Communicating with Congress

Communicating with Congress
Tips from the Congressional Management Foundation
The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to helping Congress become a more productive and effective institution through better management. They recently conducted a major study of best practices for communicating with Congress. Below are some key findings from their extensive research. See www.cmfweb.org for more info. Congress received four times more communications in 2004 than in 1995 — all of this huge increase is due to the surge in Internet-based communications with Congress. Of the managers of Congressional offices surveyed, 73% say their offices spend significantly more time on constituent communications than two years ago. During this decade, the staffing levels of Members’ personal offices have not changed, meaning more and more hill staffers are over-whelmed and under-staffed in receiving and responding to
communications from constituents and grassroots advocacy groups.
The Internet is generally having a positive effect on the discourse between citizens and Congress.

79% of Congressional staff surveyed believe the Internet has made it easier for citizens to become involved in public policy; 55% believe it has increased public understanding of what goes on in Washington; and 48% believe it has made Members more responsive to their constituents.
Quality is more persuasive than quantity. Only 3% of staff surveyed say campaigns generating identical form letters arriving via postal mail would have “a lot” of influence on their Member of Congress. In contrast, 44% report personally-generated, individualized postal letters from constituents would have “a lot” of influence. Consider placing greater emphasis on generating messages of higher quality from your constituents and reducing high-volume “form letter” communications.

Many Congressional staff doubt the legitimacy of identical form communications, and want to know whether communications are sent with constituents’ knowledge and consent. Half of Congressional staff surveyed believe identical form communications are not sent with constituents’ knowledge or consent.
Another 25% are unsure about the legitimacy of these communications.
The organization behind a grassroots campaign matters. Don’t hide the fact that your organization’s campaign is the force which has urged citizens to contact Congress. (They can tell when letters are from a campaign versus spontaneously generated and tend to get suspicious if the organization involved doesn’t acknowledge their role.) Instead, utilize the political power of your members in your campaign. When asking people to write or call Congress, mentioning the organization and the campaign helps get results, and helps direct Members and their staffers back to your group or website for more info on the issue, when needed.
Keep it brief, but informative and compelling. Because of the increasingly high volume of communications being sent to Congress, the reference materials you leave behind at Lobby Visits should be no more than one page, or else it may not ever get read. Staffers accumulate huge piles of reports and fact sheets that get lost in the clutter. These are the basics of what to include on an effective one-pager: your full contact info, including name, address, zip, phone number, email and website; the name of your organization and a brief description of who you represent (geographic scope, # of members); the specific legislation you are asking about, including bill number and sponsor, if possible; the direct impact of this issue on constituents and your community; a personal story or testimony that connects the issue to the
experience of constituents; a brief summary of the issue in common (non-technical) terms, with links to where to find more details; a reasonable number (not too many) of understandable statistics, with citations.

Other Findings - Worst Grassroots Practices with Congress:
1. Don’t direct a grassroots pressure campaign to one specific staffer. (Unleashing tons of mail, faxes or calls on a single staffer will just create stress for them and resentment toward your group.)
2. Don’t inadvertently generate a negative campaign to a Member who supports you/don’t direct activists to ask a Member to sponsor or vote for something they already have (this can especially be difficult when sending a blanket Action Alert across districts whose Members have varying positions on the issue.)
3. For Call-In campaigns, don’t patch your grassroots members directly through to Congress without first coaching callers on specific rap and tips.
4. Don’t send multiple and simultaneous communications – fax, email, call, and letter all saying exactly the same thing from the same person or organization.
5. Don’t generate “automated” campaigns from lists rather than genuine constituent actions: more and more Members/staffers (nearly 75%!) believe that a lot of the communications they get is generated by an organization just tacking people from their list onto a letter without the constituents’ knowledge or involvement.