Category Archives: Government Relations
Increasing Internal Government Affairs Visibility Through the (can you believe it?) HR Department
Many corporate government affairs staff covet the opportunity to meet with new employees during routine “new employee orientation.” We often believe if we can simply get in front of these malleable minds, they will develop an allegiance to our grassroots…
How To Be A Mediocre and Ineffective Advocate
Here are the sure-fire ways to be a mediocre and ineffective advocate.
These are the truths that, if ignored, will take us from the on-ramp directly to the road to perdition as we try to communicate with legislators.
1. Reliance on technology as communications panacea. The craze over the latest Internet techniques to communicate with legislators was legitimate in the early 90s. Savvy advocates know the tools are not the answer, but rather the strategy and message behind them.
2. Transfer of knowledge mistaken for motivation. This axiom is particularly salient when we try to convince our insurance industry colleagues, employees, friends and even family members to contact legislators about critical issues. It is why the ubiquitous legislative update provided by a lobbyist…
Solutions to the Social Loafing Lifestyle
In a previous post, I talked about social loafing. Now I’m going to talk about how we change the social loafing dynamic.
Identify Contributions
Identify team member contributions. What have coalition members done to advance the cause? Be specific, and enumerate contributions that you want duplicated. Are the contributions distributed to the coalition members or posted on an easily accessible Web site?
What about your faithful PAC recruiters? What about your PAC board members who help answer tough PAC questions or find colleagues to help recruit others? Where are
their achievements noted?
Ditto for your grassroots team leaders. How many new members have they recruited during the last quarter? Who consistently responds to your calls to action?
Anyone who has worked in sales knows that…
The Habits of Effective State Advocacy Groups
The results of the following research have been featured in many of my advocacy workshops, as well as various national and regional publications.
In our initial research review, we saw that the specific word “grassroots” was the second highest response as one of the habits of an effective advocacy group. However, upon further review of the responses, we noted that there were numerous responses such as: “active membership,” “lots of members”, and “regular people” that refer to grassroots.
Therefore, I am republishing the results. This change affects only the order of the number one and number two responses. The remaining effective habits are the same.
While those of us in the government relations profession often debate about the most powerful interest groups and…
Supreme Court Rules in Citizens United Case
From I2M faculty member Brett Kappel at Arent Fox:
JANUARY 21, 2010 – WASHINGTON, DC – This morning in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the US Supreme Court overturned the ban on corporate and union independent expenditures in federal elections. This opinion will have a major impact on the 2010 elections. Corporations will now be able to spend their corporate treasury money to advocate the election or defeat of federal candidates.
Nonprofit groups may also be able to benefit from this decision – as they may have more flexibility to participate in federal campaigns.
These expenditures must still be made independent of the candidate’s campaign and will have to be disclosed under existing regulations.
Further information on the scope of the…
