Seek out the inexperienced for grass roots key contacts

When you as a lobbyist set out to recruit grass roots advocates (key contacts), you might be tempted to seek out those who are already politically active or who have connections with elected officials. This video shows the advantage of getting an inexperienced volunteer and below I discuss a couple of broad parameters for selecting effective grass roots key contacts.

Video: Become a great grass roots key contact

Experienced vs not

Here’s why you might want to avoid “experienced” people. If you send out an all points bulletin “Know a politician? We need you!” You may get a few ideal candidates. You will also get people who have an agenda and it may not be yours.

You will get people who know the politician, all right, and who will tell you they are best friends… but if you ask the politician you want them to contact, you may find out the relationship is… not so hot. They may also bring in negative baggage from previous issues, issues unrelated to those you want to pursue.

You can do much better if you seek out people who are willing to commit the time and are willing to be trained. The most important personal attributes for successful key contacts:

Willing to invest time building a relationship

Able to set aside personal feelings about politicians and issues

Not likely to offend their targeted elected official

Selecting “mirror images”

When you pick your advocates you can seek out people who are like the politician and/or staff you need to influence – mirror images.

For example if you need a grass roots contact for an African-American urban Democrat, seek out an African-American urban key contact. Likewise for Hispanics from Southern California, Jews from New York City, women from San Francisco and gun-totin’ middle-aged white guys from Georgia. You want people who relate easily and we all relate easier to people like ourselves.

I once sat in a Washington meeting with a tall blond young male staffer. On my side I had three gray haired pin strip suited man and one young tall blond woman. Guess who the staffer focused on? And guess who volunteered to become the key contact in the future?

You won’t be able to do this in every case but it’s something to bear in mind.

Wouldn’t you like to have someone like Melody working for you back in the district?

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Votility blog tells you how it’s done

This blog is a spot-on guide for anyone who wants to recruit, motivate and activate grass roots key contact advocates, and, more importantly, keep them engaged.

If you look at the web sites of many politically active associations you will be hard pressed to find any mention of specific humans with pictures and engaging stories and video. They read like legal briefs and look like tombstones.

How dull is your web site compared to popular magazines?

Compare your web site to the magazines at the grocery checkout. (I know you don’t want to be seen looking. Just get in a busy line so you have time to dawdle. If you’re tempted to buy you can always say the magazine got in with your groceries by accident.)

That magazine, in some ways, is your competition for the time and attention of your members. It’s lively, provocative, engaging and full of people… and some animals and kids.

It’s definitely a good lesson in how to draw people in. If you want to engage your members electronically, you would do well to ask why more people read those magazines than your web site and what you can do to compete.

This blog article article is a good start point if you ask how you can turn the principals listed here into people oriented content, especially as a way to reward and recognize your grass roots key contacts.

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Now… why did you send out that action alert?

Last week I got an action alert from a group in Texas I had consulted with. The alert was a request to association members to email their legislators about a bill up for a committee hearing. As is typical in grass roots management software, you could link and send a detailed email to your legislator.

People and email swarm… with just a little effort your grass roots key contact bees can have some serious sting… without it… just fluttering butterflies

One click, it’s gone.

The association person in charge of the action alert reported what happened and I couldn’t help but think of “Wasted Days And Wasted Nights.”

“According to Voter Voice, there were 700 e-mails that were sent and we have verification that 11 people responded to the action alert to send letters to their legislators.”

As far as I can tell, Voter Voice is about as good a system as any available for managing grass roots contacts, and this action alert was as well-constructed as any, yet this effort almost certainly had no impact.

Dancing like butterflies… no sting like a bee…

It is a typical minimalist effort. Send out a blast email and wait.

With the typical result. Nada.

I wrote the very disappointed association grass roots manager and asked if she had assessed:

a. Which legislators got the emails
b. Whether they are decision makers at this point
c. What was the quality of email they received
d. Did anyone verify that the sent emails were read and responded to?

It might be that the 11 emails went to key gatekeepers from voters they know and so the emails had significant impact… but I doubt it and before I raised the issue, that factor had not come up. The association person was only thinking quantity, not quality and had invested minimum effort.

This case illustrates why most associations and corporations using grass roots key contact software get very little political impact from their efforts: Lack of focus, lack of quality, lack of accountability.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you lay the groundwork and invest resources in education and invest time and effort, here is what can happen:

1. You would have a cadre of grass roots key contacts who have personal relationships with members of the committee and understand the power of personal communication from voters in the elected official’s district.

2. You would have contacted only those key contacts who live in the districts of the committee members and done so by telephone, helping each one develop a personal message to be delivered in email with telephone confirmation.

3. You would emphasize the importance of that personal message and also identify the key decision makers on the committee and make sure they heard from at least one of their constituents.

4. You would check back until you had a report from each grass roots key contact as to results.

And… you would have had powerful, measurable results.

Oh, you say, that is too much work, I don’t have that much time.

True. But what’s your result from hitting send and doing nothing else?

What’s the point of bees with no sting?

What you need is a grass roots intern or secretary who does have the time and who likes to do this kind of work and who can make it a priority and turn your butterflies into bees.

Grass roots stimulation work is not well done, as a rule, by lobbyists.

But that’s a topic for another day.

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Recruit, Educate, Motivate, Activate Grass Roots Key Contacts

Any organization hoping to create a favorable regulatory and legal climate or get government funding needs to combine the “inside” work of professional lobbyists with the “outside” power of grass roots key contacts.But since many Americans are cynical and discouraged about their government and sour about politics and politicians getting them to take action can be difficult.

My experience creating strong grass roots programs tells me the task falls basically into four parts:

Recruit

Educate

Motivate

Activate

My own method has been to use a certain set of messages, a certain set of messengers and multiple media and methods. More on each to come.

Motivating Grass Roots Key Contacts To Lobby

One of the most powerful techniques to activate grass roots key contacts is to make sure they hear certain messages from elected officials. These include:

• We don’t hear that often from our constituents on particular issues.
• When we hear from constituents, we pay attention.
• Your impact is dramatically increased when you make the message specific and personal.

You can get this motivating message to your grass roots key contacts in personal appearances at meetings and also through video… probably the most efficient way. Here’s a sample.

Getting people to lobby day… and beyond

You will get more benefit from a lobby day that brings grass roots key contacts to the capital if you build in the plan for what you want them to do when they get back home.

Here’s one great outcome, a site visit by a state senator.  This video is designed specifically to:

• recruit young people into grass roots advocacy
• demonstrate the power one person can have with very little effort
• show how easy it is to get senators and representatives to a site visit from which they gain deeper understanding of you, your profession
• plant the seed for future activity beyond the lobby day

When interviewing people not used to being on camera, it takes significant coaching and retakes to get the kind of comments that will achieve your goals. But then you have a training and motivation tool that you can use in many forms:

• DVD with a speech or seminar
• online in an article
• on screen at a convention
• transcribed into a written article on your web site or in your newsletter

As with any online content, you have to drive people to it or bring it to them. This kind of testimonial is powerful and more so if you gather a group, show it and then stimulate a discussion. It also works to recognize good work done by your advocates.

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Make Your #LobbyDay More Effective

Check out this conference on lobby days hosted by the Congressional Management Foundation

http://tinyurl.com/c7ed99r

Speaking of lobby days… Be sure to aggressively recruit grass roots key contacts from gatekeeper districts.

If you simply accept anyone who wants to show up and do nothing else, you may not get key contacts for the elected officials who are most important to your cause.

Think about the key committee and sub-committee chairs who decide on your legislation. Make sure you enable and invite key contacts from their district.

It may take personal phone calls from your professional staff and volunteer leadership and even scholarships or air fare… but what’s it worth to have someone from the home district show up and speak to a committee chair?

It’s great to have a large turnout, but for political impact, you need to cover the key decision makers.

One measure of the success of a lobby day is to list the must-have legislators, The A-list legislators, and ask “How many key contacts spoke directly to those on the A-list?”

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