How to get your supporters to foyer congress on your behalf

In January 2019, the 116th Congress convened — and nonprofits are taking notice. Given this twelvemonth kicking off with a government shutdown and both a presidential ballot and national census coming upwards in 2020, there are a number of reasons for nonprofits to pay attention to the legislation that will shape the style they further their missions.
Keeping with the marketing funnel model of nonprofit impact and digital engagement, part of the piece of work your system does is nurturing supporter engagement towards action and change. One of the tangible actions yous tin can inquire supporters to accept, beyond donating, is to put their own reach to utilize by advocating on your behalf — whether through email, social media, signing a petition, telephone calls, or offline events.
So allow's combine that potential: Here's how to make the right asks of your supporters, and how to become them to brand the right asks of their representatives on your organization'south behalf.

Segment your audiences

Outset of all, brand sure y'all're making the right asks of the right people. Yous wouldn't enquire your parents and your friends for the aforementioned favors — and if you lot did, you lot would ask them in different ways. Before you ask for any advocacy, segment your email list and consider the demographics of users post-obit yous on social media. Helpful considerations here will include your supporters' location, level of engagement with your cause, and level of appointment with your organisation specifically. (Psst: If you lot want to connect your unique email subscribers to the specific site content that they visit, nosotros have a tool for that .)

Ask for their support at the right moment

Turtle has just donated $50 to your organization. She's reached the confirmation page. Fourth dimension to exit the site, correct?
Wrong.
Your donation confirmation page is the perfect moment to ask supporters to have the next step — and if you've always donated to a GoFundMe , you've seen this in action. Social proof goes a long style towards scaling modify. With your system at the acme-of-heed for donors when they take out their credit cards on your donate folio, this is the perfect moment to bend their ear virtually amplifying your cause even further. This tin be especially effective if there's a piece of legislation in the news that is relevant to your organisation's work.
More evergreen asks tin can besides be put to use in confirmations for email sign-ups — it's the perfect side by side ask to make afterward a user signs up for your email listing in a welcome series .

BJ Fogg Behavioral Model

BJ Fogg'due south behavioral model

Come across users on their level

Every bit we've talked about before, goals are met with the right combination of motivation, ability, and trigger. This is referred to as BJ Fogg's Behavioral Model, and what this means for nonprofits is that we desire to brand sure that your supporters are asked at the right time — when they're nigh motivated — and asked in such a mode that the request is easy for them to fulfill. Permit's await at the options for contacting your senator — and the best mode to get your crusade noticed.

The 4 means your supporters can contact their representatives

1. Phone

This is the quickest way to accomplish your representative'southward office and ensure that your voice is heard. TheNew Yorkernotes that, specially in high-action times, they have up more time on the part of congressional offices, "thereby occupying staff, obstructing business concern as usual, and attracting media attention."
The drawback to this is that it'south a higher barrier of ask for your constituents. Supporters can call their representative's office directly, or punch the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, only there are great websites like five Calls that requite yous all of the numbers y'all demand, based on your location. Nonprofit and social justice organizations tin can also co-opt complimentary tools like Resistbot or paid services such equally an SMS or click-to-call mobile platform to mobilize their user bases.

2. E-mail

This is less standardized across the board for Congress: Some members accept their e-mail addresses listed on their website, others accept website forms to guard their inboxes more than closely. If you desire your users to email their representatives, you'll have to either ask them to look up the contact info, or provide links to the websites for all 100 senators and 435 members of the House if your cause is a national one (pro-tip: not the all-time apply of your time) .
The ROI of emailing congressional offices is challenging: Staffers aren't required to answer to emails, and can therefore more than easily ignore. As a private medium, there'south no publicly-visible tape of the message which means these complaints or voices of support are ofttimes getting lost in a vacuum.Resistbot is one tool that tin can also assist guide constituents to emailing their representatives.

3. Social Media

It tin can seem similar letters volition get lost in the shuffle on social media given how many people @ their representatives (or even other representatives) whatsoever given day. But according to the Congressional Direction Foundation , it tin accept fewer than 30 Tweets effectually a unmarried issue to get the attending of a congressional staffer, the caveat to that being that they need to usually happen within the outset 24 hours of a post past that congressperson or a topic being discussed in the larger political ecosystem (due east.g., border security during the 2018-nineteen government shutdown).
The more than publicly a representative must deal with comments, the improve. Facebook comments can be easily deleted or bulk-managed by staffers and the platform is easily spammed and trolled (although Facebook Boondocks Hall is an available resource for users to locate their elected officials).
Tweets, on the other hand, tin can't be deleted. This is also an easy ask to make of constituents, however social media is still riding sidecar to the IRL tactics of snail post, phone calls, and other means of straight contact, as Emily Ellsworth Coleman wrote in 2016. Curlicue downward to the bottom of this commodity to notice ane tool for finer Tweeting representatives (spoiler warning: we congenital it).

iv. Snail Mail

Due to security on the Loma, letters and packages accept the longest to achieve representatives — both because of the normal processing time for the postal service and because of the additional screening. Fifty-fifty though every piece of snail mail must be read past a staffer, it tin can have weeks for your bulletin to reach them. Once again, as with email, you'll need to rely on your supporters to wait up the correct mailing address themselves if y'all're mobilizing multiple constituencies, though once again Resistbot steps in with an assist (we hope we receive no kickbacks from them).
If y'all're feeling extra assuming, there are also pizza-grams, although information technology's likely that those pies volition go to waste.

How to assist your supporters effectively entrance hall on your behalf

Nosotros've looked at the motivation, and we've looked at one attribute of power in finding the right medium for your supporters to foyer on your behalf. Permit's expect at the other aspect of power: Making it equally like shooting fish in a barrel equally possible for supporters to make the right enquire — and get noticed.
By and large, the goal is to continue things short and sweetness, and to focus on a specific consequence with a specific ask for your congressperson. Their offices are often quite busy, and so you want to brand sure you become to the betoken with a specific reason for reaching out, whether it's defending DACA, supporting the Paris Agreement, or raising awareness on an issue that'south not currently getting plenty attention on the Firm or Senate floor.
Y'all can provide your supporters with a 2-3 judgement script to utilize on phone calls, or a cursory e-mail text that they can re-create and paste. There are websites to help operationalize social media advancement too with pre-written Tweets that users tin can send to their representatives — finding the right Twitter handle simply past entering their nothing code.

One-click advocacy

Total disclosure, we're now one of those websites: Politweets past Whole Whale is a free tool you can embed on your site and customize with letters for supporters around the state to send to their reps. You write the Tweet, they practise the sending. Larn more about installing Politweets on your system'south website .