Tag Archives: grassroots advocacy groups
How to Prevent Burnout of Your Most Valuable Advocates
If you have a non–stop stream of enthusiastic grassroots advocates who are willing to repeatedly contact lawmakers when you ask, read no further. If you have advocates who consistently leverage their personal legislator relationships for your cause, read no further.
If you don’t, there’s research that reveals what you need to do to keep them interested and motivated. (and it has nothing to do with plaques and awards) The surprising results are based on The Showalter Group’s proprietary research with hundreds of quality grassroots advocates— the ones who attend your annual Lobby Day events, D.C. Fly–In’s, testify before legislative committees, write and meet with their lawmakers when asked, etc. They come from a variety of professions and interests, including, but not…
The Top 7 Things Your Grassroots Advocates Don’t Want to Hear
In the interest of equal time, here are my thoughts relative to my grassroots compatriots. These are my favorites, not in any particular order. I provide these because words matter.
How we talk about grassroots sends clear signals to our volunteers as to what’s possible, and most important, our attitude toward them. These tips may help you to avoid the “trial and terror” approach to grassroots recruiting.
Drum roll, please. . .
1. “When we contact you to communicate with your legislator, it may be the first time you’ve heard from us, but we just can’t predict the legislative process.”
True, we cannot predict the legislative process. If we could, no one would need lobbyists or grassroots networks. However, certainly any government affairs department…
The Ultimate Motivator: Part 4
Negative Communications
If we are truly grassroots professionals, we should embrace “bottom up” communications. Many times our messages only asking them to do something for us, or tell them what they should not be doing, saying, thinking, etc. It is important to be a carrier of good news. It affects how we are seen in the organization and how much time our advocates will give us in the future.
People attribute negative personal characteristics to those who bring us bad news, regardless of whether they were involved in creating that bad news (Manis, Cornell and Moore, 1974). We generally don’t trust those we don’t like.
What is your positive to negative communications ratio? Ask your advocates what you can do to help them…
The Ultimate Motivator: Part 3
Without trust in the leader and the organization’s purpose, it is very difficult to get people to join your grassroots cause or contribute to your PAC.
The enemies of trust I outlined in part one of this article include:
• Regular grassroots and PAC underperformance
• Misplaced loyalty
• Direction changes
• Failure to trust others
There are more enemies of trust. In this concluding article I will review the four remaining trust blockers and the questions you must ask of yourself to begin to eliminate them.
Inconsistent Messages
If I had a dime for every brochure, Power Point or web site that passionately extols the value of grassroots and PAC advocates, I would be able to
personally pay off the national debt. However, many of us talk the…
Trust – The Ultimate Grassroots and PAC Motivator: Part 2
Misplaced Loyalty
Whether it’s defending your advocates to badly behaving legislators, or helping them navigate internal organizational land mines, we must demonstrate loyalty to engender trust.
Unfortunately, I still hear stories of legislators who treat grassroots advocates worse than their mother– in – law. Many of us have witnessed condescending behavior and overt animus toward constituents during our Capitol Hill and State House lobby day events.
We can’t prevent lousy legislator behavior, but we can defend our advocates when we witness the behavior, as well as when we hear more than once of an offending legislator misplacing her anger on our well–meaning grassroots volunteers. Misplaced loyalty to the legislator rather than the advocate breeds mistrust.
I understand that a lobbyist has to placate the…
