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| Richard/SIA |
 Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:07 am Post subject: Effective communication with congress. |
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Moderator
Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 324
Location: N.W. Nevada
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Effective communication with congress.
This is based on a presentation I attended a couple of years ago.
The speaker was one of my congressman's senior staff members.
Basically, the more effort you put into contacting your congressman or senator the more weight your communication will carry.
So I am listing these in descending order.
1. A personal visit is best!
It may take an appointment, it might take a trip to D.C. if they are in session.
A good rep. will make themselves available to their constituents during the congressional "recess".
These are often "town hall meeting's", held at libraries, senior centers, high schools, etc.
You can probably ask their staff to add you to the list of people to be notified when a meeting is scheduled.
They are also usually posted in the local newspapers.
Some may post them to their websites.
All members of the formal party structure are almost always notified.
2. A visit with their staff may be almost as good, and easier to arrange.
3. A hand-written letter gets their attention, and each hand-written letter is generally considered to represent at least twenty people who feel the same way, but did not write.
NOTE! Since the Anthrax scare it is not a good idea to address letters to the Washington office!
Address them to a local state office, and ask them to forward them via their internal mail delivery.
Letters to D.C. are still being irradiated, and take four month's to arrive. No point in writing only to have the letter show up long after the vote is over.
4. An original typed or word processed letter.
5. A fax.
Any written media provides the staff with a document that can be dropped on the desk, or copied for distribution.
6. A phone call.
Easy, quick, sometimes necessary if time is critical.
But in many offices calls are most often just recorded as marks on a dry erase board, + or - column.
One way to make calls more effective is to tell the staffer you want a written reply, then they will take notes.
If you want a reply you will have to give your address, and must reside in the rep's district.
7. E-mail.
Just too easy, the sheer volume overwhelms most staff's ability to read and respond.
8. Mass mailing's.
Usually organized by a lobbying group.
Congress view's these as more of a demonstration of the groups ability to call on their members than as genuine passion for the subject being discussed.
No matter what means is used to contact any member of congress it is ESSENTIAL that you remain truthful, calm, and reasonable!
If you are making any sort of charges against anyone, some sort of verifiable proof is required.
This is where we shine, we have archived voluminous congressional testimony and other documents!
Coming across as a ranting, a liar, irrational, angry loon, will damage your credibility and cause!
In fact, your opposition may pretend to be one of your supporters, then make ass's of themselves in order to damage your credibility.
Here you go, a full semester of Poly-Sci 101 in a couple of minutes, and all for FREE! javascript:emoticon(' ') |
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| ken@thor-bullets.com |
| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 5
Location: ohio
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I just passed the jfpf? video to my senator and his wife who is a powerful judge here. I gave them a short intro to the video. It's nice having influential people in my guard unit.
_________________
every time you say "sim-test gel" a vyse guy slams his head on the keyboard |
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| Richard/SIA |
| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 11:56 am Post subject: Update on effective communication-lobbying! |
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Moderator
Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 324
Location: N.W. Nevada
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Update on effective communication and lobbying!
Courtesy of an NRA alert I received this morning.
It reinforces my earlier post on the importance of contacting our legislators directly.
I have edited out some NRA specific or redundant passages in the interest of brevity.
There is a LOT of good information here, I encourage all members to read this carefully and take action on the strategic advice it offers.
Congress is in recess, your legislators should be available for you to speak with, in person!
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Despite high-tech, lobbying still most effective face-to-face.
Cincinnati Business Courier - April 21, 2006
By Amy Showalter
At first blush, Thomas Jefferson might be pleased to hear that the number of letters and e-mails received by Congress has quadrupled in the last 10 years.
That's thanks largely to interest groups whose members inundate Congress and other legislative bodies with e-mail messages and letters championing their causes.
But our country's greatest champion of representative democracy would have to be troubled by a recent report from the Congressional Management Foundation that concluded the avalanche of electronic and postal mail isn't improving the quality of the debate.
That, too, was my conclusion after I conducted research with grass-roots organizers and issue managers who work for a group known as the Fortune "Power 25" -- the 25 top lobbying organizations in the country. The Power 25 includes well-known grass-roots organizations such as the National Rifle Association, the AARP, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The old-fashioned way of lobbying -- face-to-face meetings with legislators and their staffers -- is still the best way to change minds, according to the data I complied from 50 interviews with advocates at the top of their game. In other words, stuffing e-mail inboxes is expedient but not necessarily effective.
The government relations professionals I talked with were more likely to successfully influence an undecided legislator based on the legislators' election results, the composition of their districts and -- most important of all -- their ability to set up face-to-face meetings between legislators and key constituents involved in the grass-roots lobbying effort.
For example, we found a high correlation of influence success with legislators who experienced a comfortable margin of victory. In other words, legislators who win by five points or more are more persuadable.
Meanwhile, rookie legislators are more strident in their views and change their minds less often than seasoned legislators. The lesson: Don't focus on freshman legislators who won by close margins.
A less intuitive finding involved districts with a significant number of independent voters. There was a correlation between influence success and face-to-face meetings, most markedly in those districts with a large percent of independent voters.
Legislators from those districts need even more face-to-face communications. That finding underscores how important it is that interest groups do their homework and understand the political makeup of the communities their congressional members represent.
My interviews showed no connection between "influence success" and the number of grass-roots staff members that organizations employ.(bold added by myself, we are a small group, but this confirms we have enough members to be effective!)
Similarly, the number of hours spent discussing grass-roots strategy made no difference when the results were considered.
We also found that legislators are more likely to work to persuade their colleagues to support an organization's issue if they have been approached by personal friends who believe in the issue.(Me again)
Finally, interest groups that knew what their opposition was doing were much more successful than groups that didn't.
During the research, one organization told me about its fight over a major health care initiative. The association was standing alone against several groups well-known for their large network of grass-roots advocates. But the association persuaded key members of Congress to kill the initiative by getting key constituents to communicate personally with the legislators. Though vastly outnumbered, the association's advocates won because they knew their opposition's strategy and tactics and rigorously selected the right messengers for their issue.
My surveys back up findings by the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation that surveyed congressional staff members last year.
The survey found that the amount of correspondence to Congress has quadrupled in the last 10 years while the number of staff members fielding the correspondence stayed the same. Not surprisingly, some offices are handling the deluge more effectively than others.
The good news is that congressional aides believe the Internet has made it easier for citizens to become involved in public policy.
More than half of those surveyed believe the Internet has increased the public's understanding of what goes on in Washington.
But the aides also said interest groups waging grass-roots campaigns should focus more on personal visits and less on barraging Congress with e-mail.
Interest groups "aren't communicating in a more effective way. They are just doing a lot more communicating," said Kathy Goldschmidt, the foundation's director of technology research and co-author of the report.
That's fine if congressional staffers are adept at handling the fourfold increase in communications, but many aren't, she said.
"Some are like the Starship Enterprise, and some are like the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria."
Showalter owns The Showalter Group Inc., a Cincinnati-based firm that advises trade associations.
She can be reached at amy@showaltergroup.com. |
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