Effective Grassroots Advocacy: A Grasshopr Primer

Grassroots Advocacy Basics

• What is Advocacy?

  Advocacy is the act of speaking or pleading in favor of something such as a policy position, a cause, or an issue.
  
  

• What is Grassroots Advocacy?

  Grassroots advocacy is the engagement of people (citizens, supporters, members) in advocacy efforts. Grassroots advocacy is also referred to as grassroots lobbying to differentiate it from direct lobbying, which is the act of meeting directly with elected officials and their staff, often using professional lobbyists.
  
  Grassroots advocacy is an extremely important component in achieving the goals of a group’s issue campaign. It communicates to elected officials the issue positions taken by their own constituents. A “group” can be an association, union, advocacy organization, business chamber, or simply a community of people who share the same goals.
  
  

• How does Grasshopr help with Grassroots Advocacy?

  Grasshopr is the online grassroots advocacy platform. It is not only a place to launch and manage online grassroots advocacy campaigns, but is where grassroots advocacy communities can be fostered and managed.
  
  Grasshopr has the tools for groups/organizations and individuals to create targeted advocacy campaigns at the federal, state or local level and distribute those campaigns to their members, supporters and the public to get people engaged and take action on important issues. There’s more on Grasshopr Action Alerts below.
  
  The most effective way to ensure the success of grassroots advocacy campaigns is to build sustainable grassroots advocacy communities. Grasshopr is a place where communities of people who share issue positions or causes can connect with each other. With an advocacy community on Grasshopr, groups and organizations have a strong foundation upon which to build and spread advocacy campaigns. Each campaign also serves as a community-growth vehicle.
  
  

Grasshopr Action Alerts: Online Advocacy Campaigns

• What is a Grasshopr Action Alert?

  A Grasshopr Action Alert is an online grassroots advocacy campaign. Specifically, it is an online tool for generating authentic grassroots communications to elected officials. It can be posted publicly (or kept private within the group) and sent to your members and supporters to alert them of a bill or issue at the federal, state or local level and gives them a way to let their elected officials know of their position.
  
  A Grasshopr Action Alert comes in two flavors; a User Action Alert and a Group Action Alert. A User Action Alert is to be used for 'episodic campaigns', where an activist mobilizes people around a certain bill or issue for the duration of the campaign. A Group Action Alert, on the other hand, is used to mobilize supporters from an existing group and/or to build an advocacy community around issue areas, as campaign supporters are invited to join your group when they take action. Hence, consider starting a group to launch your Grasshopr Action Alert if you would like to build a sustainable advocacy community. See more on Grasshopr Communities below.
  
  A Grasshopr Action Alert includes the following:
  • A title
  • A message to your members, supporters and the public about the issue and why it’s critical that they get engaged
  • The message that individuals will sign and send (automatically via Grasshopr) to their respective elected officials.
  • Targeting options to focus your campaign on the right elected officials at the federal, state or local level.
  • A deadline for the Grasshopr Action Alert to expire. This can be changed if needed to keep the campaign going.
  • Metrics to help you track your success.
  
  
  

• Creating a Successful Grasshopr Action Alert

  Your goal in creating a Grasshopr Action Alert is to generate as many authentic communications from constituents to elected officials on a bill or issue as possible. The four primary ingredients of a successful Grasshopr Action Alert are: Targeting; Content; Distribution; and Tracking.
  
  

  Targeting

  Targeting is the first step in creating a Grasshopr Action Alert. Is the campaign at the federal, state or local level? Should it focus on all legislators or just those in one chamber (such as the Senate but not the House of Representatives)? Or maybe it will only target specific legislators?
  
  Note that Grasshopr Action Alerts will route communications to elected officials from their constituents, so only those people that live in a targeted legislator’s state or district can take action on such targeted Grasshopr Action Alerts. Elected officials rarely pay attention to non-constituent communications.
  
  

  Content

  • When creating a Grasshopr Action, the first question you should ask yourself is “What is the issue, and what action would you like elected officials to take?”
  • Make sure you understand the issue and, where applicable, relevant legislation.
  • Focus on one specific issue at a time.
  • Be factual and avoid hyperbole and sensationalism.
  • If appropriate, make the message “personal” but in a universal way. Keep in mind that others are going to be signing onto the letter, so convey messages on how the issue affects individuals.
  • Be short. Your supporters don’t have a lot of time on their hands, and elected officials (and their staffers) have even less.

  Creating the Title

  Keep this short and action-oriented. You can include the bill number, but often you’ll find terms like “Tell Congress to Support Our Troops with Funding” or “Tell Virginia Legislators to Oppose the Restaurant Tax” get the point across quickly and effectively.
  
  Since you’ll likely want to post it to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, note the limitations and restrictions of other sites. Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters, and the link to your Grasshopr Action Alert will take up some of that space. Using a link-shortener like bit.ly makes links shorter and gives you the ability to track the effectiveness of using different social networking sites to promote your advocacy campaigns. Shortened links are typically under 15 characters.

  Creating the Message to Your Supporters (Description)

  The Description is where you expand on the message in the title that gets the attention of others. Briefly explain the issue or bill in question and why it’s important for individuals to take action and communicate with their elected officials. If you are urging support for a bill, use a few sentences to make your case as to why support for this bill is important. If you’re urging opposition, make your case against it. If there’s no legislation involved, make your case for the result you’re seeking from elected officials. Again, short and punchy wins the day.
  
  Don’t forget to urge your supporters to let their friends, families, and networks know about this campaign. Grasshopr has provided a “Share” option for supporters to post the Grasshopr Action Alert to Facebook, Twitter, and other places where they live online. If your Grasshopr Action Alert is compelling and relevant, it may go viral!

  Creating the Message to Elected Officials

  Individuals will be signing on to this letter and sending it to their elected officials, so draft it from their perspective. Repeat many of the points you included in your message to your supporters and include a bill number if applicable. Keep the tone professional, respectful, and avoid threats or quid pro quo offers.
  
  Keep this message even shorter than the one to your supporters. Elected officials and their staff have very limited resources, and the quicker they understand the message, the better the chance it will have for impact. If they have to spend too much time figuring out what the issue and desired action is, the probability increases that it will be ignored or misinterpreted.
  
  

  Distribution

  So you’ve drafted the perfect Grasshopr Action Alert, but now you need people to act! In order for them to act, they need to see it. A successful Grasshopr Action Alert will involve a mix of Grasshopr distribution tools and your organization’s communication channels.
  
  For many people, social networks are the new email and represent their preferred way to hear from people and organizations they care about. Grasshopr provides a unique URL for each Grasshopr Action Alert, making it easy to link to it from elsewhere.
  
  
  • Proactive Grasshopr Distribution provides tools to distribute your Grasshopr Action Alert to your supporters that have joined your Grasshopr group. If you used the Grasshopr database upload feature, those supporters that have not yet activated their account will also receive the Grasshopr Action Alert via email.
  • Grasshopr Action Alerts are also posted on your Group’s profile page, enabling visitors to take action.
  • Post your Grasshopr Action on your group’s Facebook page. Encourage those involved with the group to do the same.
  • Tweet your Grasshopr Action via your group’s Twitter account. Encourage those involved with the group to do the same.
  • If you’re active on LinkedIn or any other social network, such as a Ning group, make sure you let your supporters there know about your Grasshopr Action Alert.
  • Post the title and link to your Grasshopr Action Alert on your organization’s main web site.
  • Send an email to your list, and use the Grasshopr Action Alert’s title as the subject line.
  Tip: You can use a link shortener like bit.ly to track the effectiveness of each distribution channel. Simply create a separate short URL for each channel, and you can view click through counts for each one and compare.
  
  

  Tracking and Measuring

  The Grasshopr Campaign Tracker lets you track the effectiveness of your Grasshopr Action, including total actions taken and breakdowns by elected official. You can send a “thank you” message to those who have taken action, and a reminder message to your group members who have yet to take action. You can also send update messages to all respondents going forward to let them know what’s happening on this issue.
  
  

Grassroots Advocacy Communities

A Grasshopr Advocacy Community is a group of people on Grasshopr that come together around specific areas of interest and issue positions. Instead of launching episodic blast email advocacy campaigns, Grasshopr provides a place where members and supporters can get more engaged, connect with other members and supporters, and collaborate internally.

• Managing your Grasshopr Advocacy Community

  Grasshopr provides administrator-level tools to manage your Grasshopr Advocacy Community, including the ability to:
  
  
  • create and target Grasshopr Action Alerts, messages, event advisories, and polls
  • upload a membership database and invite members to your Grasshopr Community (individuals must have opted in to this, such as members of an organization). Data export is coming soon.
  • set your membership policy as “open to the public” or “closed, invite only”
  • name one or more administrators for your group
  • view membership breakdowns by state or district
  • “star” your champions (super-advocates)
  • add notes on members for administrative purposes
  
  
  

• Grasshopr Action Alerts as Community-Builders

  Grasshopr Action campaigns can be great community-building tools. With each campaign, you can grow your community. A “public” Grasshopr Action Alert invites each individual that has taken action to join your group. Remember, a Grasshopr Action Alert is a campaign. A Grasshopr Community can support many Grasshopr Action Alerts in the future.
  
  Remember, with Grasshopr, campaigns can help seed and grow communities, and communities can increase the effectiveness of campaigns.
  
  

• Additional Notes on Grassroots Advocacy

  Your campaign will be more successful if you do some research first. Make sure you’ve got your facts straight regarding the issue and legislation.
  
  
  • Target the right legislators. Is the issue or bill at the federal, state, or local level? What is the status of the legislation? If the bill is in committee, you may want to launch a targeted campaign to those committee members. Sometimes it makes sense to target one action alert to the Senate and one to the House of Representatives if there are different versions of the legislation in each chamber. For some issues you may only want to target elected officials in one chamber (i.e. confirmations of Presidential Appointments occur only in the Senate).
  • Be a Resource for Elected Officials. Elected officials and their staff have very limited resources and may not be very aware of your issue. Include some issue background in the message to them.
  • Act sooner rather than later. Sometimes there is little time to act before a vote comes up, but often there is plenty of time to get your members and supporters engaged and communicating with their elected officials on an issue. Get out in front of the issue as early as possible.
  • Know the positions of legislators. Whenever possible, research the positions elected officials may have on issues you care about. Don’t implore an elected official to take position that they’ve already taken if you can ascertain that information prior to launching your campaign. The first place to start is by looking at who’s co-sponsored the legislation in question.
  • Beyond “online” advocacy. There are offline activities that you can use to augment your online campaigns. Leverage your advocacy community to generate turnout at a town hall meeting using the Grasshopr event advisory tool. Organize a “Capitol Hill Day” and bring in your champion members and supporters to meet with elected officials and their staff.
  
  
  

• What is Astroturf Lobbying?

  Astroturf lobbying is an organized effort by an organization to create the appearance of significant, authentic grassroots support on an issue where there is little or none. Lately, the term has been used frequently by many activists to define “what the opposing side is doing,” but in reality it is the act of generating “grassroots” communications without the full knowledge or consent of the “grassroots” (real people or people that don’t exist).
  
  Astroturf lobbying is bad and we’ve designed Grasshopr to be an Astroturf-free zone. No group can send messages to elected officials on behalf of individuals.