Tag Archives: lobbying

Social media and state legislative sessions

Posted on January 7, 2010 by melindaklewis| 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 melindaklewis| 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 melindaklewis| Leave a 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 melindaklewis| 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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    Successful Lobbying Visits with Clients

    Posted on August 25, 2009 by melindaklewis| Leave a comment

    Elected officials say it all the time. Reporters start and end every interview with it. And social work advocates sound like broken records repeating it over and over again. When it comes to public policy deliberation, what people really want are personal stories. You know, the pull-at-the-heartstrings, compelling, yet meticulously documented and concisely told story of how real people are impacted by the social problem, and how a certain policy approach would dramatically impact their lives for the better. As you begin an advocacy campaign, it makes sense to collect these stories from those with whom you work. Have a list of people who are willing to give interviews (more on preparing your clients to talk with media later) and maintain an archive of stories, categorized by policy area. Weave them into your publications, your legislative testimony, and nearly every conversation you have with your targets.

    As you probably know, though, there is no substitute, for equipping your clients to tell these stories themselves. There are several challenges, though, associated with facilitating direct encounters between the people you serve and the people who (theoretically) serve them in elected office. I have been part of legislative visits with clients where people became so emotional that the meeting had to be interrupted, where people felt completely unheard, where there were arguments among clients in front of the legislator, and where those who were not included in the meeting became very upset. And I have been part of legislative meetings with clients where the elected official cried (in a good way), where politicians gave firm commitments on issues (when I had never been able to pin them down), and where the whole thing flowed so smoothly that I barely said a word. Even when it goes badly, it can be great; once, a state legislator slammed the door on one of our immigrant students, screaming, “get out of my office and go to college in your own country!” The student stayed calm, smiled, and said to the closed door, “Thank you, ma’am. But I am in my country.” And thank goodness, there was a reporter there to witness the whole thing.

    So, what can you learn from what has gone wrong, and how can you make these visits empowering for your clients, enlightening for elected officials, and energizing for your advocacy campaigns? Some thoughts (of course, you knew this was coming!):

  • There needs to be a transparent process that determines who will be present at a particular meeting, especially if the idea is that this is a sort of ‘delegation’ meeting representing a larger community. You can’t, obviously, include everyone–in most cases you won’t want more than ~4 people at the most–but you also don’t want to arbitrarily decide who to include, because someone will question your roster.
  • Deal with all logistical issues early. Yes, I have been in a car accident, with clients, on the way to a meeting with a U.S. Senator. Himself. (at least I didn’t have the accident with him, right?) Plan to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Make sure you know if photo ID is required to get in the building, or if you have to leave your cell phone in the car. Have all of your materials ready. Make sure that everyone has transportation (or come together–just drive safely!). Have cell phone numbers for everyone who has one. Call the office the morning of your appointment to confirm. Make sure you know how much time you’ll have for the meeting. Have an interpreter if you need one. Make sure that there will be enough chairs for everyone you’re bringing. Etc, etc, etc…
  • You need an agenda. Of course, if you don’t know how the elected official (or his/her representative–prepare your folks for the likelihood that you might not actually meet with the legislator) will respond, you can’t predict exactly how the meeting will unfold, but you need to roleplay possible scenarios, and each person needs a specific role, carving up the overall message that your group wants to convey. This, of course, can help you in choosing the team, too, since you need people whose stories/skills/experiences complement each other.
  • Think through what could possibly go wrong, and prepare for how you’ll handle it–you might even need a sort of ‘code word’, if someone feels that he/she really needs rescuing, or really needs to exit; especially if people are telling their own stories, practice helps them to be able to get through them, but it’s still a very emotional exercise.
  • Have a timekeeper/facilitator. Someone (maybe you) needs to have little to do besides keep everyone else on time, diplomatically change the subject, transition to a new speaker, or just cut someone off, and close the meeting. This is a really tough task, actually, and should be given to someone with great communication skills and some authority in the group. And make sure that everyone understands this person’s role before you get started.
  • Know who is empowered to speak for whom, and on what. At some point in the meeting, you may be offered a compromise of sorts, or asked what your bottom line is. You need to know how you’ll respond to this so that you don’t have one person offering something that others find unacceptable.
  • This also requires clarity on your role as the advocate. The elected official may prefer to speak directly to you, because, for all that they claim to want to hear from ‘the people’, it’s still uncomfortable for some to be confronted with real hardship. Your role needs to be clear, in advance, to the policymaker, and also to the team coming with you.
  • Process the meeting afterwards with your folks. On more than one occasion, I have left a meeting feeling pretty disheartened–we got the runaround again, or I felt that a certain person didn’t get much chance to talk, or whatever. And then I’ve found the rest of my group feels very differently, often much more positively, about the encounter (at times, leaving me to wonder if it was the same meeting). Sometimes, this requires some gentle consciousness-raising, so that people aren’t placated by policymakers’ empty rhetoric, but oftentimes, it’s the case that they have a more realistic and healthy view of the process, and that they can see the benefits of the process more than we can, as advocates focused on the finish line.

    Okay, then, in closing, a story that really broke all of the above ‘rules’ and was still pretty phenomenal. Early on in my advocacy work, Sister Therese Bangert of the Kansas Catholic Conference asked me to facilitate a meeting with Senator Roberts’ office and some advocates and clients around the issue of reauthorization of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). By all accounts, this should have been a nightmare–we all arrived separately, had never met each other, had only a printed agenda in front of us, and had no time to prepare. Instead, it was fairly awesome. Sister Therese had given us all clear roles to play, and we had our facts ready. The TANF recipient who was there gave a brief and very eloquent introduction about just how hard it is to make it in the labor market without advanced education (one of our specific policy requests was to restore higher education as an allowable work activity in the reauthorization). A woman who worked in a childcare that primarily served low-income families talked about a few specific cases as well as some of the facts related to wages for families leaving TANF, the need for increased childcare subsidies, and the impact on child well-being. And I mainly asked our questions about Senator Roberts’ position and the timeline for reauthorization. Reauthorization ended up being put off entirely for that year, but I still feel really good about that meeting. We were a pretty impressive group, far stronger as a collection than we were individually, and, while we didn’t have a relationship base going into the meeting, we formed fairly lasting relationships during those 20 minutes of teamwork.

    If you have set up legislative visits with your clients, what have these experiences been like? What would you do differently? What other help do you, or they, need? What have the outcomes been?

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    Seeking, winning, and using Executive Orders

    Posted on August 12, 2009 by melindaklewis| Leave a comment

    I don’t have a lot of experience with executive orders; although I’ve pursued it as a possible policy change option on several occasions, I’ve always been thwarted by regulations that stipulate that the kinds of changes I’m looking for must be enacted legislatively (darn separation of powers!). I have secured several resolutions from executive offices, which can be influential in some instances, because of their symbolic weight, and I have also assisted advocates in a couple of other states as they pursued executive order strategies at the state level.

    This post, then, will be short, since its primary purpose is to remind you that executive orders exist as a legitimate avenue for policy change, provided that the type of policy change you seek falls under the jurisdiction of the executive. Too often, I think, social work advocates think only ‘legislation’ when thinking of policy change, when, in fact, it can be far more expedient to pursue a strategy which only requires convincing one person–the executive–of the wisdom of your proposal.

    Some considerations in pursuing an executive order:

    First, obviously, there is the question about whether your desired policy change can legally be enacted outside of the legislative context. These limitations differ in different statuatory environments, but it may also be possible, if you are finding the legislative body particularly reluctant, to craft your desired change so that it does fall within the purview of the executive. A word of caution, though; sometimes that can be a ‘first step’ towards the more comprehensive change you desire, while, other times, it may be seen as an antagonistic move by the legislature, which may then deepen its opposition to your cause.

    There is a divide between what is legally possible for an executive and what is politically desirable and, of course, for you to convince an executive to act, your sought-after policy change must be both. In general, there is reluctance to make any major policy changes by Executive Order, but executives are sometimes willing to make change through EO that they would be unwilling to push for legislatively since, while it may burn political capital with the public, it does not require that they engage in any lobbying or vote-trading.

    As in any advocacy/lobbying campaign, a key part of your analysis must be your relationship with the executive and his/her staff. While, theoretically, it should be easier to convince one person to support your desired change, but there are certainly many examples when that is not true; an executive answers to one, generalized constituency, while each legislator answers to a more specific set of interests, and it can sometimes be easier for organizers/advocates to mobilize pressure on these legislative interests than throughout a more diffuse electorate.

    The process of seeking an Executive Order can easily overlap a potential legislative strategy, though (and this I do have a lot of experience with). Unless you perceive that the executive will be hostile to your proposed policy change, it makes sense to meet with him/her and the staff in the beginning of your advocacy campaign. If the executive is open to considering executive action, you can assess that at that initial meeting. If that’s not an option, technically or politically, you can gauge what other support you might get, including intelligence and/or lobbying assistance, from the executive and his/her office.

    Be aware that, even with executive action, you are not necessarily circumventing the legislature altogether. On one occasion, we were successful in getting Governor Sebelius to use her executive powers to do a reorganization that brought additional attention to the issue of affordable housing in the state, but the legislature did not enact policy changes that would have given the new entity the funding and authority it needed, thus highlighting the limits of executive power. Be cognizant, too, of some political backlash against what many consider the abuse of executive power by the Bush administration, which has led to some caution by some executives in terms of what they’re willing to do unilaterally.

    Because I don’t have as much experience with executive orders as with other types of policy advocacy, I’d love to hear from others about their experiences. What types of EOs have you secured, and what was their impact? What made you pursue this strategy rather than a legislative approach? Looking back, was it the right decision? What role did the elected legislature play in the overall policy change? What lessons do you want to share with advocates considering an executive strategy?

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    A Kansas Advocate’s Forays into Jeff City

    Posted on August 4, 2009 by melindaklewis| Leave a comment

    I spent the vast majority of my advocacy energy in the Kansas Legislature and with the Kansas Congressional delegation. My time in Jefferson City, Missouri bookended, I guess, my advocacy–I started lobbying on issues that affect low-income older adults while interning during my graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and, during the past ~2 years of my time at El Centro, Inc., I provided some technical assistance and support to the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates group and others who were attempting to address issues of immigrant rights in the Missouri capital.
    I don’t remember too much about those early days, but I remember very well my experiences in Jeff City during the 2006 and 2007 legislative sessions. Some of what I learned, and some of what I shared with others, from those experiences (lessons often shared during the much longer drives from Kansas City to Jeff City–how spoiled I was by the 1 hour commute to Topeka!):

  • Building alliances with organizations and people around the state is imperative, especially in a state like Missouri where so much of the power is in rural/mid-state legislators
  • Targeting is key–I remember being so frustrated that MIRA wanted me to meet with the sponsor of legislation to bar undocumented students from attending college in the state. It was clear that we were never going to persuade him, and it was also quickly apparent to me that he was going to occupy as much of my time in Jeff City as possible, with circuitous arguments and fallacious requests for information, just so that I couldn’t get to those who I could possibly convince. It is imperative that advocates gather and apply intelligence that allows them to rank legislators as red (totally against them), green (totally for them), and yellow (may be able to be convinced)–keep working with people until you have very few yellows left, but don’t waste your time with the reds!
  • Work the media–Many days, connecting with statehouse reporters was one of my most important tasks in Topeka. They can carry our message much more widely than we can with just 1:1 visits, and they are especially helpful in trying to get information to those in isolated parts of the state. I made it a priority to develop some relationships with reporters in Jeff City.
  • You need intelligence on a regular basis. The distance between Jeff City and KC or St. Louis made it impossible for MIRA to have someone on the ground in the capitol building all the time in those early years. That often meant, though, that our first few visits with legislators were embarrassing–we didn’t know what had happened the day or evening before, and so we had to be brought up to speed. If you can’t have an advocate there most of the time, see if there is a legislator who you can trust to provide you with this information, and make a point of connecting with him/her before doing any visits, so that you are able to make the most of your time.
  • Context counts… A LOT. Of course, I hadn’t expected that what I knew and used from Topeka would apply very well in Jeff City, but even I was surprised that it really didn’t apply AT ALL. After all, the two capitals are only about 4 hours apart, but the political climate, shared history, guiding legislative principles, relevant players, and even legislative procedure are very, very different. In the end, I wasn’t able to even be too helpful to MIRA–I knew the issues, and I knew how to lobby, but I didn’t have time to learn Missouri well enough to give very good advice about specific arguments to use and avoid, key players with whom to connect, and best ways to exploit potential openings. MIRA has learned this stuff, of course, on their own, but it was a humbling reminder for an advocate about the limits of our own relevance.
    Some of my students live and/or work in Missouri now, and so I try to integrate Missouri content into my classes. Here is a handout that I developed, current as of April 2009, to help students orient themselves a bit to the committee structure and the legislative leadership in Jefferson City. I also had a guest speaker who used to work for the legislature and now lobbies on behalf of a social service organization in Missouri come to my class in January. I am always interested in hearing about how nonprofit advocates do their work there, for comparison purposes. If you lobby in Missouri, what lessons have you learned there? What has this session looked like for you? If you have any comparative experience, how does Missouri differ?

    Missouri Legislative Overview

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    Testimony with Impact

    Posted on July 14, 2009 by melindaklewis| Leave a comment

    I know that social workers loathe militaristic analogies, but I really think that there are some parallels between legislative hearings and traditional military battles. Both are rather formulaic, with literal or figurative lines drawn in the sand. Both feature opposing sides vying for supremacy. Both have these opposing sides aim for the same, finite resource. And, while one can succeed at either with a combination of luck and brute force, it is advance planning and smart strategy that can pull off a seemingly effortless victory.

    I have spent a lot of time in legislative hearings–mainly in Kansas, but also in Missouri and in Washington, DC (where I also spent a lot of time waiting in line to get into hearings, since I can’t afford the placeholders who save a space in line for the high-spending corporate lobbyists!). I have testified at dozens and dozens of hearings, and I have listened to hours and hours of others’ testimonies. I have seen really phenomenal testimony–one of the best is Sister Therese Bangert, a lobbyist for the Kansas Catholic Conference, whose testimony is also short and always respected–and some really ineffective testimony. And while any good nonprofit lobbyist will tell you that you are doomed to fail if you only focus on hearings (because the bulk of your work has to be relationship-building, while testimony is primarily about imparting information and putting on a show), you can’t ignore these avenues either. The social work advocate who learns how to use legislative hearings as an opportunity to develop client leadership, make an impressive statement for the media, present a cohesive coalition message, refute your opponents’ best arguments, and create an aura of invincibility that will make it harder for officials to oppose you will be more successful in the other facets of advocacy as well.

    This post includes several pieces of material that I think might be helpful to organizations and advocates preparing for legislative testimony. While I was certainly not uniformly victorious in legislative hearings, I have a good reputation for preparing and presenting solid testimony, and I am particularly proud of how often we were able to present a surprisingly strong showing that both solidified our positions and undermined those of our opponents. But, first, some lessons learned:

  • You should never be surprised by who’s testifying–line up the people you want to testify on your side (and make sure that their testimonies won’t overlap–see below), and find out in advance who will testify in opposition (committee secretaries will often tell you this in advance, if you’re cultivating good relationships)
  • Use your time wisely. Find out how much time you’ll have, and practice to make sure that you can fit your key points into that time. Likewise, talk with your allies in advance to make sure that each of you will offer unique points; overlap just wastes minutes.
  • Don’t read your testimony. There will likely be many things that you want to put in your written testimony that you won’t emphasize in your oral remarks; it’s okay to have different comments for these different purposes.
  • Try to anticipate your opponents’ points, and diffuse them as much as possible. This doesn’t require mind-reading; look at what they’re saying in the media, ask lawmakers what points they’re making to them, and then figure out how you’ll counter them.
  • Highlight stories. Remember that you’re speaking to the media, often, at least as much as to the committee, and both audiences will be impressed by a combination of facts, value-based arguments, and personal accounts.
  • Remember that the who of testimony matters at least as much as the what. Think about who you want to carry your message forward–clients, certain leaders, a Board member with relationships on the committee–and then prepare those people to give the testimony that needs to be given.
  • If you have allies among the committee members, think of questions that you want to be sure you and/or your opponents are asked, and see if they would be willing to ask them. Elected officials want to appear informed, and we can help them do that while ensuring that all of our points are made.
  • Lobby before and after the hearing–in advance, ask key members what points they really need to hear in order to support your position (and try to include them in your testimony); afterwards, follow up to see what questions they still have.

    If you have testified in a legislative hearing, how was that experience? What would you do differently? If you’re planning an advocacy campaign for the next legislative session, how do you anticipate preparing for legislative testimony? What help do you need to get ready? What is the best and worst hearing you’ve ever been part of? The best and worst testimony you’ve ever heard? Do you have any examples of testimony that you’d like to share?

    Materials related to HB2615, an attempt in 2006 to repeal Kansas’ instate tuition law:
    Testimony List–everyone I planned to have testify, and what points they planned to cover
    Questions for the Committee–questions I had developed to share with some sympathetic committee members to aid them in asking questions of our opponents
    My remarks for the committee–more or less, an outline of what I intended to say (we were opposing this bill, so I went after my opponents, who were proponents)
    My Testimony–what I actually turned in to the committee

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    Melinda Mommy Meets Melinda Lobbyist

    Posted on May 12, 2009 by melindaklewis| Leave a comment

    For the most part, my advocacy activities and my mommying don’t meet. In part, that’s because we have learned that our kids thrive on routine, which means no dragging them to evening meetings or long events. I also know myself well enough to know that I don’t do anything ‘halfway’, and so I made an intentional decision to compartmentalize my life–this is my mommy period, and I’m pretty hardcore about it, and I know that there will be other intense advocacy periods in the years to come. That’s not to say that we raise our kids apolitically; even though my children are young, I’m very open about my political beliefs, and they see Mommy and Daddy volunteering for causes, debating policy, discussing current events, and certainly keeping friends with mostly progressive people. My oldest son likes to look at my magazines and the websites that I frequent, and I try to answer all of his questions honestly. Still, my advocacy mostly takes place while the kids are asleep or on the one day a week when I have babysitting help; that’s when I’m at the computer sending emails, reading analyses, connecting with other groups. I talk with my state representative at least a couple of times a month, but she also knows the kids and my life, so I feel more comfortable letting that blend together a bit. I care about issues that affect my children directly, of course, especially school finance, but most of my priorities are only indirectly related to their well-being; I want to build a fairer, safer, healthier world, in part, because that’s the kind of world in which I want my kids to grow up.

    Last week, though, Mommy Melinda put on her lobbyist hat to take a stance on an issue very directly related to my kids, and I’m getting my oldest son involved too. The park three houses down from ours is across a busy street, and I have always worried about safety there, especially because it’s at the crest of the hill, so visibility is limited. I knew that our city was in the process of doing a new park plan, and, when it was announced, my husband sent it to me. I saw that one of the proposed improvements was a crosswalk and signal crossing to our park! I wanted to make sure that that piece rose to the top in the city’s consideration of the plan, especially since it will be phased in over several years. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know who my city council people were before this–I have worked closely with city officials in other cities, but not much in my own and, again, the compartmentalizing got me! My husband helped me find out our Ward, and I sent emails first to our two councilpersons, describing our situation and why I want that crosswalk to be a priority. I also talked to my son about the danger of that crossing and explained that the city might add a stoplight if we convince them that it’s important. I told him what I was trying to do, and then I had him listen while I called the councilperson who had not responded to my email. I also asked the councilmen to notify me when the plan would be on the city council agenda; they allow public testimony, and I want to go to speak.

    My son has been talking about the light quite a bit, and he has been asking questions about ‘the people who will decide if we get to have one.’ I want him to be curious about them, skeptical even, and I want him to see Mommy using her “work talk” to address something that is a concern for our family. It’s still new to me, this being a mommy in the public arena and letting my public work come into our family, but I know that it’s where my life needs to head, as I bring my two halves together.

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    The Kansas Budget Deficit Battle (Cliff’s Notes for Social Workers)

    Posted on May 7, 2009 by melindaklewis| 1 Comment

    I am not a fiscal analyst. I do not pretend to be an expert on budget matters. Most of the policy issues on which I worked most intently were not big budget items, and so my engagement in the appropriations process was really only peripheral. Our instate tuition issue got wrapped up in the omnibus process in the 2004 session, so I sat through hours of budget negotiations between the House and Senate committees that year, and I worked some on school finance legislation, a huge part of the entire state budget, as it impacts Limited English Proficient and at-risk children.

    This year, I have honestly been paying more attention to the Kansas state budget than I did when I was working full-time as a lobbyist; the budget battles impact the practicum organizations of a majority of my students, and I have been closely following the proposed cuts for public education in my role as a Board member of Kansas Families for Education. All of the name-calling and sky-is-falling back and forth have prompted me to think about what social workers need to understand about these difficult economic times, and about the ways in which states can respond to them. We’re not likely to be the best ‘numbers people’ in the room, but we do bring an important understanding: these numbers are really about people, and people’s lives, which makes them anything but academic. It is from that perspective that I share these thoughts about Kansas’ current budget woes, and the fight around them.

    First, social workers need to remember that, to mangle several famous quotations together, “the news of this fiscal crisis has been greatly exaggerated.” NO, I’m not saying that we don’t have a serious deficit, or that real people aren’t going to be seriously hurt by the cuts that ensure. My points are these:

  • When did you ever hear a state legislator say to a social work advocate, “We’re flush with money right now, so we’re going to increase funding for programs that serve (fill in the blank: low-income families, people with disabilities, hungry children)”? They don’t. So we can’t wait for the budget to improve before we start making our case–it will never be good enough for them to want to give us what we know our clients need.
  • And, second, to some extent, this fiscal crisis, at the state level, has been exacerbated by intentional policy choices by state legislators, who also have the power to make it much better, if they would make decisions like decoupling the state and federal tax codes (meaning that the tax breaks enacted at the federal level wouldn’t reduce our state revenues) or rolling back or even just postponing some of the tax cuts enacted in recent years. Retired state representative Ray Cox (R-Bonner Springs) was fond of calling such tax increases “tax restorations”, since that term more correctly reflects the fact that we have decimated our own revenue base with a series of major tax cuts, particularly during the ‘good times’ of the 1990s.

    But, the reality is that, right now, social work advocates are battling to try to minimize the damage, and that the advocacy that we need to do to put revenue enhancements back on the table and to make social services so valuable that they will be sacred is going to really come into play next year, not in the next two days. 

    Some thoughts, then, about how to best prepare ourselves for these perennial budget battles, with hopes that these lessons will even serve us well in these lean years.

    1. States have to balance their budgets; unlike the federal government, they can’t run continual deficits, which means that we have to acknowledge the need for tax ‘restorations’ to the extent that our state’s needs are now outstripping our fiscal capacity.

    2.  The portion of the budget over which social service advocates have to battle is a relatively small one: for fiscal year 2009 (which ends on June 30th, 2009), 51% of the state general fund went to elementary and secondary education and another ~13% to higher education. When you consider our mandatory obligations under Medicaid and the costs of just keeping a government running, not to mention corrections costs (which, we social workers know, could be decreased somewhat by better investment in people at risk), we’re left with about 15% of the budget, or approximately $900 million, which sounds like a lot, but when you divide it among programs for older adults, people with disabilities, low-income energy assistance, childcare subsidies, community mental health centers, and the dozens of other programs funded through SGF, you’re not left with a lot. Argument number #2 for increasing the size of the pie!

    3. We’re no longer talking about ‘trimming the waste.’ We hear this a lot, right, about social services–that we can supposedly absorb these cuts because it just means working more efficiently? The reality is that, at this point, institutions have already trimmed as much as they can. The cuts being considered today (the Senate version would cut an addition $138 million from the $13 billion budget; the House’s latest effort was a $247 million cut that has been delayed because of massive opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans) would mean layoffs of employees, possible furloughs, cuts in classroom expenditures, elimination of some social service programs entirely (I got an email yesterday that the Respite Care and Family Subsidy Programs are two likely to be eliminated if these cuts go through), and increased waiting lists for others. There’s only so much we can cut (Argument #3 for looking at revenue restorations..are you convinced yet?).

    4. We have to stop fighting each other. Too often when I was in the Kansas Legislature, i would hear advocates for one vulnerable constituency make the case, implicitly or explicitly, that their population was more worthy than another (“kids are the future”–so what are you saying about older adults? or “people with disabilities need help through no fault of their own”–so what are you saying about people in the corrections system?). We can’t do this–there are enough voices attacking the need for social services altogether without us adding our voices to that chorus. That’s why I always advise students to answer the “so where should we get the money?” question like this: “As the state legislator, it’s your job to figure out how to meet all of the state’s obligations to its citizens. I know that these are not easy decisions, but the benefits of investing in (fill in the blank for your program/constituency) are worth it.” The moment you say, “maybe you could cut xzy,” you have earned yourself an enemy who should, rightfully, be your ally.

    I’m including a link to an article by a great statehouse reporter, Scott Rothschild of the Lawrence Journal World, that outlines some of the current debate. The House is expected to take up the budget today, and legislators need to hear from social workers that drastic cuts are unacceptable. We need to put revenue enhancements, like the decoupling and the postponement of the franchise tax cut, back on the table. I talked with my state representative yesterday and, somehow, knowing that I did my part might make the next year’s budget a little less bitter.

    Here’s the number to call to reach your state representative. Hopefully you’ll get a busy signal the first time you try:

    1-800-432-3924

    May 6, 2009 LJW article on state budget

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