Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Wizarding Your Way to Advocacy Success

A certain bespectacled wizard who we all know and love (or are tired of) is one of the best activists in the world! How? Because he applies five important rules for effective advocacy in every encounter with the "Dark Lord" (a.k.a. Congress).

Specificaly, he believes what he's doing is right, he has the right allies, the right tools, he perseveres and, well, he makes his own luck -- and its generally good!

If you're wondering how the seven books of Harry Potter and the seven year cycle of the legislative process connect, check out my latest tipsheet. And while you're there, sign up!

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Grass-roots, Grass-tops -- Or Grass-middles?

Somewhere along the way, the idea of "grassroots" (i.e., citizens communicating with elected officials) became synonymous with "mass e-mails." Conversely, "grasstops" became synonymous with personalized communications.

I'm not sure why or how that happened. In my opinion, "grasstops" communicators are those that have some sort of relationship with an elected official or are opinion leaders in the community. "Grassroots" are people who are connected to an elected official's office through constituency and are generally more "rank and file" citizens.

But that doesn't mean that "grassroots" citizens should be consigned exclusively to mass e-mail campaigns -- they can develop personalized, thoughtful messages as well as anyone else. In fact, they SHOULD develop personal messages because, well, they work!

Check out this interesting article from Politico.com on grassroots / grasstops (grass middles?) techniques.