Purchase "Government by the People: How to Communicate with Congress"
Sign up for the Advocacy Tipsheet!
| The
Advocacy Tipsheet Archives |
The Armchair Advocate: Five Things to do From the Safety of Your Couch -- March 10th, 2003
EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY TIP - THE ARMCHAIR ADVOCATE, OR, FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR HOUSE TO BE AN ACTIVE AND EFFECTIVE CITIZEN
I’ve been inspired by the particularly difficult winter here in DC (both in terms of snow and potential terror attacks) to think about what people can do from the safety of their couch to be effective and active citizens. Following are my top five ideas – what are some of yours?
- Educate yourself: Thanks to the world wide web, there are a tremendous range of opportunities for the effective citizen to learn more about how government works and the ins and outs of the policy process. For those of you in touch with your inner child, you can take the fun and easy route through the Clerk of the House’s website designed to help kids understand government (http://clerkkids.house.gov/). Anyone who misses their high school civics teacher can learn more about government through the Dirksen Center’s CongressLink site at www.congresslink.org. This site is designed by and for secondary school teachers. Or, for a mere $8, you can take a course on American Government at http://www.legal-classes.com/courses/usagov.htm.
- Read, read, read: If you’re going to effectively advocate about something, you probably should know a little bit about it, right? Yes, it is possible to advocate without knowing much about your topic (and I’ve seen it happen often), but it’s much more effective to know what you’re talking about. So, find out what both the supporters and, more important, the opponents of your issue are reading. Make a list, check it twice, and start gathering those resources. To find links to virtually every newspaper on the planet, check out www.onlinenewspapers.com. One great resource for trade press and magazines is www.magazine.org. You can identify supporters and opponents of your views through a google search.
- Watch, watch, watch: I’m referring to the news, not sitcoms. Although I am the first one to agree that the news media may not always give the most accurate portrayal of what’s going on in the world, short of ESP, it’s the best thing most of us have. In addition to watching the evening news, check out public interest shows on public television and cable as well as your options for watching government at work through the Internet. C-span, for example, webcasts the House and Senate floor on an ongoing basis, as well as important congressional hearings. Check it out at www.C-span.org.
- Think, think, think: Hey, the world is a thought-provoking place (and sometimes it’s just provoking). Take some time as we emerge from winter into spring to really evaluate your views. Are you sure you still really believe what you did 5 years ago? Or are you sticking with old perspectives and old views out of habit? It’s OK to change your mind. Life experiences happen to the best of us – if you don’t learn from these experiences then you’re really just standing still. A couple of great sites I’ve found to help me think about things in a new light are Fathom at www.fathom.com and the Barnes and Noble University at www.barnesandnobleuniversity.com, where you can take free courses on everything from Ben Franklin to Buddhism.
- Take action: Put all that educating, reading, watching and thinking into action by writing a letter to an elected official on something you care about – whether it’s the pothole in front of your house or the war in Iraq. Readers of the advocacy tipsheet can download a PDF version of the “effective letters” section of my book, Government by the People: How to Communicate with Congress at www.advocacyguru.com/effectiveletters.htm.
Most important: HAVE FUN! Remember this is citizen advocacy, not a trip to the dentist. Being an active and effective citizen should be a pleasure, not a chore – especially when you can make your views known and be a couch potato at the same time!
INTERESTING WEBSITES
The Congress Online Project recently released a report on Congressional websites, awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze “mice” for outstanding sites. I’m pleased to announce that my old boss, Congressman Blumenauer, received a GOLD mouse! One of the reasons sited by the study for his success was an effective advocacy page on the site, that, if you go to the site and read it, might sound awfully familiar to readers of the tipsheet J. To view the report, go to http://www.congressonlineproject.org/webstudy2003.html. To see the effective advocacy page on Congressman Blumenauer’s site, go to http://www.house.gov/blumenauer/advocacy.html.
Billed as bridging the gap between scholarship and public knowledge about the use of the web in politics, www.politicalweb.info offers a range of resources of interest to that interesting breed of “political and internet junkie” (you know who you are). Check it out, especially the website features grid at http://www.politicalweb.info/2004.html.
The Institute for Interactive Journalism has come up with a list of “cool stuff on media websites, which you can check out at http://www.j-lab.org/coolstuff.html. Some of the city planning games, in particular, are really fun!
If you’re still confused about what happened in the last election, check out the Library of Congress’ archive of 2002 election sites at: http://www.loc.gov/minerva/collect/elec2002/index.html. They have done an excellent job of preserving some of the best (and the most odd) of the 2002 campaigns.
My friends at the National Priority Project want you to know that NPP has added a 'trade-offs' section to the NPP Database. With a few quick clicks, you can compare what residents in your state will pay for some aspect of military spending with what that money could buy instead to meet social needs. Examples include what the cost of going to war in Iraq or jet fighters would buy in health care coverage for children or more elementary school teachers. To find out about your state's trade-offs click at www.nationalpriorities.org/database and click on the trade-offs icon to the left.
INTERESTING EVENTS
March 11th, 2003: Wish Cindy Klein, AdVanced Consulting’s PR Associate, a happy birthday! She can be reached at cindy@advocacyguru.com.
March 28th, 2003: GalleryWatch.com and AdVanced Consulting joined forces to offer “The Budget and Appropriations Process: Making Sense of the Dollars and Cents”. It's not too late to order the class on CD-Rom!
April 14 – 25, 2003: Congressional Spring Break – think now about how you can connect with your elected officials during this time!
EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY TIP - TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY CAMPAIGN WEBSITES: OR, HOW NOT TO REALLY IRRITATE YOUR SITE'S VISITORS
At AdVanced Consulting, we've been doing candidate surveys on public transportation and bicycling issues. This has involved a tremendous effort to track down candidate contact information. As such, we've had the opportunity to review a number of political campaign websites in the last few months, which has inspired this week's tipsheet "Tips for Effective Advocacy Campaign Websites: Or, How Not to Really Irritate Your Site's Visitors." Although we gleaned these lessons from campaign sites, they apply no matter what you're trying to do on the web.
-
Remember that 85% of the world is still on a dial-up connection: Neither I nor my colleagues at AdVanced Consulting have yet seen a flash introduction or heard a MIDI audio file that was worth the time it took to download those files through a regular telephone line. Once it does finally show up, computers with limited capacity have a hard time showing these carefully orchestrated pieces effectively. Think about it. If you push a watermelon through a straw (the equivalent of pushing a large amount of data through a phone line), it takes a long time. And, well, the watermelon doesn't taste very good at the other end. So give users the option of whether they want to view video fragments or listen to audio files.
-
Know why they are coming to your site: In most cases, users are coming to your site for one of five reasons. (1) They want to learn about your issues. (2) They want to contact you through e-mail, regular mail or telephone. (3) They want to volunteer or contribute to your cause. (4) They want to get involved anonymously. (5) To a much lesser degree, they want to criticize your cause. Your navigation structure should simply and clearly make all these opportunities available (except, perhaps, for number five). Think about having four simple navigation buttons on the home page called "About", "Contact Us", "Volunteer/Contribute", and "Get Involved". Under these various pages, consider who is coming to that page and what they want to do there. For example, the media may be coming to your "about" page to learn more about your cause and to get quotes. So make sure that in addition to a general background on your effort, you've got a button called "for the media", which provides immediate access to quotes, pictures, and any articles you've written.
-
Make everything accessible: One of the sites we had the opportunity to look at had nothing but links to PDF files. If you wanted to learn anything about the campaign, you had to download a file, open it, and read it. While PDFs are great in certain circumstances, they are not appropriate for every situation. Provide as much information as you can in simple, easy to read text and be sure your navigation system always allows people to get back to a home page or a site map.
-
Consistency, Consistency, Consistency: Nothing screams "unprofessional" louder than a personal or inappropriate e-mail address. If I see one more puppytoes@yahoo.com campaign address, I'm going to scream. This is especially frustrating when a campaign has a website address. Any web-hosting or registrar service worth its salt will allow you to automatically forward e-mail from a yournamehere@yourdomainname.com address to your hotmail, AOL, or other similar address. Take a few minutes to figure out how to do that so you can offer people an appropriate, professional e-mail address.
- Let them contact you directly: Hands down, the number one pet peeve for me and my colleagues is the inability to contact a campaign directly. Most of the campaigns we reviewed have forms on the site for interested individuals to fill in, with absolutely no other e-mail contact information. As one person put it "Sure, they're busy people, but step one is simply appearing to care what people think." Even if you're concerned about the volume of mail that an actual e-mail address will engender, include one. You can always set up an "auto-response" that allows you to send a message back immediately to those who e-mail you. If you need to ascertain a certain physical location (i.e., that they live in a particular district), be sure to explain that in your e-mail. Finally, think about who needs to contact you. For example, you should have a general information e-mail, an e-mail for the media, one for volunteers, etc. etc. Separate e-mail accounts are relatively easy to set up and can be configured to arrive automatically in one place.
Hopefully, these diatribes have offered some useful insights. At the least, it's been cathartic for me. If you're interested in reviewing sites and evaluating them, you should know that the George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet and AOL have launched an innovative survey that lets citizens rate campaign websites. You can take this quick five-question survey by clicking on www.electionguide2002.com. After you've clicked on this site, find your favorite candidate. Next, click on the candidate's Web site. In the upper right hand corner of the screen, you'll see a button that says, "Rate This Site".
INTERESTING WEBSITES
George Washington University's for Politics, Democracy & the Internet has a number of great resources at http://www.ipdi.org/. In particular, they have their own list of lessons learned at: http://www.ipdi.org/thedownload09302002.html.
If you're
looking for statistics on web and e-mail use, check out a recent survey
by the Pew Internet and American Life Project at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=69.
The survey found that after September 11, 2001, increasing numbers of
Internet users are using e-mail and visiting government Web sites more
often.
The Congress Online Project puts together a great newsletter with interesting tips on how Congressional offices can more effectively communicate with constituents. Check it out at http://www.congressonlineproject.org/100702.html.
If you think your inbox is full now, just wait. The consultancy firm IDC recently issued a study concluding that the number of e-mails sent will grow from the present level of 31 billion a day to 60 billion in just over three years. Check out a summary article at: http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/applications/article/0,,1301_1472121,00.html.
INTERESTING EVENTS
Nov. 5th - Election Day! There will be a quiz in the next edition of the tipsheet on whether you actually voted. So get out there and vote!
Nov. 7th - I leave for a three week vacation in New Zealand. But have no fear. AdVanced Consulting will be in the very capable hands of Cindy Klein. If you have questions during that time, please do not hesitate to give her a call or send an e-mail to cindy@advocacyguru.com.
Nov. 12th - the House and Senate will return to Washington, DC in a "lame duck" session to finish up work on the Appropriations bills for 2003. In addition, new members will be flocking to DC to find housing, staff, and their way around the Capitol.
