For many organizations, the government affairs team is a small yet mighty part of the overall operation. Whether you’re advocating at the federal level or you operate in all 50-states, your team likely cannot build personal relationships with every elected official it would like to — that’s where stakeholders come in.
Your stakeholders may be from many different walks of life—they may be an employee who drives a truck for your company, or they could be a donor to your PAC. Above all, they often have relationships with elected officials that you are unaware of.
With Quorum’s Stakeholder Engagement tools, your team can survey its stakeholders to identify existing relationships amongst your network, then use those relationships to build on your government affairs strategy. Here are three reasons your team should survey its stakeholders:
Find Champions
With 535 members of Congress and over 7,000 state legislators, it’s likely that there are stakeholders in your network with personal or professional relationships with elected officials that you may not know. By surveying your stakeholders you are able to uncover if your stakeholders are politically or socially acquainted with a particular member, or if they might be connected through family, friends, or some other relationship.
Know Their Interests
Politics is often a small world, full of past relationships and long-standing friendships. Stakeholder surveys can provide a robust look into just how connected your network or organization truly is. By leveraging custom fields, you can capture additional interests about your stakeholders. Learn anything from policy interests to who their college roommates were to whether they would be interested in participating in a fly-in—the possibilities are endless.
A Personal Touch
When you meet a member of Congress at an event or interact with them in a meeting, use Quorum’s mobile app to pull up their member profile and see if any of your stakeholders have a relationship with that member. Then, you can use that relationship as a conversation starter and as an added pull for why a member should support your issue.
With the ability to survey your stakeholders, you will be able to improve your engagement with both elected officials who could have an impact on people you care about and can provide a chance to strengthen your grasstops relationships.