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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Getting grass roots key contacts make the ask

Lots of interest in getting advocates to make the ask, so I put together a 4 minute video of techniques that will work… I mention a seven step checklist for advocates that will keep them on track… I’ll follow up with more on each step and why they work…notice two important elements: testimony from actual politicians and training specific to the ask… if you use politicians to educate your volunteer advocates – whether in person or on video – you have to be very directive and not shy about getting retakes… this will allow you to create succinct and on-the-point comments… if you give politicians free rein, they will play back the tapes they are most comfortable with that serve their needs and maybe not yours… My experience has been that lobbyists are often reluctant to stop a politician and tell them to make a particular point… but if you can, you can create powerful motivation for grass roots key contacts. These comments on video from elected officials each took four re-takes, but they are very powerful.

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Educate to activate your advocates

I had warned the guy introducing me not to use the “P” word, but he forgot. So he stood up to an audience of 200 people and announced “The next speaker is going to entertain and educate you about ‘politics.'”

About 2/3s of the audience fled for the doors.

For most people, to work in politics is to commit an unnatural act.

And so in focus groups I explored why people have such a fear and loathing of “politics,” I learned the most frequent objections people have to getting engaged. Then I developed techniques to overcome them.

One of the first and most important steps is to help people understand that legislative lobbying is not “politics” as they understand it.

This flows from the fact that many people you want to recruit into your grass roots key contact program have never had a conversation with a politician. Many have never even been in the presence of one.

So they form their attitude about politics, politicians and PACs based on what they read and see in the news. Which is all negative. Nobody not working in the political area has anything good to say about lobbyists or politicians or money in politics.

So your primary job in setting up a key contact grass roots program will be education.

The education needs to focus on helping people understand that:

• politicians really want to hear from their constituents, the people who can vote for them
• they will respond and usually try to help anyone who can vote for them
• party politics and the partisan warfare you see on TV often is not a factor as you lobby to create a positive legal and regulatory climate for your business or cause
• most politicians are honest and work hard to please their constituents and serve their district state and nation.
• Most importantly, legislative lobbying for your business or profession is not “politics” as you know it. (In a coming post we’ll discuss how to do this and key points to make.)

There’s more, obviously. But this gives you a start to think about addressing the challenges of engaging inexperienced people in grass roots key contact lobbying. You must become the educator about politics and help your advocates adopt a new, positive attitude to counter the daily barrage of negative information they get from other sources.

Why would you want inexperienced people? Good question and that’s the next topic.

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Lobbyist is not a four-letter word

Personally, I like the “L” word. I’ve even told my children, “If you want to make a positive difference in the world, meet interesting people, live in an interesting place and make a good income, become a professional lobbyist.”

I don’t think you will hear any high school counselor say that, but it’s true.

This blog will focus on one aspect of a lobbyist’s life, generating grass roots support back in the district where people live and vote. When I help people influence politicians, I like to explain that the professional lobbyist works “inside” the legislature, at the committee and staff level. The volunteer advocate, the grass roots operative, works “outside” the legislature, back home away from the capital to support the professional lobbyist.

One of the challenging duties of a professional lobbyist is to mobilize grass roots advocates, i.e., ordinary people such as corporate staff or association members. Often this means changing their attitude, overcoming the negative presentation of politics they’ve seen in the media.

That is, getting comfortable with  the “L” word.

Grass Roots Advocates have to believe lobbying – communicating with elected officials – is honorable and effective.

It’s not easy. I ran focus groups in nine states and asked a variety of people – credit union managers, school board members, nurses, farmers, Realtors, etc. – why they don’t write letters, make phone calls and give money to politicians.

From this research, I wrote a book used by corporations and associations to recruit, motivate, educate and activate ordinary people to build relationships and support their professional corporate or association lobbyist.

Along they way I learned it takes time and different techniques to build a grass roots network, but the payoff can be huge when you combine the effort of the inside (professional) lobbyist and the outside (grass roots) advocate.

The two synergize to give you and your organization maximum clout.

In future posts I’ll look at the primary reasons people don’t write, phone or give money to politicians and offer ways to change their behavior, ways to get them to support their professional lobbyists by writing, calling and giving money to politicians.

Next up: How to counter the common attitude that “Politicians don’t give a damn about ordinary people.”

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