K Street Cafe

Come hear Adfero Group’s own Sue Zoldak and Purple Forge’s John Craig discuss how organizations are using Mobile apps to organize, mobilize and engage their target audiences in grassroots advocacy, lobbying and campaigning.

Are you currently using Mobile to reach your organization’s assets? Find out more and sign up here.

Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 6:00 p.m.

Location:
Adfero Group
1666 K Street NW, Suite 250
Washington, D.C.

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30 Meet & Greet
6:30 – 6:40 Introductions
6:45 – 7:30 Sue Zoldak (Adfero Group) & John Craig (Purple Forge)
7:30 – 8:00 Q&A

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When AT&T announced its $39 billion bid to buy competitor T-Mobile in March, theWashington Post wrote breathlessly of the firm’s “fierce lobbying clout” that includes an army of well-connected advocates and a powerful PAC. Experts and consumer advocates agree, said the Post, that the influential telecom company is “well-positioned to make its case.”

Then the Post mentioned an important detail in the seventh paragraph of the story. It seems that “Congress does not have direct oversight over the deal.” In fact, AT&T needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department, not from Congress.

Yes, Congress holds the purse strings to the FCC and can weigh in on the proposed merger. But this is not shaping up to be an old-fashioned lobbying battle. The proposed merger, and the process that will be followed to determine its fate, are far more complicated than that.

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Written by Kate Kaye, ClickZ Politics & Advocacy

E-mails to congressional representatives are the common currency of online advocacy campaigns, but a new study shows all advocacy e-mails are not created alike. In a report published earlier this month, the Congressional Management Foundation aimed to determine how much influence e-mail, social media channels, and traditional media channels have on U.S. House Members and Senators.

The CMF survey of more than 250 congressional staffers showed that e-mails with individualized messages are far better received than form e-mails, which are often automated through advocacy campaign websites. Nineteen percent of respondents said e-mails including more personalized messages had “a lot of positive influence” on office holders who had yet to firmly decide on an issue, and 69 percent said they had some influence.

“What matters most is the content, not the vehicle,” suggested the “Communicating with Congress” report, which showed that postal mail featuring personalized messages is seen as almost equally influential to personalized e-mails. Twenty percent said they had “a lot of positive influence” and 70 percent said they had some.

Form e-mails, on the other hand, were seen as having “a lot of positive influence” by just 1 percent of participants and “some influence” by 50 percent. Social media site comments were also attributed less value. Just 1 percent said social site comments had “a lot of positive influence,” and 41 percent said they had “some influence.”

To read the entire article on ClickZ, click here.

Cross-posted from the Public Affairs Council blog

Average citizens can have more influence on congressional policy than they think, says a new study from the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF). In fact, in many cases they have more influence than lobbyists or editorial page editors.

The report, Communicating with Congress: Perceptions of Citizen Advocacy on Capitol Hill, was released this week at the Public Affairs Council’s National Grassroots Conference. It is based on a survey conducted late last year of 260 Senate and House staffers.

“The most influential advocacy strategies for swaying an undecided Member of Congress depend on personal communications from constituents,” says the study. “Whether individuals make contact face-to-face, by phone, or through personalized email or postal mail, Senators and Representatives are influenced by their constituents’ own views about the public policy issues before them.”

The key word here is “personal.” In an age when technology allows an issue group to shut down Capitol Hill servers with thousands of identical emails, it’s refreshing to hear that taking the time to visit a congressional office in person is worth the effort.

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Grassroots advocacy in the first quarter of 2011 – a new year and a new Congress – presents some challenges, but even more opportunities for your organization and its members.

Let’s acknowledge that, in the first three months, it will be a bit difficult  to deliver your messages to Congress. What do you do when some offices haven’t been filled yet (some Senate offices won’t be filled until March) and many House offices aren’t yet fully staffed?

That said, the first quarter also brings tremendous opportunities to educate and engage members of Congress, particularly the freshman class, early on.

As Brad Fitch rightly noted in his post, New House Calendar Benefits Grassroots Advocates, the 2011 House calendar currently has 13 District Work periods – more than double from 2010. This means your organization and members have more opportunities to engage with your member of Congress at home, and your member of Congress has more face time with constituents from the district. This is a win-win situation.

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Cross-posted on the Partnership for a More Perfect Union

The newly released House calendar for the 112th Congress presents a fascinating opportunity for grassroots advocates seeking to build relationships and influence legislators. The calendar makes good on part of a promise the House Republicans made when they took office that they would operate differently than Democrats, and even previous Republican leaders.

The schedule is mostly a two-weeks-on and one-week-off schedule. It includes five days of voting when legislators are in Washington, no votes after 7 pm, and consistent end times on Fridays. Whether incoming Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor can pull it off is still a question. (The Senate tried a similar calendar during the 104th Congress and punted it after 10 months.) But, for sake of sane scheduling, increased efficiency, and hot meals at 7:30 pm for Members and staff, let’s assume they can. What does this mean for those seeking to influence legislators?

First, legislators will likely schedule more town hall meetings. The 2010 House calendar had 5 District Work periods – the 2011 calendar has 13. This means Members of Congress have more certainty and time to schedule town hall meetings in the district. It also means they’ll likely schedule more events as well – visits to businesses, schools, and groups. Great photo op’s, but also great face time with constituents.

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Cross-published on Adfero.com

In a 2007 poll, 44% of Americans responded that they had contacted a U.S. Senator or U.S. Representative within the previous five years.

According to the Congressional Management Foundation’s Communicating with Congress report, this percentage was significantly higher than a 2004 poll, largely due to the increased availability of online tools to contact Congress.

CMF’s data suggests a more engaged electorate – something that should be viewed as a positive. After all, an ideal representative democracy functions best when more citizens voice their opinions.

Yet in a recent piece for The Huffington Post titled “The Tragedy of Political Advocacy,” Jake Brewer takes issue with this very trend. Jake’s main point is that modern advocacy campaigns create lots of noise, but produce few tangible results. The result? Lobbyists play an even more important role in the lawmaking process. Hill staffers don’t know what or who to pay attention to, so they turn to hired guns to make sense of their overflowing inboxes.

In many ways, Jake is right. Frustration with email-focused grassroots campaigns — and the organizations that create them — is understandable. No one can argue (at least not with a straight face) that inundating Capitol Hill offices with email messages is the most effective way to achieve a policy goal. Campaigns built around phone calls and snail mail letters don’t fare any better.

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The American League of Lobbyists (ALL) unveiled a new video about the truth about the lobbying profession as part of our ongoing education campaign about the role lobbyists play in shaping good public policy.

“Lobbying: Your Constitutional Right,” explains what constitutes lobbying and why it is essential to the democratic process. There are two-minute and six-minute versions of the video.

A lobbyist’s role is to communicate about issues vital to all Americans. The American League of Lobbyists promotes good government through transparency, accountability and integrity. This is kind of the School House Rock version of the lobbying process and we hope that it will be used as a good introduction to ethical and accountable lobbying.

Four ALL members outline why lobbying is essential — Dave Wenhold, former Rep. James Walsh (R-NY), Patricia Adkins (non-profit) and Pamela Whitted (association).

The videos will be used on the ALL website (www.alldc.org), social media outlets, in classrooms and presentations given by ALL members.

Access to the video is available via YouTube:
SHORT:

The Tragedy of Political Advocacy (The Huffington Post)
With the increasing ability of citizens to share their voice with Congress, the result has been more reliance on specialists and less on constituents than ever before.

Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post
(The New York Times)
Details what labor officials and lawyers are viewing as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media.

The hard-working transparency advocates at the Sunlight Foundation have released a new suite of tools called Politiwidgets. Each tool in the 10-widget set is as easily customizable and embeddable by bloggers as searching for, resizing, and generating code for embedding a YouTube video.

The suite includes some interesting tools that haven’t really surfaced on the web in such customizable fashion, even if the data behind the tools have become available over the past couple of years through other projects like, for example, OpenSecrets.org. The list includes (with examples given for my representative in the U.S. House, Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN 5th):

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