Q&A for the CMF Report on Communications between Citizens and Congress Webinar

Webinar participants asked many questions in response to the presentation. Tim Hysom, Brad Fitch, and Jason Janicki responded.

Q: What is your opinion of call-ins?  Have congressional staffers indicated whether they thought large scale call-ins were legitimate or effective?  Also, how would you engage effectiveness of advocacy call-ins with a letter writing campaign?

A: Tim – They can be very effective and are probably most effective when time is of the essence. Prepare citizens for the phone call interaction and provide talking points. The most effective communication is e-mail, as it is easy for legislative staff to handle, but phone calls can be very effective under time constraints.

Q: How would you recommend placing your organization’s name in a letter writing campaign? At the beginning, or end?

A: Tim - We recommend placing your organization’s name at the beginning as many staffers won’t read through multiple paragraphs of text.

Q: How do Congressional offices cope with a ton of personalized messages? Don’t the messages just get dumped in the flood?

A: Brad – Our experience is that messages don’t get dumped in the flood.  Personalized messages set a tone for the campaign.

Tim - It would be a good idea to have two parts to the message: one part being static text citing the organization’s position and another part with constituents’ personalized stories.  Then staffers can easily see where the messages are different.  It’s not unusual for a member of congress to reference a constituent’s personalized message in a speech.

Q: Do you think that it's possible that staff may still maintain that letters from constituents aren't real as an excuse to ignore them or to explain their inability to deal with the level of communications?

A: Tim – The research from the 2005 study showed that Congressional staff didn’t trust communications that come from a repeated identical form letter.  We’re interested in re-doing that research to see if there has been a dramatic change since 2005.  I do think there has been a change in perception through our reports and the outreach groups like Capitol Advantage have done to legitimize the volume of constituent mail. I think it really is more an issue of staff being overwhelmed and our new model will make communications much more easily managed. 

Q: What role, if any, does a constituent’s foreign language play in the new model?

A: Tim - Constituent speaking a foreign language should be able to engage offices as most offices now have bilingual or multilingual staffers.  You may want to contact the office to ensure that they have someone who can read the language, but language shouldn’t be a barrier.

Q: Is it possible to turn on the Organization Signature for only campaigns that we organize and not for the spontaneous, self composed letters that our members might write on a topic not related to our association?

A: Jason – Currently, no. Being able to turn the signature on or off based on the alert is not currently available, but it is something that our product development team is working on.

Q: One of Tim’s early slides said that we should have more democratic dialogue with Congress, not just try to win legislative battles. Can this be done by constituents via e-mail? How?

A: Tim – Absolutely.  There are many ways to build relationships with Members of Congress and their staffers in addition to sending a message asking them to support or oppose a piece of legislation.  Reach out to offices by offering yourself as a resource. Engage members who feel the same way you do on issues, and thank them before or after a vote.  There are a lot of ways to engage members; including writing a letter to the editor, as we mentioned earlier.

Brad – There is a section of Capwiz XC called “For Policy Makers” where you can create a page inside your Capwiz XC site and populate it with info that is targeted just for policy makers and staff.  You’re trying to be a liaison.  Do the job that you do best, which is communicate information about your issue to congressional staff.

Q: Thanks for a good program.  My question relates to logic puzzles on the Hill.  Do you anticipate more and more members of Congress to move to logic puzzles as a way of controlling communications that may be mass mailed and not generated by constituents?

A: Brad – Capitol Advantage monitors very closely every web form on Capitol Hill.  We’re not seeing an increase in logic puzzles or human identifiers, like CATCHAs.  Offices are becoming more and more concerned that these puzzles or codes interfere with disabled people interacting with congressional offices, so we haven’t seen a real big increase there.

Tim – If we were to get some traction on the new model that we’re putting forward through this report, it really eliminates the need for offices to use human identification tools.  This new model does what the CATCHAs were meant to do anyway, which is to ensure that citizens are real by providing easy ways for offices to identify personalized messages and communications. 

Q: Do you recommend telling a congressional office how many pieces of correspondence were sent to them AFTER your advocacy campaign is finished?

A: Tim: It can be a really great combined advocacy strategy tactic to have a grasstops person visit the member and say to them the number of messages sent to them, to hammer home how involved their constituents are.

Q: Is it better to personalize emails at the beginning or at the end?

A: Brad – It’s definitely at the beginning because some congressional staff never get to the end of the message.

Q: Can you tell us what type of text we should use to identify our organization on each campaign? The sample text that was shown here used Capwiz·XC and the organization in the same phrase, but I understood that Capwiz·XC also automatically adds its own text?

A: Brad - You don’t need to mention Capwiz·XC in the body of the message, we’ll take care of that with the Organization Signature, but you may want to make the name of your organization non-editable at the beginning of their message. For example: “As an active member of the Widget Association, I am concerned with the possible repercussions of HR123.” 

Q: We would like to collect copies of replies that constituents receive from their representatives. What is the best way to collect the offices’ replies in order to get a feel of their position on an issue?

A: Brad – This is a challenge, but it is great information if you can get it. You can send out messages to your membership asking people to fill out forms on either Capwiz·XC or Knowlegis to give you some feedback on the response.  It’s really important to get that information. 

Q: How do you learn which form of communication is most preferred by each Member of Congress?

A: Tim – You have as many ways of managing communications as you have members of Congress.  There really isn’t a way besides contacting the member of Congress.  If you have a good relationship with the chief of staff or the LD you could contact them, or call the office and ask the LC what the best way to communicate with them is.

Q: CMF's research shows that almost half of Americans surveyed contact their Rep or Senator, but how do you reconcile the informal poll here today where many of us note frustration with getting our members to participate in campaigns?

A: Brad – Great question. A couple things come to mind: 1. It’s hard to educate and get people started from a dead stop.  2. Look to see if you’re making things as easy as possible for people to get involved.  Make action alerts short, one to two paragraphs and simple.  3. I don’t think a lot of the leadership of organizations realizes the importance of grassroots advocacy.  Not enough resources are devoted to it.  Folks are understaffed and need a bigger budget.

Q: How can we make sure that messages that our supporters send don't ask a bill co-sponsor to co-sponsor a bill they already support?

A: Jason – Use Capwiz·XC’s Smart Alerts! You can create Action Alerts that offer one message for co-sponsors and another message for non-sponsors. Capwiz·XC is smart enough to determine the advocate’s legislator based on their address and whether that legislator has sponsored the piece of legislation or not. The advocate will then be provided with the appropriate sponsorship-based message to send their elected official.

Q: When you do phone alerts should you tell people to ask for the target (senator/congressperson) or just talk to the person that answers the phone.  What is the protocol for WHO you ask for / talk to?

A: Tim – The vast majority of offices have staffers manning the phones.  It’s nearly impossible for a citizen to call an office and be able to talk to the Member of Congress.  So, talk to whoever answers the phone.  Typically that person will transcribe your comments and then they will assign that communication to the staffer in the office who manages those issues.

Q: Your research showed that in 2005 staffers believed that personal visits were more effective than personalized emails.  Is that still the case for 2009?

A: Brad – That is never going to change.  In-person interactions will always be more persuasive, unless the written communication is very powerful.  In-person doesn’t necessarily mean going to Washington, DC.  What we’ve seen is people taking advantage of town hall meetings, or people setting up district meetings, or meeting through virtual fly-ins.  Because of increased competitiveness, you do have to take more creative efforts.

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