Grassroots Advocacy

The Challenge Create nationwide support among key political “Influentials” for a widely-used fuel that produces electricity and create an effective standing “Army” of citizen advocates to engage public policy makers.  Strategy Create and manage a multi-year coordinated campaign to foster development of a national grassroots and grasstops network of voters and community leaders willing to be active advocates on a variety of federal, state and local issues.  Tactics   Recruit, educate and engage a standing Army of 250,000 advocates, including 35,000 local elected officials.   Aggressively integrate online tools, including customized integrated advocacy database, Letter-to-the-Editor and “Contact Your Legislator” tools; social media tools; and text messaging.   Activate the Army as needed at the federal, state, and local levels in support of initiatives by calling, writing, e-mailing, and/or meeting with public officials.   Recruit advocates to testify and/or submit comments at state and federal regulatory and legislative hearings.   Generate and place Op-Eds, Letters-to-the-Editor, and comments on news sites and blogs.   Create and manage local events.   Create and manage state-wide issue-based “political” campaigns.   Identify and recruit high-level local political activists to communicate with public officials on specific issues. Results   Over 200,000 citizen advocacy contacts with public officials from voters and local elected officials   Sustained growth of the Army over 10 years, with an average retention rate of 80%   Moved the needle on public opinion during the field program in the 2008 campaign, increasing public support by 26 points and cutting opposition in half   Pushed the issue into the political discussion during presidential campaign and moved from no mentions by candidates to making our issue a topic in each of the presidential debates with all major candidates voicing support in the debates and on the campaign trail