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America must cut the pipeline that funnels young people into lives of
crime and violence. We take a hard-nosed look at research on what keeps kids
from becoming criminals and put that information in the hands of policy-makers
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EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY STRATEGIES FOR CHILDREN'S ISSUES AND
CRIME PREVENTION First Things First: The Basics Congress Advocacy: How to reach Capital Hill Overall Tips Building Relationships Timing and Targets on the Hill Calling Your Members Writing Letters to Members Visiting Members Testifying Before Congress Administrative/Executive Advocacy: How to reach the President/Governor/Mayor Media Advocacy How to reach the general public Note: The majority of this material was taken from Better Public Policy for Children, Youth and Families: An Advocacy Guide by the National Association for Counsel for Children, as well as a similar publication by Miriam Rollin for the National Network for Youth. Information regarding advocacy by non-profit organizations was drawn from publications of the Alliance for Justice and Independent Sector. Material on media strategies was gathered from "How to Tell and Sell Your Story," by the Center for Community Change (1998), and from "The Children's Advocates Campaign Strategy Book," by the Coalition for America's Children. First Things First: The Basics Do some homework before you start advocacy:
Overall Hill Advocacy Tips: Consider the following:
Building Congressional Relationships: You may have written a letter to your Senator in the past about increasing crime prevention program appropriations, or placed a phone call to your Representative opposing proposals that would allow more juveniles to be tried as adults. You may have visited your Representative and Senators while you were touring Washington at some point. Your Representative may even have visited your agency. Yet, you may still feel a little uncertain about how to build strong relationships with your Senators and Representative. We know that building relationships with elected officials is not second nature to most of us. However, there are few differences between working with families and young people and cultivating relationships with elected officials. Building trust, listening, sharing, treating others as resources, educating and staying respectful, credible and reliable are all skills you use every day. Your role as an advocate will be easier if you realize that policy advocacy is just an extension of the work you do every day with children, youth, families, funders and community leaders. Keep in touch with your Members of Congress. As issues affecting children and crime prevention arise, call your Members or their staff to discuss these issues. Demonstrate that you are a reliable source of information. Ideally, your Members will become resources for you as well. A relatively small investment of your time each month - a few 10-minute phone calls - can yield impressive results in developing a relationship with a Member of Congress and his/her staff. That relationship can make the difference between being just another advocate or being an effective advocate and having a positive impact on national policy affecting children and crime prevention. It also is beneficial to thank a Member each time they vote for or co-sponsor legislation that would help young people and/or your agency. If a Member is a strong and active supporter of positive legislation, you may want to further recognize him/her with an award or certificate of appreciation. Congressional Staff: Senators and Representatives have offices in Washington, D.C. and in their home districts. Home district office staff is typically oriented towards constituent services (e.g., a "caseworker") and arranging events in the district. Therefore, if you are calling to set up a site visit or appointment in the district, call the district staff. D.C.-based legislative assistants are usually the prime contacts for the Member on substantive issues pending in Congress; each legislative assistant is assigned to handle several issues for the Member. Members who are committee or subcommittee chairs (and most ranking minority members) also have committee/subcommittee staff in addition to their "personal" staff. The committee/subcommittee staff does almost all of the work for that Member on legislation within the subcommittee or committee jurisdiction. Advocates should establish and maintain good relationships with them as well. Other staff in Congressional offices include: an appointments secretary/scheduler (contact him/her if you want to schedule a meeting with the Member in D.C.); a press secretary (contact him/her if you're inviting the media for the Member's visit to your agency); and support staff, which may include a secretary, a receptionist, a legislative correspondent (usually a legislative assistant in training) and/or an office manager. Last, but definitely not least, are the two staff who run the Member's office: a Legislative Director, who makes recommendations regarding the pros and cons of issues, and an Administrative Assistant/Chief of Staff who has a close relationship with the Member, manages the office (assigns work, handles personnel decisions, etc.) and keeps an eye on the political implications of issue decisions. A relationship with both the Member and the legislative assistant handling children, youth and family issues is ideal. The Member ultimately makes the decisions, but the staff conducts research, develops most of the talking points and drafts legislation. You could even have different people in your agency cultivating different contacts. For example, the executive director could cultivate the relationship with the Member, and a case worker/attorney could work on the relationship with the Member's staff. Return to top Timing and Targets of Hill Advocacy Contacts: Which Member of Congress should you contact? Generally, you want to contact and establish relationships with the Members and staff that represent you. Members listen to constituents much more than non-constituents. Non-constituent contacts may be largely ignored unless the Member has ambitions for national office or you can provide some unique and particularly useful information to the Member. When should you make advocacy contacts to your Senators and Representative? Advocates can contribute their views and ideas to policymakers at almost every juncture in the legislative process. If you have a Representative or Senator on a relevant subcommittee, you may want to contact them at the beginning of the Congress and sustain the relationship throughout their tenure. Renew the contact when a hearing on a relevant bill is scheduled and seek to testify. Make contact again as legislation moves toward subcommittee mark-up and then at the time of full committee mark-up and again when the bill is on the floor. You have a particularly important opportunity and responsibility as an advocate for children and crime prevention if you are a constituent of a Representative or Senator who serves as the chair of a key subcommittee or full committee. Chairs decide whether and when to hold hearings on legislation and who will testify. For any major legislation, chairs typically draft the version of the bill that their subcommittee or committee will consider. Chairs usually determine whether or not a mark-up will be held and when. Chairs write the committee reports on legislation and chairs also manage the consideration of the bill on the floor. Chairs lead the efforts in House/Senate Conference to develop compromise legislation that can move toward enactment. A committee chair can even advocate to colleagues on the Budget and Appropriations Committees for more funding for certain programs that his/her committee oversees. If you are a constituent of a relevant subcommittee or committee chair in Congress, or any other key Member, try to be as active as you can in policy advocacy for families and young people. Key members of Congress include the ranking minority members of important subcommittees or committees as well as the House and Senate leadership for both parties. Even if your Senators and Representative are not on any key committee, subcommittee or in the leadership, they may have a connection to a Member who is. The earlier in the process you make your position on legislation known, the greater the chances are that your views will be considered. It is much easier to change a provision in a bill through informal contacts prior to a subcommittee mark-up than through an amendment at mark-up. Similarly, it is usually somewhat easier to get a successful amendment to a bill in subcommittee than in full committee. Return to top Calling Your Members: Who are they, and what's their number? The Members of Congress (two Senators and one Representative) who represent you have offices both in D.C. and in their state/district. You can call any Member of Congress in D.C. through the Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or (202) 225-3121. To contact a Member of Congress in a specific committee or subcommittee, visit our Key Committees section to determine which legislators to most target on those committees. You can also find out who your Senators and Representatives are at http://capwiz.com/fightcrime/dbq/officials/. What should I say?
Writing Letters to Your Members of Congress: Remember that it is easy to reach your elected officials. Correspondence should be mailed or faxed (but not e-mailed unless a Member or staff person has specifically requested that mode of communication) and should follow these simple guidelines:
Visiting Members of Congress You can visit your Senators and Representative when they're home (typically Friday through Monday or during one of the Congressional recess periods), or when they're in D.C. (usually Tuesday through Thursday while Congress is in session). To make an appointment to meet with a Member of Congress, call their appointment secretary/scheduler; give your name, relevant title/occupation, city and the issue you will discuss during the visit. Before the visit:
Testifying Before Congress Many state and local policy bodies allow citizens to sign up to testify just before a hearing begins, and no written statement is necessary. Congressional hearings are somewhat more formal and you need to be invited to testify by the Chair or Ranking Minority Member of the committee or subcommittee holding the hearing, and written statements usually must be submitted at least one day before the hearing (often multiple copies are requested by staff). It is important to prepare your testimony in advance of any public hearing. Ideally, you should type out your testimony, read it a few times, prepare an outline to speak from and practice speaking from it out loud. This way you can have a more conversational tone in your testimony, and even get some eye contact with policymakers now and then. Try to avoid reading your testimony. Even the most animated reader can't make testimony that's being read sound really interesting. Remember that you can usually submit your written statement for the record, so you don't have to worry about covering every single point in your oral presentation. By the way, your written statement should include a cover sheet with the name of the committee/subcommittee, the date of the hearing, and the topic of the hearing, along with your name, title, and city. It's best to arrive a little early at the hearing room; you can sit down, relax, and focus your thoughts. (If it's hot outside, you can cool down, and if it's cold outside you can warm up. If you were rushing to the hearing from something else, you can catch your breath.) In your introduction, greet the policymakers (a spirited "good morning" or "good afternoon" with eye contact), identify your name, your title, and the issue you are addressing, and thank the Committee/Subcommittee for allowing you the opportunity to testify. Address all comments to the Committee/Subcommittee, not the audience. Your voice should be loud and clear (without shouting). Don't rush; a few pauses can be useful. You should have listened to any prior testimony, so avoid restating what's already been said. Close your statement with a very brief summary of your position, your appreciation of the opportunity to testify, and an offer to answer any questions the Committee/Subcommittee may have. Sometimes Committee/Subcommittee members are distracted during your testimony - they may be speaking with other members and/or staff, or reading correspondence, reports or even the newspaper. Do your best to connect with them using your passion, eye contact, strategic pauses, etc. If all that fails and they're still not paying attention, don't take it personally. Policymakers are busy people, often going all day from one event to another. They (or their staff) will read your written statement later. Make sure to keep within the parameters specified by the Committee or Subcommittee (e.g., time frame for submitting written testimony, number of copies to be submitted, time frame for giving oral testimony, etc.). Follow the advice given earlier in this guide, including relevant suggestions from the advocacy "Basics" and "Visiting Your Members of Congress" sections (e.g., as with visits, try to present testimony as a youth/adult partnership effort; family and youth testimony can be especially compelling). Three tips for those who want to go the extra mile: you may seek other organizations to sign on to your testimony, to give it more weight; you may also wish to contact and coordinate with other panel members in advance of the hearing; you may even plant some questions with legislators who support your views. If you've never testified before, see if you can attend another hearing of the Committee/Subcommittee prior to your testimony to get a feel for the room, the policymakers, the kind of questions they ask (if any), and what the experience is like. If you're testifying before Congress for the first time, check out C-SPAN (cable TV) which, in addition to House and Senate floor debates, also periodically covers Committee/Subcommittee hearings. After the hearing, evaluate what was done well, what could be improved next time, and what follow-up needs to occur. NOTE: It would be unnatural for you to NOT be at all nervous before testifying, especially the first time. Try to relax as much as possible and be yourself (if appropriate, you can even inject a moment of humor in your testimony, to help connect personally with the policymakers). Remember that policymakers are people just like you, and that most of them are looking for information from you to help them do the right thing. Return to top Administrative Advocacy When legislation is enacted, the policymaking process is not over. The Administration must then implement the legislation. While many of the tips for legislative advocacy are also applicable to advocacy with executive branch agencies and officials, there are some unique aspects to administrative advocacy that should be noted. It can be difficult to find the right office or person in the Administration to talk to on a particular issue. Executive agencies are incredibly complex and finding the right office and person making decisions on crime prevention investments in kids can be difficult. Further, executive agencies are highly compartmentalized, so the right person on one issue is probably not the right person to talk to on another seemingly closely related issue. There may be different right people on a given issue, at different levels of the hierarchy: one person (a career civil servant) may be very well versed on the issue, but not have the authority to make the decision; another person at a higher level (a political appointee) may have the authority to make the decision, but have little understanding of the issue and, if a political appointee, may have motivations other than pure substance determining the decision. Finally, there is a high level of turnover, so the right person one-month may have been moved by the next month. Perhaps more challenging than finding the right person/office is actually influencing them, once you find them. Unlike Members of Congress, administration officials and agencies have no grassroots constituency to whom they are accountable. It is said that agencies have a constituency of one: the President. As a result of this lack of a direct constituency (and often insufficient numbers of staff), there is a much lower level of responsiveness to letters and calls. While you can be sure that a Member of Congress tracks how many letters and calls they're getting on a particular issue, there is no such certainty regarding letters and calls to executive agencies, EXCEPT in two circumstances: comments submitted in response to the publication of a proposed rule in the Federal Register, and calls and letters to the White House. When a proposed rule or other proposed action (e.g., program plan) is published in the Federal Register with a specified public comment period (and you submit comments to the appropriate office within the designated time period), the agency will consider your comments and is legally required to do so. That does not mean they must do what you recommend, but that they take all comments into consideration and must provide justification for their decision. If you wish to weigh in with the Administration on an important issue - including whether the President should sign or veto a particular bill - you can call the White House comment line (202-456-1111), send a fax to the White House (202-456-2461), send an e-mail to the White House (president@whitehouse.gov) or send a letter to the White House (The President, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20500). The White House staff tallies its incoming communications and provides regular reports to the President. Obviously, this approach is most persuasive if you can organize a large number of such communications to arrive at the White House in a short period of time. Another way to influence the Administration is through Members of Congress. If you get Members of Congress to write to and/or call the Administration on an issue, you are much more likely to get a response and - more important - favorable action. The chairs of relevant Congressional committees and subcommittees (those which have authorizing and oversight jurisdiction over the agency in question or those which appropriate funds for the agency) are the best points of contact, but the Administration will probably respond in some way to any Member of Congress. Return to top Key Media Advocacy Strategies Write letters to the editor. When writing a letter to the editor, look at the letters section of the newspaper, call the newspaper or check their website to obtain information about letter submission requirements. Your chances of having your letter published are greater if you write your piece in response to a recent news event, article, editorial, or op-ed piece. Make it brief (250 words or less). Include your name, title/occupation, address and phone number (they don't print address and phone number, but many publications call you before publishing your letter to confirm that you wrote it and would like it published). If you have relevant credentials/expertise, say so. Follow the advice in the advocacy "Basics", "Writing Your Members of Congress" and other advocacy strategy sections of this guide. Include an attention-grabbing fact or analogy and local information, and show a little passion! Don't be disappointed if your letter isn't published, especially if you submitted it to a wide-circulation paper (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, etc.). Try again next time! Write Op-Eds Op-Eds are longer (500 - 700 words) opinion pieces often published "opposite the editorial page" - hence, the name "op-eds." a. As with letters to the editor, you should look at the op-ed section of the newspaper to get a sense of what their op-eds look like. Op-eds may be tied to recent or upcoming events, or may be addressing more long-term issues. As with letters, include your name, title, address and phone number, and any relevant credentials/expertise. Don't forget to follow the advice in the advocacy "Basics", "Writing Your Members of Congress" and other advocacy strategy sections of this guide. As with letters, include an attention-grabbing fact or analogy and local information, and show a little passion! b. Newspapers are more likely to publish op-eds signed by experts in the community. As a person who works with children's issues and crime prevention and as an advocate you have credibility to write on youth issues. Another strategy for placing an op-ed is to find a recognizable person in your community to submit the op-ed on your behalf. c. When submitting an op-ed, send it to the largest paper in the area. If they reject it, try sending your piece to a smaller paper. Do not be discouraged if your first op-ed is not published; it sometimes takes a few submissions. d. Call the paper to follow-up on your op-ed 3-4 days after you submitted it. You can "pitch" the importance of the issue to their readers. (Then, don't call again until your next op-ed submission.) |
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