As we come out of the midterm elections, sessions convene across all 50 states, and prepare for a new Congress, digital advocacy will no doubt continue to be of utmost importance in 2023.
This next year opens up a myriad of opportunities for you to get momentum on your issues and have your organization’s mission represented by newly elected and returning officials. You’ll need to build and strengthen relationships with your key stakeholders and quickly energize and mobilize your supporters to move the needle on your issues.
Luckily, digital tools such as FiscalNote and VoterVoice are readily available to get your advocacy strategy up and running in no time.
Ready: Keep Track of New Bills and Regulations
Between high inflation and soaring energy prices, reproductive rights discussions, and infrastructure allocations, legislators will be facing big issues in 2023. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up and cut through the noise to focus on what really matters to your organization. A newly sponsored bill, regulation, local ordinance, or breaking headline could affect you at any time, anywhere you operate. When that happens, you need all the data in one place.
An issues management platform, such as FiscalNote, allows your team to work remotely while staying on top of key policy and stakeholders, whether you manage issues at the state, federal, or global level. Dedicated issue workspaces help record all the relevant information in one place — from talking points and news links to custom alerts on relevant legislation and regulation and tracking all the team’s actions and interactions with regulators, government officials, and other key stakeholders.
Besides not being able to afford to miss a newly introduced bill, regulation or amendment, you also need to avoid missing a headline relevant to your issues or stakeholders. A news and analysis platform, such as CQ Roll Call, can help you cut through the noise to get the critical policy news, objective facts, and coverage on policy, as well as the people and politics of Congress, and how all these forces combined affect your organization and interests.
From here, you can build a strong advocacy strategy that is always up-to-date and current with any last-minute policy changes.
Set: Know Your Stakeholders and Build Relationships
Once you’re confident you’re staying on top of your issues at the local, state, and federal levels, you have to make sure you’re building relationships with decision-makers across the board. A first-rate Congressional directory, such as FiscalNote’s Knowlegis, has the most up-to-date contact information for all the staffers and legislators you need in your corner to move your issues forward. Slice and dice your email lists based on congressional profiles, issue area, party, role, staff, chamber, delegation, or voting record, and send your outreach confident you’re getting the best deliverability rate on the market to Capitol Hill.
Using a stakeholder management solution like FiscalNote, you’ll be able to connect those key decision-makers to your priority issues, define their influence on a specific matter, and better understand how they align with your organization.
Go: Inform and Mobilize Your Advocates
Now you’re ready to pass on all that important information about the issues that threaten your members and supporters and energize them to take action. That means connecting your advocates with lawmakers and influencers via emails, tweets, texts, phone calls, push notifications — whatever suits your organization’s demographic and action plan best.
To do this you’ll need a digital advocacy platform that lets you automatically match your advocates’ and potential advocates’ (members, donors, clients, supporters) addresses to the correct legislator. You also need to make things as easy as possible for your supporters to take action and for yourself to measure the success of your campaign via a dashboard so you can change tactics as needed.
VoterVoice allows you to quickly and easily set up an online action center that matches the look and feel of your organization, informs and engages them, and keeps them coming back. Here, you can house all relevant information for your supporters and have pre-filled forms so they can take action on your campaigns with one click.
Your fly-in for the new Congress and state sessions will arguably be the most important. It can help establish you as a thought leader for your industry in the minds of new staffers and members and help you build long-lasting relationships. With VoterVoice, you can manage event agendas, provide and receive talking points and notes, collect feedback, and launch a campaign off the momentum.
