Advocacy guide
How to run a grassroots advocacy campaign
Eight steps from a cause to a decision, whether you are moving a city council, a state legislature, Congress or a federal agency.
The steps
- Choose one decision. A vote on a bill, a hearing, a budget line or a rule with a comment deadline. A campaign aimed at a decision has a date to work back from; one aimed at an issue does not.
- Find who makes it. The committee that hears the bill, the members who will vote, the agency that writes the rule. Your own legislators come first: look them up by address with Who represents me.
- Write the ask. One sentence: support or oppose, the bill number or docket, and the decision-maker's name. Everything a supporter sends repeats it.
- Know why it matters to them. What the bill or rule does to people in their district: jobs, schools, costs, safety. Gather a few true stories from supporters who live there.
- Equip your supporters. Give them the ask, a short template they can make their own, and the right office for their address. Ask each one to add a sentence of their own.
- Time the push. Send it before the committee meets or the comment window closes, and again before a floor vote. Watch the bill's status so the next step does not catch you out.
- Use more than one channel. Email and calls make the volume; a meeting, testimony or a public comment puts a person and evidence in the record.
- Follow up. Thank the offices that listened, tell supporters what happened, and keep the list for the next decision.
Mistakes that cost a campaign
- Several asks in one message, so the office cannot log it under any of them.
- No address, so a constituent's message is counted with everyone else's.
- Thousands of identical messages and nothing personal in any of them.
- Starting after the committee has voted, or after the comment window has closed.
- Never telling supporters how it ended, so they do not come back for the next one.
Running a campaign, not writing one letter?
Book a free grassroots advocacy session. We'll walk through reaching the right offices with your supporters, then run a one-click campaign with our grassroots advocacy software that sends personalized messages from your whole list.
More from the advocacy guide
Need 500 people to send this before the vote?
Run it as a campaign. Each supporter's message goes to their own legislators, matched by street address, and message versions rotate so offices see varied mail, not 500 copies of one letter.