked against us after the 2010 elections, just might be the year to go out on a limb. What do we have to lose?

    Those are the kinds of compromises I can get excited about.

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    Yes, you can influence redistricting!

    Posted on October 26, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    Every 10 years, our country conducts a decennial census, which brings us new insights into our population, allocates critical resources, and, of course

    sparks nasty redistricting fights in most of the state legislatures in the country.

    Just in time for the 2011 legislative cycle, The Alliance for Justice has released some new guides that reassure nonprofit organizations, including public charities and private foundations, that, yes, we can get involved in the redistricting fight, while legally protecting our nonprofit status. It’s critically important, especially given data that 70% of registered voters have no opinion about redistricting, and experience across the country that shows very little citizen engagement in the process.

    This is critical, both because redistricting is so important to the exercise of democracy in our country, and because it’s often an incredibly divisive fight, the kind that nonprofit organizations usually want to avoid.

    The Alliance for Justice can’t give you the political and moral courage to enter this fray, but they can reassure you that you can, indeed, do so, and give you the guidance you need to avoid running afoul of the Internal Revenue Service when you do.

    You should check out the guides, but here are a few quick points to get you started (and to run past your Board Chair as you make the case for including redistricting on your list of policy priorities for the coming year!):

  • In states where redistricting is governed by the legislature (like in Kansas), efforts to influence it often count as a lobbying activity (and, therefore, should be tracked as an expense).
  • In states where redistricting happens outside of the legislative arena (like Missouri), this activity should not count as lobbying.
    *Question for the AFJ folks, though, that I haven’t been able to figure out yet: if a legislator sits on the redistricting panel (because some states include them) but is acting in his/her capacity on the panel, not as a legislator, then is it lobbying? I think not, but some clarity there would be good.

  • Any activity that educates policymakers about the issues at hand without specifically advocating a piece of legislation is not, similarly to other advocacy, counted as lobbying. In the area of redistricting, this opens up a lot of opportunities to discuss how redistricting impacts certain populations, issues that will be at stake, and civil rights implications.
  • Because redistricting ultimately influences political elections, it’s especially important that nonprofit organizations articulate (and actually hold!) nonpartisan rationales for why particular redistricting plans are preferable to others. In other words, opposing a particular plan because it unfairly disenfranchises voters of color is okay (as a lobbying activity), but opposing it because it would make it harder to elect Democrats (or Republicans) is not.

    Many states don’t get their full redistricting processes underway until summer 2011 (in Kansas, it’s after the 2011 session recesses in May), so you still have time to get your coalitions and plans in place. We want fair districts and equitable electoral opportunities in 2012 and beyond.

    It won’t be an easy struggle, but, with AFJ’s guidance, it’s one we know we can take on. And we can prevent this:

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    Social media and state legislative sessions

    Posted on January 7, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    So, it’s that time of year again. This was only the third year that I celebrated New Year’s Eve without this queasy feeling–a combination of anxiety and dread–as I anticipate the coming legislative session.

    I’ll be in our state capitol several times this session, on behalf of a couple of organizations on whose Boards I serve, and I’m considering taking the kids up at some point, because I think that my oldest son would be very interested in the construction in the building, at least! And I’ll be talking in this space quite a bit about the happenings there, particularly about the state budget and the implications of the expected massive cuts for social workers and social services, in particular. And I’ll be tweeting about media coverage of the legislature, and also updating the Facebook pages of a couple of organizations doing work in the capitol this session.

    And that has got me thinking about how advocates can use social media for their legislative work this session. Here are some specific ways in which social media strategies would have helped me as a nonprofit lobbyist–let me know if you’d like to work together to implement some of these strategies into your advocacy in the 2010 session!

    Blogs
    One of the greatest challenges for state legislative advocates is how to engage people in the issues in a way that mobilizes them for action. Blogs can help in this! If your organization already has a blog with a dedicated following, then incorporating content around the legislative session would be fairly easy–remember that the state capitol building should have free Internet access, for those moments in between committee meetings when you’d have time to post (for those, like me, not lucky enough to have an iPhone!). If you don’t have a blog yet, reach out to your current supporters via email, newsletter, and/or other mechanisms of communication, and include some content on the blog that they can only get there (like in-depth analysis of pending bills) to “push” them to the site.

  • Posts that feature clients’ perspectives on pending policy issues
  • ‘Interviews’ with policy experts, elected officials, and other stakeholders about the session and pending issues
  • Polls and other interactive features to draw in potential activists

    Twitter
    For those actively using the micro-blogging site, Twitter offers a virtually “real-time” communication medium. You can search through Twitter for all of your existing supporters who might be on already, but you should also seek out potential allies, “follow” them, and then hope that they will return the favor, so that you can build your network of supporters. Then, you can use Twitter to:

  • Provide real-time updates of committee hearings, floor votes, and even 1:1 meetings with targeted elected officials
  • Send out action alerts, with the most recent information
  • Use a service like @2gov that collects and organizes tweets and sends them to elected officials, based on participants’ geography–you could encourage your followers to send tweets about specific bills; at this point, @2gov only interfaces with federal officials, but hopefully parallel applications for state legislatures are in the works!
  • Use Twitter’s new geotagging feature to find potential supporters in your area, and organize them!

    Facebook, MySpace

    The social networking sites’ potential for advocacy has not yet, in my opinion, been fully realized. To be most effective, your organization would need to build a strong Facebook fan page, use tabs to capture people’s interests, and then use your Status Updates to push updates about pending legislation, Links to highlight media coverage and links to background information, and perhaps Causes to raise money for specific advocacy projects. In the absence of such an infrastructure, state legislative advocates might use social networking sites to:

  • Encourage grassroots advocates to use their Facebook or MySpace profiles to recruit their friends and colleagues into the campaign (especially where they can highlight their own interest in the issue)
  • Connect less formally with advocates working on other issues, and journalists that cover the legislature, and perhaps even legislators themselves, as a part of relationship building

    And don’t forget other technological innovations with tremendous promise for this year’s legislative session (and beyond!):

  • Text messaging, perhaps the best way to quickly communicate real-time information to supporters (and, sometimes, to reach legislators on the floor with messaging for debates!)
  • Flickr, to highlight photos of advocacy events and encourage participation by your activists
  • Google Wave, as discussed here yesterday

    What are your plans, nonprofit lobbyists, for integrating social media and emerging technologies into your advocacy during this state legislative session? Activists for social justice, how do you wish the lobbyists who represent your concerns were using these technologies to engage you? What tools have I left out that you think offer tremendous potential? Or what ideas do you have to use these tools in different ways? If you’ll be tweeting from Topeka this session, please find me on Twitter: @melindaklewis, so that I can follow!

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    The “Lobby Day”

    Posted on September 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

    If you spend much time in any state capitol in the U.S., you will encounter the springtime ritual of nonprofit organizations (and for-profits, too–you can tell the difference by the type of lunch they provide!) bringing their constituents to their state capital for an annual Lobby Day. I have organized 7 of these myself and helped to plan and coordinate another ~10, and I have participated as a speaker or advocate in at least 15 more. I have seen amazingly successful Lobby Days, where participants have meaningful encounters with elected officials, connect with others similarly committed to their issues, and leave excited to take on more advocacy work. And I have seen lackluster Lobby Days, where participants catch only glimpses of elected officials, sit numbly and listen to uninspired speakers, and wander around the capitol waiting for their boxed lunch to be delivered so that they can go home. And I know that you want to have the former, not the latter, describe your Lobby Day, right?

    Which leads, then, to the inevitable bulleted list of lessons I’ve learned over the years of bringing non-lobbyists to state capitols to lobby effectively. Done right, this one day can yield significant returns for a nonprofit’s advocacy campaign, and I hope that these thoughts might help you in preparing your own day.

  • Plan your Lobby Day with an eye towards the legislative calendar. You want to be early enough in the session that your issues are still in play, and so that you can make an impact on the process, and yet not so early that you haven’t had time to lay a foundation for the day–setting up visits, preparing timely bill summaries and talking points, and planning logistics (only some of which can be done in advance of the start of the legislative session). In a state where the session runs January-sometime in late spring/early summer (like Kansas and Missouri), mid-February is kind of ideal, although I have had successful Lobby Days as late as mid-March. You may also want to have an idea of when other nonprofit organizations, particularly whose agendas might overlap yours, are planning Lobby Days, so that you can maximize your impact throughout the session. We twice chose to do our Lobby Day during spring break because we were working on student issues and wanted to have a large youth presence.
  • That leads to the next point, you need to have a lot of the groundwork done before your group ever hits the floor of the capitol building. Visits need to be set up with at least some members of the legislature (once you have confirmed that you will have constituents from a certain district participating, you don’t necessarily need all of the names–you can schedule a meeting with the legislator for ‘her constituents who will be in the capitol with XYZ organization that day.’ If they aren’t constituents, you’ll be relying on the strength of your relationship with the legislators and/or relationships that individuals have with them, so you’ll potentially need to be more specific about who’s involved.) Some agencies like to have participants schedule these visits themselves, I guess to have the experience, but I am more concerned with making sure that they happen, which is where the real empowerment can occur, so I like to set them up myself. You also need to alert the media and deal with logistics (parking, meal arrangements, etc..). We always found it necessary to fundraise in order to pay for school buses to take people from Kansas City to Topeka, and we also provided small stipends to people in targeted areas of the state (where we wanted to persuade legislators) so that they could also travel to the capital.
  • Materials: you’ll need press packets, packets of information for elected officials that each delegation will leave with their members, and packets for the participants themselves (talking points, information about the capitol, lobbying tips). Make sure that these are kept separate, with different colors of paper, or something–they are for very different audiences. You should also print off photographs of each legislator with whom a group is supposed to meet; they should be able to recognize him/her not only in the meeting but also if the meeting is cancelled and they have to track him/her down outside the chambers or in the hallway.
  • If at all possible, you should form teams or ‘delegations’ for the legislative visits; I like groups of ~3-4 for these conversations, with 1 or 2 people being either those who have a connection to the legislator (like a constituent or someone with a relationship) or those with experience lobbying (or, ideally, both), and the other ~1-2 people being those who are pretty new to lobbying. Your goals here are to get every single person an experience sitting down and talking with an elected official and also to make those visits as impactful as possible, and I’ve found that this arrangement satisfies both, while also achieving a valuable third goal of developing new leadership and equipping people to play more active roles in the future.
  • Plan an agenda that energizes your participants, provides them with some of the context that they need to be effective in their lobbying, allows them to meet each other, and yet devotes the majority of the day to actual contact with legislative targets. This can’t be overemphasized; it just isn’t a Lobby Day if people are just coming to hear speakers and then eating lunch and maybe running into a senator in the restroom but not knowing for sure and, in any event, not saying anything. Usually we had some sort of march and rally first thing in the morning; everyone knew we were there by about 10am. Then we had legislative visits until lunch (paying attention to the House and Senate agendas and committee schedules); some people left at lunch, if their visits were done, while others stayed after lunch to meet with more legislators.
  • Participants’ packets should include feedback sheets where they provide information about each legislative contact (scheduled visits plus any chance encounters), the views expressed by the elected official, any follow-up needed, and a process evaluation of the visit, including feedback on fellow group members. Since I always had a master list of who was meeting with whom and when, I could follow up to make sure that I received these forms from at least all of the established visits. This is essential if the core lobbyists/advocates are to ‘close the loop’ by answering questions and taking advantage of legislative interest. Have someone stationed somewhere in the capitol building to receive these and also to answer questions and provide directions all day, and also check for them again at lunch and before closing the day’s events.

    If you have organized an agency Lobby Day, what lessons do you want to share? What worked and what didn’t? What was your greatest success? What would you do differently? What help do you need as you consider bringing people to Topeka or Jefferson City (or insert your state capital) next year?

    Materials:
    Bilingual flyer for Bistate Lobby Day, January 2007

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    What are talking points?

    Posted on September 17, 2009 by | 1 Comment

    If you look at very many advocacy documents for nonprofit organizations, you’ll see all kinds of things labeled, ‘talking points.’ Some of them are really fact sheets, some are really abbreviated policy briefs, some are myth/fact summaries, some are endorsements. All of these things can play a valuable role in an advocacy campaign, but that does not make all of them talking points.

    In essence, talking points are those messages that you want advocates to really USE when they’re lobbying on behalf of your issue/legislation. They are tailored to the specific audience (so you might have some for media and some slightly different ones for legislative targets, and maybe even different ones for potential allies). They are designed to persuade, not simply (or even primarily) to inform; that’s what you use policy briefs and fact sheets for (although those, too, should be persuasive–otherwise, why bother?). They can be longer than a policy brief, but they must be shorter than a background paper or full legislative analysis. Importantly, they are not designed to be just handed over to your targets, but, instead, used to guide lobbying communications–that’s why they’re called talking points. In some cases, you don’t even want them to be public, because they include guidance to your advocates that reveal weaknesses in some of your arguments (such as advising people not to respond to xyz question, because it’s a no-win for your side) or direct people to which compromises you’d be willing to accept.

    I’m not the world’s greatest talking points writer. I have a fondness for words (shocking, hunh?) that is not my friend in trying to prepare very concise talking points. So, I’ve tried to pull together, in the links below, some examples that I think are pretty good, to give you an idea of what talking points look like. To find these, I also looked at dozens of ‘talking points’ that were way too long, way too detailed, had graphics/charts (which, obviously, can’t be conveyed very well orally), and were, in other ways, potentially excellent tools but not really talking points. In one case, I found the script for a DHHS official’s speech, labeled, ‘talking points’ (hopefully we don’t need to be prompted by our talking points to say, ‘good morning!’).

    I would be happy to look at your talking points, since they really are an important tool in equipping your lobbying team for successful interactions, and to offer feedback. And if you now realize that your talking points really aren’t, don’t despair. There’s a good chance that, with just a little tweaking, they can easily become another type of document that you need for lobbying, also!

    Materials:
    Georgia AFL-CIO Talking Points on Opposing Trade Policy in Colombia

    Audobon Society Talking Points on Global Warming

    Drummajor Institute’s Talking Points on Immigration

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    What should be on our legislative agenda?

    Posted on September 8, 2009 by | Leave a comment

    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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