HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY

It cannot be said too many times that having an effective organization is crucial to successful legislative advocacy. You have to gather your allies, create a coordination structure, do your homework on the issue, define your message, establish and maintain a communication network, and cultivate media relationships so that you can use everything you have when you need it. Finally, legislative advocacy demands that you take the long view, and expect that you'll be at it for a long time.

Step 1: Marshaling your llies

There is strength in numbers. Identifying the people in your camp and getting them to commit to an advocacy effort are your first steps toward building a powerful organization.

Putting together a core group for an advocacy campaign takes some serious work. It means using your network or creating one to reach an ever-widening circle of concerned people and organizations. Generally, you start with those you already know, or who you know are allies. As you collect allies, make sure that everyone agrees on the basics of what you're advocating for. It's better to have a smaller group that's rock-solid than a larger one that's split into factions, or that can't agree on a reasonable message.

Step 2: Creating a Coordination Structure

It's vital to have a single coordinating individual or body at the core of your advocacy effort. This facilitates communication and decision-making, but, most important, it puts at the center of the effort one person or small group whose business it is to know what's going on, and to act or react quickly, decisively, and effectively. The coordinating individual or group should, of course, involve all the participants as much as possible, but there may be times when the whole advocacy group will need to trust the coordinator to make a decision and mobilize support for it. As you gather supporters, you may want to explore forming a coalition. A coalition of equals can sometimes serve the purpose of coordination without raising the concerns about who has power that often wreck advocacy efforts before they get started.

Whether you form a coalition or not, it's usually a good idea to have a coordinating body that represents a number of the different groups and interests involved in the advocacy effort. The individual coordinator might then come out of that group. The coordinator should serve as the focal point for the campaign, orchestrating communication, direct action, or whatever else needs to be done.

Step 3: Doing your Homework

Know your issue inside out: If you're going to advocate effectively, you and everyone else involved has to learn as much about your issue as possible. You should have all the statistics available, both at your fingertips and on the tip of your tongue. If there's science or political philosophy or history involved, you should know it well enough to explain it in a way understandable to the average person.

Know the other side: If you have opponents, or if there are drawbacks to what you're advocating for, you need to know the arguments against it as well as you know your own, and to develop point-for-point answers to them. If there are legitimate arguments that you can't answer, you should at least consider rethinking your position on those issues. If that's not possible i.e. if you see what you're advocating for is far more important than its negative consequences then you should at least acknowledge those arguments as problems, and offer to work toward solutions with your opponents.

It's absolutely essential to be honest in these situations, because your credibility is at stake. If you downplay or ignore arguments unfavorable to your issue, people will assume that you're exaggerating, or even inventing, the favorable arguments as well. Successful advocacy depends in part on legislators' and the public's trust in you and what you tell them. The best way to assure their trust is to tell the truth.

It's important to know the other side personally as well. If you have opponents, either legislators or others, you need to know who they are, why they are opposed, and what they'll respond to. If you can maintain a personal relationship with them regardless of your disagreement, all the better. You may be allies in the future, and they're more likely to deal reasonably with you if they see you and you see them as reasonable people.

Know the committees that are important to your issue and who's on them: Find out who among those legislators are supportive, who needs to be convinced, and what will convince them.

Know who other key legislators are, and their positions on your issue: Chairs of important committees, legislators who are willing to take up your issue as a personal cause, individuals whom other lawmakers respect and listen to learning who the players are should be an important part of your preparation.

Step 4: Defining your Message

You need to be specific and crystal clear about what it is you're advocating for, whether it's funding, legislative language, a new policy or a change in policy, recognition of a particular need or concern, or some combination. In order to be sure that your message is one that all your allies can happily support, you can develop it through a process involving representatives from all constituent groups. Alternatively, if there's an advocacy group that everyone supports, it could be agreed that the message developed by that group will be the message voiced by everyone.

The advocacy message has to make sense, be easily understandable to those unfamiliar with the issue, and effectively address the issue in reasonable ways. If it offers solutions, they should be feasible, given the economic and political climate and the resources available.

The clearer and better your ideas, the better your chances of success. If you can make a powerful argument that's easy to understand and difficult to counter, you're more than halfway home.

An advocacy effort must speak with one voice. Having a clear and specific message that everyone agrees on makes that possible.

Step 5: Creating a Communication Network that works

It's vital that you and your allies be able to reach one another quickly, and to mobilize for immediate action.  The best way to insure effective action (putting together an urgent strategy meeting, calls to legislators, organizing a public event on short notice, etc.) is through an effective communication system.

Step 6: Cultivating the Media

Publicity is often a major element in an advocacy campaign, and the best way to get it is through the media. In order to make sure you have access, you need to develop and maintain relationships both with newspapers and radio and TV stations and with individual editors, columnists, reporters, producers, and broadcasters, so that you can get your message out quickly and at the right time.

Step 7: Taking the long view

One of the most fundamental pieces of a solid advocacy effort is the understanding that advocacy takes time. A particular success--getting money in the budget for your issue, for instance can often be accomplished in a short burst of furious activity. But it may take years to get a bill passed, or to have your message become common knowledge among policy makers. Your group has to be willing to keep at it, even in the face of apparent defeat, or worse, indifference. There is no guarantee that sustained effort will lead to success; but there is an absolute guarantee that a lack of sustained effort will lead to failure.

Perhaps the hardest fact for advocates to swallow is that success doesn't mean it's all over. Once you've achieved a goal, it doesn't mean you can relax. Legislators change, social movements grind to a halt, memories especially those of politicians are short. As soon as advocates turn their backs, their issue ceases to exist for legislators (and, to a great extent, for the public as well), to be replaced by the issue of the moment. A solid advocacy effort never ends and never stops for a rest. It has to continue all the time, essentially forever.