K Street Cafe

Add Action to Any Website (Engage)
Engage’s “Multiply” platform allows organizations to add grassroots action tools to any website.

Dealing with the Disaster of Online Critique
(Tech President)
Learn pointers from the Air Force’s “Blog Assessment Strategy” for dealing with criticism online.

Originally published on PMPU.org.

Clay Johnson, formerly of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote in his blog recently that “online petitions are a sham.”  He even used some of our data about congressional mail volumes to help make his point.  While I think that he makes some really keen observations and puts his finger on some of the key challenges, not all online advocacy is the same.

The Congressional Management Foundation has done research with both the senders (citizens) and the receivers (congressional offices) and majorities of both believe that advocacy campaigns are good for our country.  In fact, 73% of internet users who had contacted Congress in the last five years confirmed that they thought advocacy campaigns were good for Democracy.  On the Hill, 53% of the congressional staff that responded to our survey confirmed that even they (the ones on the front lines of helping Members manage communications) thought that advocacy campaigns directed at Congress were a good thing.

What’s more, our survey of internet users found that interest groups played an integral role in how citizens learn about and communicate with Congress.  Citizens join interest groups, visit their websites, and participate in their online petitions to learn about the issues they care about and to take collective action.  However, interest groups need to realize that they occupy a key role in the connection between their activists and the Members of Congress who represent them.  With that role comes responsibility.  On the Hill, congressional staff do not have the tools that they need to quickly distill meaning from the overwhelming volume of communications that they receive on any given day.

Clay is right that there are bad actors that don’t have the facilitation of genuine dialogue as their primary motivation.  However, we can’t let a minority of interest groups negate the critical and valuable—both to citizens and Congress—role that interest groups and grassroots advocates play.  He’s also right that there are currently some significant obstacles to meaningful communication.

It is specifically because there are these challenges, that we recently launched The Partnership For a More Perfect Union to help improve the relationship and communication between citizens and Members of Congress.  Through the Communicating with Congress Project we are seeking ways to improve the channel of communication between citizens and their elected officials because it’s good for citizens, Members, and democracy.

Williamsburg Embraces iPad Politics (Tech President)
Williamsburg, VA sheds traditional paper city council agenda books for iPads, raising questions of efficiency and privacy.

Report: 91% of Political Advocacy Groups on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (PRNewser)
The vast majority of advocacy groups utilize social media tools to relay messaging.

Unsure How to Vote in California Primary Election, Many Turn to Twitter (Christian Science Monitor)
Primary voters in California and other states have been using Twitter and Facebook to find out about the candidates.

Elephants Are Afraid of Bees (Beekeeper Group)
An interesting take on how nature provides an excellent model for advocacy.

DC Activists Stage “Virtual Sit-in” on Local Politician’s Facebook Pages (The Huffington Post)
Gone are the days when a “sit-in” consists of taking over a physical space with actual bodies to make a point – last week the Save Our Safety Net campaign hosted a virtual sit-in on a DC council member’s Facebook page.

There’s an App for that: Dems, GOP take 2010 Campaign Fights to iPhone, iPad (Hillicon Valley)
Ahead of tough upcoming midterm elections both parties are poised to take campaign battles to the iPhone and iPad.

POIA Would Make the Government Work Better (Sunlight Foundation)
Some believe the recently introduced Public Online Information Act (POIA), which will make public information available online, will empower citizens to hold their government accountable, therefore making it work better.

Hand-Deliver Your Emails! (To Congress) (e.politics)
Did you know that it’s usually more effective to print e-mails out and hand-deliver them to Congress?

First Lady’s First Tweet (CNN)
The first lady sent out her first tweet at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

BP’s Digital Lobbying (Advocacy 2.0)
In an effort to mitigate the fallout from a recent oil spill, BP has launched a major PR campaign utilizing several social media tools.

The online grassroots community has wisely begun a discussion of ethics lately. A February forum at George Washington University was a solid kick-off to the dialogue. An ethical examination would be a healthy exercise when one considers the strategies, tactics and motives surrounding the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle to fill the seat of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

The recent opening on the Supreme Court, and the anticipated grassroots battle over the nominee, raise an ethical question for grassroots organizers. Groups on both the left and right see a Supreme Court nomination battle as an opportunity to rally troops, raise funds and bolster their causes. However, many political observers have suggested that President Obama will probably nominate a non-controversial candidate, seeking to avoid a bloody and partisan nomination fight so close to the 2010 mid-term elections.

(more…)

I’m Maddie Grant, an association/nonprofit industry blogger on social media and online community building. I’m very happy to have been invited to be a regular poster on K Street Cafe.

This is my first post here, so I’m still getting the lay of the land as to what kinds of topics will interest K Street readers. I am an avid blog reader and definitely consider myself a “content curator”; Here’s the kind of stuff I read and write about on my blog.

So I thought I’d do two things. First, I want point you to a few PR/Public Affairs/Advocacy related blog posts I’ve found very interesting recently – and ask you to tell me if these float your boat or not. Check ‘em out.

(more…)

This morning at the Public Affairs Council’s National Grassroots Conference, former Member of Congress J. C. Watts spoke on what makes an effective grassroots advocacy strategy. Obviously, every Member of Congress has their own unique perspective, but it was helpful to hear from someone on the “inside” who advocacy organizations are trying to influence.

One interesting point Watts made was that he and his staff took notice of the volume of communications from constituents on any given issue:

“When I ask my staff, ‘Have we heard from constituents about an issue?’ and they say that we have received 47 calls, that does not impress me. But, if we receive 547 calls, then everyone sits up and takes notice. I think there must be something legitimate going on. We need to take notice.”

And then later, during a question and answer period he said:

“When the staff tells me we received 721 communications on an issue it makes me say, ‘Something is going on here – we need to find out more and take notice.’ ”

Watts then outlined some tips for Grassroots practitioners who are trying to influence Congress. He spoke about the good, the bad and the ugly:

(more…)