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The Value of Relationships in a Grassroots Strategy

Advocacy relationships are irreplaceable, especially at the state level. No matter how strong your lobbying strategy is, legislators need to interact with advocates to take your cause seriously. Every time one of your supporters has a meaningful interaction with a government leader, they put a face to an issue. Simply put, your advocates bring your issues to life by making them personal. At the same time, legislators lend extra weight to advocates’ opinions, especially at the state level. Most of the time, your lobbyists won’t be the legislator’s constituents. Your advocates will be. That means every time your supporters build relationships with local leaders, those legislators know they’re hearing from the people — their constituents — who hold the power to impact the official’s political future.

Building Relationships Through Grassroots Strategies 

As state and local power grow within the United States, building relationships across statehouses becomes increasingly important. By planning and implementing a thorough grassroots advocacy strategy, you can build new relationships across statehouses and lay down a sturdy foundation for your grassroots campaigns. Here are a few grassroots strategies to promote better relationships:

Educate advocates about statehouses

Advocates are passionate and driven by emotion. They won’t always be experts on government and politics. Those gaps in knowledge widen at the state level because state governments can vary wildly. State legislators work at different paces from state to state, keep different office hours, hold different staff sizes, and have laundry lists of preferences. To build new relationships at the state level, you’ll need to educate advocates about local governments in the following ways:
  • Conduct training sessions that explain how their state’s government works.
  • Connect advocates with lobbyists who are familiar with the state government’s norms.
  • Track social media and show advocates what legislators know or misunderstand about your issues

Connect your teams

If your lobbyists and advocacy teams aren’t united, your grassroots team will miss out on a valuable relationship-building resource. That’s especially true at the state level, in which an office’s structure, communication preferences, and culture can vary wildly from one state to the next. Because statehouse norms differ, it’s easy for advocates to overlook important details that an insider may take for granted. Your lobbyists will understand legislators' preferences and can pass on that valuable information to advocacy teams. Before onsite meetings, consider conducting training sessions in which your lobbyists debrief advocates on how a specific statehouse is unique. It’s also a good idea to encourage lobbyists and advocates to record notes about meetings and individuals that everyone can use to build stronger relationships with lawmakers.

Build relationships, track engagement, and take action

As new government leaders take their places, you will need to build relationships and identify the issues they are engaging on quickly. At the state level, bills are passed at a faster clip than at the federal level. This means the faster you build relationships and understand new lawmakers’ habits, the bigger an impact it will have for your organization. Before your advocacy teams call key legislators, encourage them to localize issues and discuss how a topic has affected them personally. Personalizing issues shows lawmakers how issues are impacting constituents on a local level. And don’t stop at phone calls. Your grassroots members can build deeper relationships with new legislators by scheduling face-to-face meetings, getting coffee at a local spot, or planning meet-ups during which you can educate leaders about your issues. When your advocates take those meetings, require them to track meeting notes. You can accomplish this by having them digitally tag meetings with overall sentiment or by labeling them with the issues that were discussed. From there, you can track positive meeting rates and see if your rates for productive meetings are moving in the right direction. By tracking issues discussed, you can ensure your meeting conversations align with your priority issues and that your most important issues are discussed in the majority of meetings.. By using software to track engagement and meetings in this way, you can see how often your teams are connecting with priority legislators, how often you’re discussing important issues during meetings, and what you need to do to yield more from your relationships in the future.

Accomplish More with Software

Building relationships across statehouses is crucial to push your organization forward. And the right public affairs software will help your teams accomplish more at a faster pace — especially when it comes to developing relationships with state legislators. For instance, you can use a relationship mapping tool to simplify the relationship management process. This software reporting function keeps track of your networks and pieces together visuals that reveal how your supporters are connected to officials. That way, you can build on the relationships your teams have already developed. You can also motivate your advocates to create new relationships across statehouses by building state reports. For instance, you might decide to monitor the number of advocacy members who have successfully met with key state legislators throughout the month. Impact reports show you where relationships are paying off and where new relationships are needed. You can also encourage relationship building by setting up a points system, awards, or a full-on gamification program. [post_title] => How Deploying the Right Grassroots Strategies Can Help Build New Relationships Across Statehouses [post_excerpt] => Is your grassroots team connecting with new legislators? This article details ways to use grassroots strategies to build relationships with state leaders. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => grassroots-strategies-build-statehouse-relationships [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=7949 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [queried_object_id] => 7949 [request] => SELECT wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.post_name = 'grassroots-strategies-build-statehouse-relationships' AND wp_posts.post_type = 'resources' ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC [posts] => Array ( [0] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7949 [post_author] => 42 [post_date] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_content] => Statehouse relationships have long been an important part of most advocacy campaigns. Now, as state-level power grows, connecting your grassroots team to state leaders is more important than ever. Unfortunately, with new faces popping up in government, your team may be unable to lean on the relationships your advocates have developed over the years. It’s time to re-energize your state-level campaigns by building fresh relationships. This is how to use grassroots strategies to carve out new relationships across statehouses:

The Value of Relationships in a Grassroots Strategy

Advocacy relationships are irreplaceable, especially at the state level. No matter how strong your lobbying strategy is, legislators need to interact with advocates to take your cause seriously. Every time one of your supporters has a meaningful interaction with a government leader, they put a face to an issue. Simply put, your advocates bring your issues to life by making them personal. At the same time, legislators lend extra weight to advocates’ opinions, especially at the state level. Most of the time, your lobbyists won’t be the legislator’s constituents. Your advocates will be. That means every time your supporters build relationships with local leaders, those legislators know they’re hearing from the people — their constituents — who hold the power to impact the official’s political future.

Building Relationships Through Grassroots Strategies 

As state and local power grow within the United States, building relationships across statehouses becomes increasingly important. By planning and implementing a thorough grassroots advocacy strategy, you can build new relationships across statehouses and lay down a sturdy foundation for your grassroots campaigns. Here are a few grassroots strategies to promote better relationships:

Educate advocates about statehouses

Advocates are passionate and driven by emotion. They won’t always be experts on government and politics. Those gaps in knowledge widen at the state level because state governments can vary wildly. State legislators work at different paces from state to state, keep different office hours, hold different staff sizes, and have laundry lists of preferences. To build new relationships at the state level, you’ll need to educate advocates about local governments in the following ways:
  • Conduct training sessions that explain how their state’s government works.
  • Connect advocates with lobbyists who are familiar with the state government’s norms.
  • Track social media and show advocates what legislators know or misunderstand about your issues

Connect your teams

If your lobbyists and advocacy teams aren’t united, your grassroots team will miss out on a valuable relationship-building resource. That’s especially true at the state level, in which an office’s structure, communication preferences, and culture can vary wildly from one state to the next. Because statehouse norms differ, it’s easy for advocates to overlook important details that an insider may take for granted. Your lobbyists will understand legislators' preferences and can pass on that valuable information to advocacy teams. Before onsite meetings, consider conducting training sessions in which your lobbyists debrief advocates on how a specific statehouse is unique. It’s also a good idea to encourage lobbyists and advocates to record notes about meetings and individuals that everyone can use to build stronger relationships with lawmakers.

Build relationships, track engagement, and take action

As new government leaders take their places, you will need to build relationships and identify the issues they are engaging on quickly. At the state level, bills are passed at a faster clip than at the federal level. This means the faster you build relationships and understand new lawmakers’ habits, the bigger an impact it will have for your organization. Before your advocacy teams call key legislators, encourage them to localize issues and discuss how a topic has affected them personally. Personalizing issues shows lawmakers how issues are impacting constituents on a local level. And don’t stop at phone calls. Your grassroots members can build deeper relationships with new legislators by scheduling face-to-face meetings, getting coffee at a local spot, or planning meet-ups during which you can educate leaders about your issues. When your advocates take those meetings, require them to track meeting notes. You can accomplish this by having them digitally tag meetings with overall sentiment or by labeling them with the issues that were discussed. From there, you can track positive meeting rates and see if your rates for productive meetings are moving in the right direction. By tracking issues discussed, you can ensure your meeting conversations align with your priority issues and that your most important issues are discussed in the majority of meetings.. By using software to track engagement and meetings in this way, you can see how often your teams are connecting with priority legislators, how often you’re discussing important issues during meetings, and what you need to do to yield more from your relationships in the future.

Accomplish More with Software

Building relationships across statehouses is crucial to push your organization forward. And the right public affairs software will help your teams accomplish more at a faster pace — especially when it comes to developing relationships with state legislators. For instance, you can use a relationship mapping tool to simplify the relationship management process. This software reporting function keeps track of your networks and pieces together visuals that reveal how your supporters are connected to officials. That way, you can build on the relationships your teams have already developed. You can also motivate your advocates to create new relationships across statehouses by building state reports. For instance, you might decide to monitor the number of advocacy members who have successfully met with key state legislators throughout the month. Impact reports show you where relationships are paying off and where new relationships are needed. You can also encourage relationship building by setting up a points system, awards, or a full-on gamification program. [post_title] => How Deploying the Right Grassroots Strategies Can Help Build New Relationships Across Statehouses [post_excerpt] => Is your grassroots team connecting with new legislators? This article details ways to use grassroots strategies to build relationships with state leaders. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => grassroots-strategies-build-statehouse-relationships [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=7949 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 1 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7949 [post_author] => 42 [post_date] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_content] => Statehouse relationships have long been an important part of most advocacy campaigns. Now, as state-level power grows, connecting your grassroots team to state leaders is more important than ever. Unfortunately, with new faces popping up in government, your team may be unable to lean on the relationships your advocates have developed over the years. It’s time to re-energize your state-level campaigns by building fresh relationships. This is how to use grassroots strategies to carve out new relationships across statehouses:

The Value of Relationships in a Grassroots Strategy

Advocacy relationships are irreplaceable, especially at the state level. No matter how strong your lobbying strategy is, legislators need to interact with advocates to take your cause seriously. Every time one of your supporters has a meaningful interaction with a government leader, they put a face to an issue. Simply put, your advocates bring your issues to life by making them personal. At the same time, legislators lend extra weight to advocates’ opinions, especially at the state level. Most of the time, your lobbyists won’t be the legislator’s constituents. Your advocates will be. That means every time your supporters build relationships with local leaders, those legislators know they’re hearing from the people — their constituents — who hold the power to impact the official’s political future.

Building Relationships Through Grassroots Strategies 

As state and local power grow within the United States, building relationships across statehouses becomes increasingly important. By planning and implementing a thorough grassroots advocacy strategy, you can build new relationships across statehouses and lay down a sturdy foundation for your grassroots campaigns. Here are a few grassroots strategies to promote better relationships:

Educate advocates about statehouses

Advocates are passionate and driven by emotion. They won’t always be experts on government and politics. Those gaps in knowledge widen at the state level because state governments can vary wildly. State legislators work at different paces from state to state, keep different office hours, hold different staff sizes, and have laundry lists of preferences. To build new relationships at the state level, you’ll need to educate advocates about local governments in the following ways:
  • Conduct training sessions that explain how their state’s government works.
  • Connect advocates with lobbyists who are familiar with the state government’s norms.
  • Track social media and show advocates what legislators know or misunderstand about your issues

Connect your teams

If your lobbyists and advocacy teams aren’t united, your grassroots team will miss out on a valuable relationship-building resource. That’s especially true at the state level, in which an office’s structure, communication preferences, and culture can vary wildly from one state to the next. Because statehouse norms differ, it’s easy for advocates to overlook important details that an insider may take for granted. Your lobbyists will understand legislators' preferences and can pass on that valuable information to advocacy teams. Before onsite meetings, consider conducting training sessions in which your lobbyists debrief advocates on how a specific statehouse is unique. It’s also a good idea to encourage lobbyists and advocates to record notes about meetings and individuals that everyone can use to build stronger relationships with lawmakers.

Build relationships, track engagement, and take action

As new government leaders take their places, you will need to build relationships and identify the issues they are engaging on quickly. At the state level, bills are passed at a faster clip than at the federal level. This means the faster you build relationships and understand new lawmakers’ habits, the bigger an impact it will have for your organization. Before your advocacy teams call key legislators, encourage them to localize issues and discuss how a topic has affected them personally. Personalizing issues shows lawmakers how issues are impacting constituents on a local level. And don’t stop at phone calls. Your grassroots members can build deeper relationships with new legislators by scheduling face-to-face meetings, getting coffee at a local spot, or planning meet-ups during which you can educate leaders about your issues. When your advocates take those meetings, require them to track meeting notes. You can accomplish this by having them digitally tag meetings with overall sentiment or by labeling them with the issues that were discussed. From there, you can track positive meeting rates and see if your rates for productive meetings are moving in the right direction. By tracking issues discussed, you can ensure your meeting conversations align with your priority issues and that your most important issues are discussed in the majority of meetings.. By using software to track engagement and meetings in this way, you can see how often your teams are connecting with priority legislators, how often you’re discussing important issues during meetings, and what you need to do to yield more from your relationships in the future.

Accomplish More with Software

Building relationships across statehouses is crucial to push your organization forward. And the right public affairs software will help your teams accomplish more at a faster pace — especially when it comes to developing relationships with state legislators. For instance, you can use a relationship mapping tool to simplify the relationship management process. This software reporting function keeps track of your networks and pieces together visuals that reveal how your supporters are connected to officials. That way, you can build on the relationships your teams have already developed. You can also motivate your advocates to create new relationships across statehouses by building state reports. For instance, you might decide to monitor the number of advocacy members who have successfully met with key state legislators throughout the month. Impact reports show you where relationships are paying off and where new relationships are needed. You can also encourage relationship building by setting up a points system, awards, or a full-on gamification program. [post_title] => How Deploying the Right Grassroots Strategies Can Help Build New Relationships Across Statehouses [post_excerpt] => Is your grassroots team connecting with new legislators? This article details ways to use grassroots strategies to build relationships with state leaders. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => grassroots-strategies-build-statehouse-relationships [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-12-21 16:23:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=7949 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 1 [max_num_pages] => 0 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => 1 [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => 1 [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => e49a84d6f8288ea1b4dde9d6a67e7348 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )
!!! 7949
Blog

How Deploying the Right Grassroots Strategies Can Help Build New Relationships Across Statehouses

Theresa Hebert
Dec 21, 2022
How Deploying the Right Grassroots Strategies Can Help Build New Relationships Across Statehouses

Statehouse relationships have long been an important part of most advocacy campaigns. Now, as state-level power grows, connecting your grassroots team to state leaders is more important than ever.

Unfortunately, with new faces popping up in government, your team may be unable to lean on the relationships your advocates have developed over the years. It’s time to re-energize your state-level campaigns by building fresh relationships. This is how to use grassroots strategies to carve out new relationships across statehouses:

The Value of Relationships in a Grassroots Strategy

Advocacy relationships are irreplaceable, especially at the state level. No matter how strong your lobbying strategy is, legislators need to interact with advocates to take your cause seriously. Every time one of your supporters has a meaningful interaction with a government leader, they put a face to an issue. Simply put, your advocates bring your issues to life by making them personal.

At the same time, legislators lend extra weight to advocates’ opinions, especially at the state level. Most of the time, your lobbyists won’t be the legislator’s constituents. Your advocates will be. That means every time your supporters build relationships with local leaders, those legislators know they’re hearing from the people — their constituents — who hold the power to impact the official’s political future.

Building Relationships Through Grassroots Strategies 

As state and local power grow within the United States, building relationships across statehouses becomes increasingly important. By planning and implementing a thorough grassroots advocacy strategy, you can build new relationships across statehouses and lay down a sturdy foundation for your grassroots campaigns. Here are a few grassroots strategies to promote better relationships:

Educate advocates about statehouses

Advocates are passionate and driven by emotion. They won’t always be experts on government and politics. Those gaps in knowledge widen at the state level because state governments can vary wildly. State legislators work at different paces from state to state, keep different office hours, hold different staff sizes, and have laundry lists of preferences.

To build new relationships at the state level, you’ll need to educate advocates about local governments in the following ways:

  • Conduct training sessions that explain how their state’s government works.
  • Connect advocates with lobbyists who are familiar with the state government’s norms.
  • Track social media and show advocates what legislators know or misunderstand about your issues

Connect your teams

If your lobbyists and advocacy teams aren’t united, your grassroots team will miss out on a valuable relationship-building resource. That’s especially true at the state level, in which an office’s structure, communication preferences, and culture can vary wildly from one state to the next. Because statehouse norms differ, it’s easy for advocates to overlook important details that an insider may take for granted.

Your lobbyists will understand legislators’ preferences and can pass on that valuable information to advocacy teams. Before onsite meetings, consider conducting training sessions in which your lobbyists debrief advocates on how a specific statehouse is unique. It’s also a good idea to encourage lobbyists and advocates to record notes about meetings and individuals that everyone can use to build stronger relationships with lawmakers.

Build relationships, track engagement, and take action

As new government leaders take their places, you will need to build relationships and identify the issues they are engaging on quickly. At the state level, bills are passed at a faster clip than at the federal level. This means the faster you build relationships and understand new lawmakers’ habits, the bigger an impact it will have for your organization.

Before your advocacy teams call key legislators, encourage them to localize issues and discuss how a topic has affected them personally. Personalizing issues shows lawmakers how issues are impacting constituents on a local level. And don’t stop at phone calls. Your grassroots members can build deeper relationships with new legislators by scheduling face-to-face meetings, getting coffee at a local spot, or planning meet-ups during which you can educate leaders about your issues.

When your advocates take those meetings, require them to track meeting notes. You can accomplish this by having them digitally tag meetings with overall sentiment or by labeling them with the issues that were discussed. From there, you can track positive meeting rates and see if your rates for productive meetings are moving in the right direction. By tracking issues discussed, you can ensure your meeting conversations align with your priority issues and that your most important issues are discussed in the majority of meetings.. By using software to track engagement and meetings in this way, you can see how often your teams are connecting with priority legislators, how often you’re discussing important issues during meetings, and what you need to do to yield more from your relationships in the future.

Accomplish More with Software

Building relationships across statehouses is crucial to push your organization forward. And the right public affairs software will help your teams accomplish more at a faster pace — especially when it comes to developing relationships with state legislators. For instance, you can use a relationship mapping tool to simplify the relationship management process. This software reporting function keeps track of your networks and pieces together visuals that reveal how your supporters are connected to officials. That way, you can build on the relationships your teams have already developed.

You can also motivate your advocates to create new relationships across statehouses by building state reports. For instance, you might decide to monitor the number of advocacy members who have successfully met with key state legislators throughout the month. Impact reports show you where relationships are paying off and where new relationships are needed. You can also encourage relationship building by setting up a points system, awards, or a full-on gamification program.

Learn more about Quorum's grassroots solutions.