What Successful Grassroots Lobbying Looks like

1
What Successful Grassroots Lobbying Looks like

• Presented by
• Elizabeth McInnis
• Director of Advocacy
• Clemson University

2
In the beginning

• Over the years of the SRC conference, we have
  talked about how to lobby our state legislatures.
  
• Each person in this room faces the same core
  problem.
• How do I get my issues heard above the noise and
  clutter of other people trying to reach the same
  group of legislators?

3
Consider the problem

• You have a finite number of legislators
• You have an infinite number of issues which they
  are being asked to consider
• You have an ever expanding number of people
  trying to reach them
• You have the perfect conditions for never having
  any one issue heard properly
• AND YOUR JOB IS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BE HEARD
  PROPERLY

4
How Clemson University addressed the problem

• About 6 years ago, we looked at the issue as
  follows
• We wanted to figure out who really was our
  audience for our legislative issues
• We wanted to know how best to engage that
  audience
• We wanted to manage a solution with a very small
  staff.
• And we wanted to be able to see results at the
  capitol.

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Who is Clemsons Audience for legislative Issues

• The Alumni people who have been to Clemson and
  feel that the school delivered on its promise and
  wants to see more of the same for future
  generations
• Administration Faculty and Staff The people who
  are the university can be huge resource to make
  the case for state support.
• Legislators themselves all schools have fans at
  the capitol. We needed to let them know that we
  have support across the state.

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How would we engage the audience in our issues

• Inform them of the issues We needed to
  communicate to these people better on the issues.
  It is impossible to get someone to agree or
  disagree with you f they do not know or
  understand the issue.
• Frequency of communication Just telling people
  our problems, does not engage them. We needed an
  environment that would enable us to communicate
  good news, bad news, and just plain news that
  affected Clemson.
• Simple implementation Our government affairs
  team is a small group of people. Asking us to
  publish papers and market our information will
  not work. We have limited time, limited resources
  and yet we have a broad audience to cater to
  across the state.

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What Clemson did to address our Government Affairs

• Six years ago, we embarked on a mission to find
  technology to help us work smarter not harder
• The funny part of this is the person who led this
  charge was the least technical lobbyist you ever
  met, but he knew what we had to do.

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LegislationThe bills are our issue documentation
We track hundreds of bills so we needed to be
able to organize them into folders and by
priorities
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LegislationGetting all the information out
Our audience wanted a quick summary of bills to
see what we follow
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Legislationproviding the details
With a single click on a bill number our audience
can see the bill history as it is on our state
site, and click for the full text of the
bill. We made it easy for them to locate the
information then to read it.
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LegislationReceiving Input from our audience
Note the POST YOUR COMMENTS button. We wanted to
be able to receive feedback from our audiences in
an organized fashion. The feedback thing is a
big issue because prior to automating the
process, we had people chasing us via email and
phone calls with their input and it often got
lost.
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We find it valuable to be able to capture
comments during the session
In the end, the Legislative tracking tools we
sought helped us focus the university management
around a single set of information and cut down
on the miscommunications as we could see who was
saying what about a bill and we got notice via
email when anyone submitted comments in this form.
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Organizing the audience to help us lobby

• The second thing we needed was a means to
  organize our audiences to help us lobby.
• We knew about the traditional forms of grassroots
  lobbying which involves finding as large an
  audience as possible to make as much noise as
  possible. However, this was not always going to
  work for us.

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Organizing the audience to help us lobby

• The second thing we needed was a means to
  organize our audiences to help us lobby. This
  thinking about a grassroots part lead to some
  additional thoughts.
• We knew about the traditional forms of grassroots
  lobbying which involves finding as large an
  audience as possible to make as much noise as
  possible. However, this was not always going to
  work for us.
• We knew certain supporters had relationships
  with legislators. We tended to rely on this small
  group heavily to help us, but we also knew that
  there were a lot more of our folks who had some
  connection to the members of the Capitol and we
  wanted to harness more of them.

15
Organizing the audience to help us lobby

• The second thing we needed was a means to
  organize our audiences to help us lobby.
• We knew about the traditional forms of grassroots
  lobbying which involves finding as large an
  audience as possible to make as much noise as
  possible. However, this was not always going to
  work for us.
• We knew certain supporters had relationships
  with legislators. We tended to rely on this small
  group heavily to help us, but we also knew that
  there were a lot more of our folks who had some
  connection to the members of the Capitol and we
  wanted to harness more of them.
• We wanted a grassroots environment that could do
  both send out volumes of emails as well as help
  us record and organize people who had
  relationships with legislators and classify those
  relationships.

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The Capitol Impact Grassroots System
Has a solid blast email capability that would let
us create our own emails easily and send them to
anyone in our grassroots system. In any e-mail
we send, We can add in links to the persons
legislators to make it easy for them to get an
officials contact information.
17
The Capitol Impact Grassroots System
The system has all our state legislators and
their contact information. The smaller number on
the right of this list are the number of people
who have a relationship with the legislator. The
larger number is the number of people in our
database who live in the district.
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The Capitol Impact Grassroots System
The grassroots system can send an invitation to
each person in the database like the one on the
right. Each email has a link that sends the
person back to the system where they access ONLY
their record in the system. For people not
already in the database, the system allows them
to join and fill in all their information.
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The Capitol Impact Grassroots System
To record relationships, our supporters have a
screen where they can choose who they know,
specify the type of relationship and the system
records the relationships. Personal/Close
relationships are GOLD to us lobbyists so the
system marks them as such.
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We learned we have to market for grassroots
support

• The bulk of our advocacy support came to us
  because we contacted them first and asked, and we
  have been asking for help for six years.
• We use the built in invitation to contact alumni
  with e-mails
• We hold statewide meetings and have a PC setup so
  we can recruit more people.
• We send out weekly updates during the session,
  and at least monthly alerts after the session to
  keep them connected, using the system

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What Clemson gets for its efforts

• We have an advocacy audience of just under 1,000
  supporters
• We have at least one supporter in each district
  with a close relationship with every legislator,
  and sometimes we have several
• Depending on the issue, we can isolate committee
  members and rally the grassroots network in their
  districts, or we can rally our active 900
  advocates or we can activate the entire database
  with an email alert

22
How effective have we been

• Annually we have hundreds of bills that are
  vetoed by the governor for critical funding.
• We have repeatedly been successful by using our
  targeted grassroots supporters who have
  relationships to help us contact the legislators
  and ask them to override the governors vetoes.
• We can clearly demonstrate that our grassroots
  efforts have yielded returns in the tens of
  millions of dollars, and
• We have a far greater number of involved alumni
  than we have had in the past because of these web
  applications.

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Where is our Advocacy program going
We believe that we need to look. At the source of
funds, meaning the Federal Government. Our
Legislative Tracking system now includes the
option to track federal legislation.
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Where is our Advocacy Program going
We have started a program with our Washington DC
based alumni to have them provide the Agency
level contacts they have made. We hope to
leverage these contacts to help us get to the
source of grant and other funds more quickly.
25
Why we define our Grassroots Actions as Successful

• We define success not by the volume of our work,
  but by the following three measures
• Clemsons grassroots system earns money for the
  school.

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Why we define our Grassroots Actions as Successful

• We define success not by the volume of our work,
  but by the following three measures
• Clemsons grassroots system earns money for the
  school.
• We have extended the reach of the Government
  Affairs office through our Alumni Relationships.

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Why we define our Grassroots Actions as Successful

• We define success not by the volume of our work,
  but by the following three measures
• Clemsons grassroots system earns money for the
  school.
• We have extended the reach of the Government
  Affairs office through our Alumni Relationships.
• We hear from our Advocates that they know more
  about what is going on!

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Why we define our Grassroots Actions as Successful

• If the role of Government Affairs is to
• Inform our audience of management, staff and
  alumni of the issues they face at the state
  funding level
• Gather input on how to deal with those issues
• Steer the legislative results such that they have
  the most positive impact on Clemson
• Make sure that Clemson is recognized for its
  accomplishments within the Capitol and win
  support
• The we need tools like the one we have because
  they aid us in being successful

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Post Script from Miami University of Ohio

• Randi Thomas of Miami U, could not be here but
  wanted to share his schools approach to
  successful lobbying because it is not
  mainstream
• His department defines successful lobbying as the
  ability to make connections between students and
  legislators, such that each can recognize the
  value in the other.
• To support this approach, MIAMI U has developed
  their Advocacy system to be a portal to state
  government for the students
• And a means to connect legislators to the students

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Post Script from Miami University of Ohio
Miami U positions their site as the government
relations career network for students who want to
be more involved in Government.
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Miami U wants to offer advocacy as an integral
part of education
The Government Affairs website is a resource to
students who want to be more involved in the
political process
32
Effective use of the data in their advocacy
system
Miami U geocoded the student population and
mapped it by legislative district
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Effective use of the data in their advocacy
system

• Miami U has geocoded its student population and
  mapped it by legislative district
• Student Interns are selected from the districts
  to lobby their legislators.

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Effective use of the data in their advocacy
system

• Miami U has geocoded its student population and
  mapped it by legislative district
• Student Interns are selected from the districts
  to lobby their legislators.
• Maps are presented to legislators showing them
  the concentration of students who live in their
  district, highlighting the connection each
  legislator has to the school.

35
Effective use of the data in their advocacy
system

• Miami U has geocoded its student population and
  mapped it by legislative district
• Student Interns are selected from the districts
  to lobby their legislators.
• Maps are presented to legislators showing them
  the concentration of students who live in their
  district, highlighting the connection each
  legislator has to the school.
• Use the system to get the students in front of
  the legislators and the legislators in front of
  the students, to promote the value of the school!