Congress Sets Spending Levels for First Six Months of FY13- Learn How to Prepare Your Advocates for FY13 and Beyond

Immediately prior to adjourning until after the election, Congress approved a six-month spending bill that will keep the government running when the current fiscal year ends on Sunday. Join Advocacy Associates on Thursday for the first of two free webinars on how to prepare your advocates for the election season, the new fiscal year, and beyond. Registration is now open.

The continuing resolution sets spending levels until March 27, 2013 at the $1.047 trillion level agreed upon in the Budget Control Act, the deal reached last summer to raise the debt ceiling. The spending cap for FY13 is slightly higher than FY12 levels, which will boost programs by .621% across the board and will allow $1.992 billion in additional funding to go to various projects and disaster relief.

The agreement marks a compromise between the House and the Senate, which based its individual spending bills on wildly differing topline levels. Conservative members of the House had been pushing the budget resolution introduced by Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which would have lowered overall spending for FY13 by $19 billion. The Senate, on the other hand, supported the topline numbers agreed upon in the BCA.  In what seemed like a contradictory vote, the bill passed handily in the House, but passed by a narrower margin in the Senate. The President is expected to sign it into law this week.

After the election, fiscal issues such as sequestration, tax reform, and deficit control will dominate the lame duck session of Congress. Join Advocacy Associates for two free webinars to help you prepare your advocates and policy issues for the election season and beyond, regardless of the outcome of the election. Register here. 

Using Video to Advocate- a Lesson from Political Candidates and Clint Eastwood

While pursuing an issue campaign, it’s important to use many forms of media to reach out to the general public and to elected officials for support. Depending on how your target audiences processes information, you should manage resources to deliver your message and keep them engaged. The most powerful resource any organization can use to reach all audiences is video. If executed correctly, a good video can quickly become viral and appear on television shows, social media pages, and newspaper/blog entries. There are three steps to begin a foundation for a successful video campaign.

Step 1: Have a Strong and Focused Message

There was a great example of a strong issue video during the Superbowl that has become wildly popular. If you haven’t seen it yet, I am referring to the Chrysler commercial featuring Clint Eastwood. The video was a powerful statement of how Detroit carmakers have begun a strong resurgence. Although it has no specific political agenda, the video builds a metaphor between the American Car industry and America. The video seeks to inspire Americans to believe in, and ultimately purchase, American made cars.



Step 2: Reach and Production Value

Elections have understood the value of video for a long time. Candidates have always used short commercials with limited reach and little production value. Today, these videos still exist, but they are now combined with the online video sources that have drastically increased the reach to a national level AT NO EXTRA COST thanks to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. In addition, videos now have greater production value. Production value is better today because technology has increased to the point that the time and resources needed to create a great video are less. Mastery of Final Cut Pro X, AVID, or even iMovie can make any amateur video seem great.

Some Examples:





Step 3: Don’t Be Too Bold

Videos are a powerful tool in any advocate’s arsenal. Be cautioned though: “with great power, comes great responsibility.” It’s important to note that “over the top” videos can result in negative consequences that will make your campaign look foolish. Your campaign will lose support if a controversial video becomes viral. Some examples of videos that have landed some of their candidates in hot water recently:

Tweets Now Archived at Library of Congress

Here on our blog, we talk a lot about how important Social Media is to any person or organization’s advocacy campaign. With this in mind, I found an interesting article yesterday that announced that Twitter and The Library of Congress have signed an agreement that EVERY PUBLIC TWEET EVER SENT will be archived in the Library’s historical record. The only tweets to not be archived are those marked private by the user.

This agreement between Twitter and the Library of Congress will obviously have strong implications. First, every public tweet your organization ever sends out will now be on record. Conversely, every public tweet Congresspersons, Senators, and Candidates send will also be on permanent record. For this reason, the carelessness some people,organizations, and politicians have with tweets will be even more costly in the future. Second, once the archive has been built up, we might have the capability to research twitter trends to track public opinion on certain issues. This could be a real game changer.

The White House Petition Site -- Useful? Or Useless?

Many of you have probably heard that the Obama Administration is launching what's being called a "petition site."  The idea is to have a place where people can directly petition the federal government -- you know, like it says in the First Amendment.  If you can gather enough support, the White House will review your petition and send you an official response.

I'm all for advocating in any way, shape or form and, hey, if you have a big enough cause I say go for it.  Such a site may help raise the profile of your issue in a new way.

But if you're one of the thousands of advocacy groups around the country focused on a somewhat niche set of issues that are unlikely to garner hundreds of thousands of supporters, I really don't think this site is a good use of your time.  Why?  Two main reasons:

First of all, in many cases a federal agency can't solve your problem.  Unless you're talking about a regulation (i.e., the implementation of a law passed by Congress), one likely response you'll get from the White House is "hey, interesting idea, but we can't do anything about it.  Congress needs to pass a law to allow that to happen."   In some cases an agency may have some leeway, but for the most part the authority of the executive branch rests in its implementation powers, not in changing policy.

But second, and more important, effective advocacy is all about telling a personal story that relates back to a policy issue.  To be a truly engaged citizen -- a true participant in the "we the people" philosophy -- you'll need to think carefully and wholeheartedly about how what government does impacts you directly.  Once you're able to connect that personal story back to government action you'll be far more likely to gain the attention of policy makers of all types and from all sides of the aisle.  A "yeah, me too" kind of signature on a petition just won't get you there.

So kudos to the Obama Administration for taking some steps to better listen to citizens.  However, if you're a citizen who wants to move beyond being heard to to eventually be agreed with (our overall goal, right?), you'll need to likewise move beyond petitions and toward active, effective engagement.

Congress- Now Available via Smart Phone

Do you ever find yourself riding home on the Metro, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to know what bills were introduced in Congress today? Do you get irritable if you don’t have an instantaneous way to find out who represents the 99203 zip code in Congress? If you’re anything like me, and I bet you are, those situations plague you on a nearly daily basis. Fortunately, if you have a Droid or an iPhone, there is an app for that.

Droid owners are in luck; the “Congress” application by Sunlight Labs is by far the best available on any platform. To find it, search in the marketplace for “Congress.” The application allows you to search for members of Congress by name, state, current location and zip code—perfect for enlightening those unenlightened friends who don’t know who represents them in Congress (you’re going to be so popular!). The application also allows you to search bills and laws, and gives details such as who introduced it, current activity and bill text via Thomas.gov. Once you find an interesting bill, you can share the information easily via Facebook, Twitter, text message or email. It also tracks votes in Congress, gives committee member listings for all committee and lists upcoming hearings. And if all of those features weren’t exciting enough, you can also create personalized alerts to be notified of activity for any bill. Now, you have no excuse to be caught off-guard when your local post office is renamed!

The applications available to iPhone users aren’t as comprehensive as the “Congress” application for Droid. Sunlight Labs does have a iPhone version of “Congress”, but it only has House and Senate floor updates, Whip notices (as nerdy as I am, I’m not entirely sure I would ever look at Whip notices), hearing information, and miscellaneous Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports and other governmental documents. The application is fantastic if you want to see how a certain bill was scored by the CBO, but less helpful if you want to know basic information, such as who is the at-large Congressman for Montana (Rep. Denny Rehberg, by the way). If you’re looking for a basic Congressional guide, your best bet is the “Congress 411” application. It allows you to search members by Senate, House and location. But, the bill information and video feed seems to be rather outdated, so proceed with caution.

However, iPhone users win overall with the C-SPAN app, which is currently unavailable on the Droid. And with C-SPAN radio, C-SPAN, C-SPAN2 and C-SPAN3, who needs Congressional directories when you can listen to history in real time?

The Social Congress

All jokes about Anthony Weiner aside, a recent report from the Congressional Management Foundation (http://www.congressfoundation.org/) finds that "most members of Congress have thoroughly integrated social media in to their communications operations, and are using new media tools to gauge public opinion, communicate with constituents and reach new people." 

The findings on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were particularly interesting, with  64% of responding offices finding Facebook to be a somewhat or very useful tool for understanding constituent's views, while only 34% see YouTube as such. 

Yet staff seem to realize that  YouTube is the number two search engine after Google (really, it's true).  A whopping 72% think that YouTube is an important mechanism for communicating their member's view.  Notice the difference:  34% see YouTube as useful for receiving input while 72% see YouTube as useful for delivering messages.  I'm not sure why that is, but it tells me we can be a lot more effective in using this tools to get advocacy messages across to members of Congress.

In addition, I'm curious about how the rise of social media will impact this little thing we call "constituency."  When dealing with plain, old snail mail addresses, legislators and staff know whether the person they are communicating with is a constituent.  Online, it's much more difficult.  One of the first rules of advocacy is to be sure you can demonstrate why you're relevant to your audience -- and for Congress that means being a constituent.  But will social media change this basic tenant of representative democracy?  I'm not sure, but I'll be paying attention, I promise

Other findings suggest that many staff are concerned that their offices do not spend enough time on social media, with younger staffers find social media far more important to the operations than older staff do.  This tells me that the use of social media will only rise as older staff retire and newer staff, with their social savvy, come to Capitol Hill.

What can we take away from this?  Apparently the Internet is here to stay and we avoid it at our peril.  Even if your demographic is older and your first thought is "well, my members won't use social media"," remember that your ultimate audience, legislators and their staff, do.

Scandals, Twitter and Congress

Unless you've been living under a rock (and no, I don't want to insult rock dwellers) you've probably heard that a certain Congressman used a certain social media outlet to send pictures of certain parts of his anatomy to certain women. I realized that I can't type all the particulars because so many of them contain words that might be censored, particularly the Congressman's name.

In this whole situation there is one entity that I think needs defending -- and that is Twitter. To paraphrase an adage about guns (i.e, guns don't kill people, people do), "Twitter doesn't embarass people: people do." If there is any lesson to be learned from this whole sordid affair, it's that we all should be careful about a) what we post on the Internet and b) monitoring what others post because it's out there forever. The alternative is to not do embarassing things, but that doesn't seem like a very viable option for most of us.

I'm guilty of this too, of course. There are certainly unflattering pictures of me all over the Internet. I thought I was safe because these were taken before digital cameras (yes, I'm that old), but it turns out you can scan these pictures into a digital format and post them. Who knew?

All that said, social media approaches can be incredibly useful in grassroots advocacy efforts (as the advocacy guru you knew I'd get around to this). Once you stop snickering at the recent scandals (I admit, I'm not there yet), take a few quick and easy steps to use some of these outlets to promote your policy cause, including:

1) Facebook: Find your legislators on Facebook and "like" them. You don't have to actually like them, but it's a great way to keep track of what those legislators are up to as well as their general perspective on the world -- always good to know when you're advocating at them.

2) Twitter: As we've seen, sometimes legislators send out something totally inappropriate and that's always fun. But Twitter is also a good way, like Facebook, to learn more about their representatives' policy views.

3) You Tube: I learned recently that YouTube is the number two search engine after Google. Not only did this make me feel old (what are the kids doing these days?) but it made me realize my current videos are terrible. We're fixing that, but I think you'll find that many members of Congress have already figured this out and have many useful videos posted on their YouTube channels.

4) Linked In: Always a great resource for finding connections between your network and those you're trying to reach. Imagine the power of contacting a legislator through a mutual friend. The legislator is far more likely to take your call and perhaps even meet with you.

5) Two Way Street: No, that's not a social media channel, but it's always a good idea to ask legislators and their staff to follow you on all your own channels. You can make it even more appealing to them by posting videos of your meetings with them, positive updates about their work on your Facebook page and notes on your Twitter feed.

Take just one of these steps and you'll be using social media for good, not evil, in no time!

News Flash: Politicians Like to Self-Promote

A recent article in the Washington Post titled "Tweeting Their Own Horns" reports on a recent study from the University of Maryland on Congressional use of the micro-blogging service Twitter.

I know this will shock you: it turns out that politicians generally use Twitter to promote themselves. The researchers reviewed tweets through February, 2009 as well as postings in June, 2009 and August, 2009 to make comparisons about when Congress is in session versus out. According to the lead researcher:

"Twitter by its nature is a very self-absorbed service," said Jennifer Golbeck, lead researcher and assistant professor in the university's College of Information Studies. "Politicians are very self-important people."

Now, I think it's appropriate to cut our elected leaders a little slack. I'll bet that if you checked out most of the Twitter feeds out there, you'd find that the majority of users are focused on "self-promotion" versus "world peace."

While you can point to a few uses of Twitter as an interactive tool for promoting dialogue between parties, for the most part it is still being used by EVERYONE, not just politicians, as a mechanism for promoting a business, a cause or one's own daily routine. I'll confess that I use it (www.twitter.com/advocacyguru) to promote my particular cause (umm, and the services I provide around that cause) of making everyone on the planet better advocates. See how cleverly I snuck that in?

I guess my main point is that while the study does make for interesting reading, I hope people won't be using it as ammunition to feel even more cynical about our elected officials than we already do. As with all new technologies, it will take time to move Twitter from a promotional tool to an interactive tool. It's probably a good idea to think of Twitter as an evolution, not a revolution.

And if you're looking for ways to be part of the evolution, check out the TweetCongress site, which is working to connect citizens with their legislators in whole, new 140 character or less ways.

Six Tools for Advocate Engagement -- Part 2

As promised, here are the three remaining tools for engaging advocates in grassroots policy efforts.

Tool #4: Web 2.0 and You – as somewhat overused as the term is becoming, the idea of “Web 2.0” has useful applications to the advocacy arena. What is web 2.0? It’s a term of art that describes the evolving ways in which people are using the Internet. At first, the Internet was used for information distribution – if you wanted information on a certain topic you went to the Internet and accessed it. In recent years, however, the Internet has evolved into a tool for users to create and post their own content, from books to music to pictures. Think of sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube as the leading edge of the “user generated content” idea. As people become more used to and, in fact, expect to generate content of their own, these tools become more integral to the online experience. Why is this important? Recent studies show that 40% of people in online communities participate more in social activism than before they joined the community. This is a ready made group of people just crying out to be involved in social causes! Associations need to harness the power of Web 2.0 for their own policy-related purposes – and some are already doing so. The American Cancer Society, for example, recently raised $40,000 in a “virtual walkathon” in Second Life. No walking – just sitting at the computer. Likewise, any political candidate worth his or her salt has a MySpace page. From ring tones to online music sharing to wikis, finding ways to allow advocates to create their own content related to your policy issue will become increasing essential to any successful advocacy effort.

Tool #5: Recognition – the policy environment is difficult, and advocates need to know that their efforts are appreciated, especially since the legislative process moves as slowly as molasses (if that fast). Fortunately, there are a number of quick and easy tools to help provide for that recognition. In addition to the traditional tchochkie approach (hats, mugs, etc.), associations should consider posting an advocates hall of fame on their website to honor those members that have gone the extra mile, such as by hosting a site visit or sending a personal letter. In addition, associations should consider making mention of the efforts of their members in their ongoing newsletters and other outreach materials, as well as prominent posts on the blog (you have one right?) thanking members for their efforts.

Tool #6: Fun – Advocacy can be as exciting as a video game. In fact, there’s a legislative fantasy congress online at www.fantasycongress.org – it’s like fantasy baseball, but for the U.S. government. If that sounds a little too dorky for you, consider how your association can use existing online environments like Second Life to promote your cause in whole new ways. Likewise look at some of the examples of organizations like PBS (www.pbs.org) who has developed a series of online quizzes and games around its programs – many of them are for kids, but some are for adults as well!

There are so many examples to consider – if you’re interested in more ideas, post a comment and we’

National Journal Article on E-mail Logic Problems

OK, I just have to say that it seems weird to type the words "Congress" and "logic" in the same sentence :)

At any rate, in an article titled "Experts See Lawmaker Mismanagement of E-mail", National Journal reporter Winter Casey noted that "Congress needs to find ways to more effectively deal with citizens via Internet communications, a group of political technology experts said Wednesday." As noted in the story, according to Steven Clift, board chairman of E-Democracy.org, the fundamental issue is if Congress can "listen to its citizens in the digital era. . . Will they be overwhelmed and befuddled by e-mail or be respectful of it?" Alan Rosenblatt, executive director of the Internet Advocacy Center, was also quoted, arguing that typing your personal information to send an e-mail should be enough; there is no problem big enough that requires a quiz.

And, surprise, surprise... "Stephanie Vance from Advocacy Associates said citizens should not be discouraged from sending form letters but added that "advocacy groups need to educate their citizens" about the effectiveness of their various communications."

The interesting back story here is that this whole discussion happened over a very informal luncheon at the Rayburn Cafeteria. Steven Clift, a leader in the e-democracy world, was in DC and suggested that we all get together to chat. Well, the National Journal reporter was there for an interview with him and he graciously invited the rest of us to join in the discussion!

I hope I didn't have spinach in my teeth.

For more about Steven Clift, visit www.e-democracy.org. For more on Alan Rosenblatt, visit www.internetadvocacycenter.org

Using Wiki for Advocacy

Although they've been around for years (think Wikipedia, the site where users can add to the general knowledge base on a topic), wiki's are finally gaining some respect, and can have tremendous application in the advocacy arena. The "command and control" approach to the Internet is making way for a process where users can more interactively engage in the content on the sites they use. Essentially, any site that has a Wiki plug in allows users to edit the content they see on that page. So, for example, if you want interactive feedback on a topic or to collaborate on a project, Wiki allows you to do so quickly and easily over the web. Like Blogs, there are a number of locations where you can set up a free Wiki site. Here's a listing from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_farms

Consider how you can use this entirely cool and free software to engage advocates in the process of understanding and sharing their views on the issues you're working on!

Congressional E-mail Folly

Some of you may have heard about recent efforts by Congress to address the influx of e-mail communications coming in to their offices by requiring that people solve simple math and logic problems before their e-mail will go through. If you haven't, you can read about it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/11/AR2006061100691.html

This will stymie, at least in the near term, many of the cyber-advocacy tools upon which associations and businesses rely. I'm not a fan of form letters -- personal, thoughtful communications are far more likely to receive the attention of your elected officials. I agree that people sending e-mails should demonstrate that they are constituents. However, I believe that requiring them to also solve math and logic problems (even simple ones) before sending an e-mail serves no legitimate purpose. True, it will shift out the truly concerned citizens from those that may be practicing "point and click" democracy (i.e., just sending form letters from a website). Nevertheless, as much as I prefer personal communications, I do not believe that constituents should be forced into sending only these types of communications.

I wrote a letter to the Washington Post on this issue, which was actually published!

Here's the link http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/20/AR2006062001595.html