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Category Archives: Grassroots Organizing

Twitter Ties and the Implications for Grassroots Professionals

At my recent Innovate to Motivate Conference, I asked each participant to share their top goal for 2012. A clear majority of the grassroots professionals in attendance stated that they want to “build or increase the size of their grassroots network.” While there are many options for doing so, one popular way is through social networks. Read the full blog at K Street Cafe.

11 Strategy Questions You Have to Answer Before You Build Your Grassroots and PAC Capacity

I am seeing a lot of turn-key tools for grassroots professionals who need to give their grassroots volunteers something to do. I agree that volunteers need to have clear direction on the best activities to build awareness of your issue and your organization before elected officials and opinion leaders. However, doing that in absence of a strategy simply takes us farther along the “activity without results” road.

People tend to make strategy harder than it needs to be. Nevertheless, the reality is that strategy is about future-oriented vision and it’s also about actionable, tactical things. There are several questions that move logically from the first to the last that can help you develop strategy which leads to appropriate grassroots advocacy plans…

Get Fresh Insights on Your PAC and Grassroots Challenges at the I2M Town Hall

Do you want instant feedback on your PAC and grassroots program challenges? Then join us at Innovate to Motivate’s® D.C. Town Halls on June 30.

Innovate to Motivate® (I2M) is an annual conference for veteran political involvement professionals. They challenge themselves through a rigorous conference curriculum of PAC and grassroots productivity topics, the science of influence as it relates to PAC and grassroots, and professional development content.   A hallmark of the annual I2M conferences is information sharing among the nation’s most experienced PAC and grassroots professionals thought our Grassroots and PAC Town Halls.

How does a Town Hall work? Why should I attend?

Town Halls are candid discussions and idea sharing among your peers where…

We’ve Been Thinking…

…about the grassroots ethics discussion among public affairs professionals. We had a lively discussion on this topic at Innovate to Motivate led by Dr. Kelton Rhoads, I2M sponsor Liz Welsh of Executive Communications www.executive-com.com, and me.

Here’s our take on the draft of ethics as created by Stephanie Vance, Anne Darconte, Les Francis, Chris Arterton (GWU Graduate School of Political Management), Tim Hysom (Congressional Management Foundation) and others.


Stephanie kindly asked us for our input, so here it is!
Proposed Grassroots Code of Ethics

The Checklist for Your Next Grassroots and/or PAC Change Initiative

Anytime we are attempting to increase grassroots involvement or PAC participation, we need to be (if you are doing it correctly) aware of change management principles. Although we think of change management as gargantuan programs promoted by senior management, new PAC and grassroots initiatives also fall into this category.

Resistance is a natural phenomenon, so we must stop asking ourselves,” Why don’t they get it?”, and start doing the things that will help them “get it.”

The main issue is not the program proposal in the graphically appealing Power Point presentation, it’s usually in the implementation, or lack of it.

Here is my quick checklist for successful implementation of your change initiatives:

1. Sponsorship. This is the single most critical factor. Do the implementers…

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