The following is a modified excerpt from The Early Years Advocacy Groups Advocacy Toolkit, developed with participation from CT Parent Power by the CT Early Childhood Alliance.
Part 1: Getting Started
HOW TO ADVOCATE
Advocacy is one of the ways citizens support issues they care about most. You are children’s best and most important advocate! Elected officials and candidates base their political decisions on a variety of factors: party politics, personal experience, special interest groups, advocacy organizations, media coverage, party leadership, campaign donors, and, most importantly, the people. If parents and concerned citizens unite around issues and speak to their elected officials about the of the well-being of their children and community, their representatives will be more inclined to make decisions that sustain and build support for programs and policies that are good for families.Advocacy is most effective when it is well-planned and ongoing. If you’re just starting to advocate, establish initial contact through a meeting and work to communicate regularly with your public officials through additional visits, phone calls, and letters year round. You want your elected representatives to use you as a resource as they make decisions on behalf of early care and education, so consider each contact you have with them as a step toward developing a working relationship. Don’t be intimidated by their title; remember, they were elected into their office to serve the needs of the people.
If you and an elected official don’t see eye to eye, don’t burn bridges; it’s important that you continue to communicate even if you don’t agree. During your exchanges, work to identify the gaps in your official’s understanding of early care and education issues and provide information you think will fill in the holes. It’s important to learn from your encounters with your elected representatives and, more importantly, to celebrate your successes!
As you continue to connect with your representatives, invite others from around the community to build your efforts. Never underestimate the power of numbers. Building a sustained, active base of advocates is the most effective way to get what you want out of government.
There is no exact right or wrong way to participate in grassroots advocacy. The key is to let policy makers know what their constituents and voters think about an issue. The most important thing is to build an on-going relationship with policy makers, especially the ones who represent YOU.
KNOW WHO REPRESENTS YOU
Elected officials shape policies that affect many aspects of our lives (and our children’s), so it’s important to know who they are. It’s best to start at the state level due to the large impact legislative decisions have on the amount of resources supplied to early care and education programs.
It’s worth knowin g the names of every elected official representing your area in addition to your State Representative and State Senator. You can search for other public officials through the town websites – for a link to town websites go to: www.state.ct.us/town.htm. You can also go to an online search engine, for example www.google.com, and type in the information you’re looking for.
Part 2: Making the Case
DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE
Think about which arguments will make the most impact on a particular legislator. Narrow the information down to three or four key points that accurately and thoroughly express what you want your elected official to understand about your issue.MAKE IT PERSONAL
In addition to using key messages, it’s helpful to begin from your personal experience: how has or will your family be directly impacted from the program/policy? Then, broaden your scope and ask other parents how the program/policy has impacted their family. Finally, draw on research that stresses how much children and communities could gain if all families had access to quality programs and services. Once you’ve created your message, stick to it!Part 3: Take Action
YOU are a Grassroots Advocate
A grassroots advocate is someone who cares enough about an issue to speak up about it. The point of Grassroots Advocacy is to demonstrate to policy makers that particular issues have deep support in their home districts, with voters, employees and community members. The focus of grassroots advocacy is not on how well you know a particular policy maker, or how much access you have, but rather on the quantity and quality of contact with the policy maker. A grassroots advocate is anyone who has an interest in the issues. A grassroots advocate is YOU.
There is no exact right or wrong way to participate in grassroots advocacy. Strategies vary by organization, region and issue. The key is to let policy makers know what their constituents and voters think about an issue. The most important thing is to build an on-going relationship with policy makers, especially the ones who represent YOU.
When selecting tactics for grassroots contact with policy makers, follow the principle that the more personal the grassroots contact, the lower the number of grassroots volunteers needed to make contact. Conversely, the less personal the contact, the more grassroots volunteers are needed to make an impact. For example, a generic postcard campaign in which volunteer advocates simply stamp and sign a preprinted message and mail it to their legislator will be recognized as generic and orchestrated. Therefore, you will need to generate a very high number of them to get on a policy maker’s “radar
screen.” Conversely, a personal visit in a legislator’s home district with five constituents who tell their personal story about the issue has very high impact, and requires fewer grassroots advocates.
Consider the Grassroots Contact Pyramid*, as a guide:
Highly personal tactics ---> Small number of people needed to have impact
(visits, handwritten grassroots advocates personal letters, etc.)
Less personal tactics ----> High number of people needed to have impact
(petitions, Day at the grassroots advocates Capitol, etc.)
* The Grassroots Contact Pyramid was created by Grassroots Solutions, Inc. (www.grassrootssolutions.com)
GRASSROOTS ADVOCACY STRATEGIES
Grassroots Advocacy relies on certain skills and strategies that are used in a systematic way. It is not enough to get people who agree about an issue together to talk about that issue: grassroots advocacy requires action that produces concrete results. This section gives you tools for how you can work to make your grassroots action more successful.
The goal of grassroots advocacy is to build an ongoing relationship with the elected officials who represent you. Policy makers are just like the rest of us -- when they have a personal relationship with someone, they rely on their opinion and judgment to help them understand policy issues and know what the best choice is. We need to help legislators and the Governor know that the best choice is to invest in Connecticut’s children. There are a variety of ways to build an on-going relationship with policy makers and to raise awareness of early care and education issues. These include:
- Letters: Letters provide much of the fuel that powers the legislative process. A stack of mail relating to a particular issue, especially if the letter is handwritten, is very influential with a policy maker, so if possible, send letters regularly and in mass. Many times, your elected official will write you back.
- Meetings: A group meeting with your legislator or other elected officials is the most effective way to communicate your message. Whether it’s held in someone’s home, at a program’s site, at the Capitol, or at a neutral setting, a meeting with your representative is a chance to connect on a personal level and should help you and your official gain knowledge about the other’s perspective.
- Phone calls: Phone calls are best utilized when you want to let your elected representatives know whether you support a piece of legislation or to have a one-on-one conversation. It also allows you to connect more with the office staff, who are key allies when working with elected officials.
- Email: Email is probably the least time-consuming method to deliver your message, but it is the least personal and, therefore, a less effective way to connect with public officials.
- Media: Media attention is a great way to get noticed by both elected officials and the community. Your representatives and their staff monitor hometown newspapers, so any mention of a program in a letter to the editor, an editorial, a featured article, or in photos can be clipped and sent to your official’s office.
- Elections: Connecting with candidates for public office and participating in elections – by getting involved in your party’s precinct caucus, attending candidate events and voting – are all important ways of influencing policy decisions. Get involved early and often.
