The System’s Broken

In our democracy, a lot of attention gets paid to voting and elections. Sadly, not enough attention gets paid to what happens between elections – communications between constituents and their elected officials. This important aspect of our democracy is broken. Badly.

It’s broken because of the sheer volume of email Congress receives each year. The Congressional Management Foundation estimates they receive more than 350 million emails per year and staff sizes remain the same. They’re simply overwhelmed.

It’s broken because there’s a trust gap. Spam, astroturf and proxy email campaigns have eroded a sense of trust that real people are taking real action. Elected officials and their staff don’t know who’s real and who isn’t. Who intended to contact them and who didn’t. Who’s a constituent and who isn’t.

It’s broken because the tools for advocacy are only available to well-funded organizations. They have the resources to kick up so much dust that many other voices get lost in the shuffle. All interests are special, but some interests are more special than others when a few can wage massive email campaigns.

Elected officials want to hear from their constituents and build stronger relationships. Individuals want their voices heard, and of course organizations want their members concerns heard. The status quo works against these goals.

We Created Grasshopr to Address these Issues

We created Grasshopr to give organizations, individuals, and elected officials an authentic, sustainable, and efficient means of engaging on issues at the federal, state, and local level. By "organization," I mean an officially-registered nationwide association or an informal small town grassroots community group. A non-profit or a company. A political party organization or a talk radio show audience. Wherever a group of people come together because of common interests, causes, or issue positions, Grasshopr can help.

Organizations should have a platform for their members to communicate, collaborate, and engage in the public policy process. They should be able to know which legislative districts their members fall in and target their communications, event notifications, and advocacy alerts accordingly.  

Elected officials should know when those communicating with them are real people who took action themselves on their own accord. They should be able to manage the communications process efficiently so they can concentrate on the job their constituents sent them to office to do.

And organizations are more effective when they tap into their most valuable resource: People. Engaging individual members in conversation and collaboration is better than blasting one-way emails.

Everyone benefits when individuals are engaged and advocacy is authentic.

- Andrew, Jon, and Sujay