Advocacy Campaigns in Washington
Using Grassroots, Coalitions, and the Media to Get Your
Message Heard
(See our Advocacy and Communication
public courses and
audio courses)
Your staff will learn how to build a solid
communications plan into an advocacy campaign that will
motivate your constituents to act and get heard in
Washington. They will learn how to recruit and
motivate your stakeholders into a winning advocacy
campaign, how to organize a
Capitol Hill Lobbying Day, form coalitions and use the
media to advance your organization's advocacy goals, and
track the success of your advocacy campaign.
Advocacy Campaigns
Overview of advocacy and educational campaigns,
types, purposes and tactics
Examples of successful advocacy and educational
campaigns
Traits of a successful campaign
Overview of legislative and regulatory limits that
may effect these activities (i.e., Hatch Act and PAC
contribution limits)
Doing the Homework
What motivates your constituents to act
Techniques to find out what motivates you
constituents
What are your constituents' resources and
capabilities
Finding out what other similar organizations they
belong to (information for possible coalition building)
What motivates a Member of Congress or their staff
Now you know your constituents-what tactics are
right for you (PAC, Capitol Hill Day, media campaign)
The Issue, Message, and Strategy
Developing a coherent action strategy (emphasize
specific methods to reach government and regulatory
officials, Members of Congress, and motivate PAC committee
members, and other targeted audiences)
Creating a message for the issue
Capitalizing on your organization's issues by
branding those issues
Remember that no matter what happens in the
up-coming election, it's a new Congress
Identifying key Members of Congress based on their
committee assignments
Tracking and rating members based on your
organization's issues -developing a score card
Defining the benchmarks and measures of success for
your advocacy
Organizing a Capitol Hill Day
Planning cycle
Budgeting for the event
Speakers and training
First timers
Training your members so they know what to expect,
say, and do
Communications Tools to Motivate and Educate
Using your research results to motivate
Writing for a newsletter and the web
Using the internet, email, and social media in your
advocacy campaign
Developing new, additional, and one-time
communication vehicles
Placing your message and messengers into 24-hour
news media
Building and Using Coalitions
Benefits of building a coalition
Finding natural and unnatural allies
Pros and cons of coalitions
Overcoming obstacles that may effect the coalition's
goals
Branding the coalition's message
Tracking and Evaluating What Happened and Lessons Learned
Why tracking is important
Tips on ways to track Hill and media reaction
How to gauge if your campaign was a success
Following up campaign with wrap-up report
Lunch and breaks scheduled as appropriate
All custom training is tailored for each organization and
audience. Topics from this program can be combined with
topics from our other programs and with topics from your
existing training programs.
Sample Agendas
See our
Sample Agendas page for agendas from our other custom training.
Attendees should have some knowledge of, or a
minimum of one year's experience working with, the
media, or completion of one of our Media
Training
courses is recommended.
Audience Size
This program is most effective for between 15 and 35
attendees.
Not enough staff for a custom, on-site program?
You can still train your staff at our
public courses.
Previous Clients
Our
selected client list includes clients who have
purchased custom training, sent staff to our public
programs and who have purchased our publications.
The fee for this program depends on the location,
number of attendees, length, and training materials.
Call us for details, or complete our
custom program information request for more
information.
If you don't have enough people for a custom,
on-site program, you can still train your staff at
our
public courses.
The
program
fee includes pre-program development and design,
materials for your internal marketing and promotion,
all course materials, and
faculty chosen for your topic and your audience
at the time and location you choose.
Our custom program clients provide the
classroom/meeting space, all audio visual equipment,
any food and beverages, all registration functions,
and travel arrangements for attendees. When the
program is held outside the Washington, DC metro
area, travel arrangements for faculty can be made by
the client or by us.
We can also provide meeting space, audio visual
equipment, food and beverage, registration, and
travel arrangements, though this affects program
cost.
TheCapitol.Net, Inc., is a non-partisan small
business, and a Virginia corporation. We are
registered with CCR. See our
Capability Statement and our
About Us page for more details.
TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm, and the
opinions of its faculty, authors, clients and the
owners and operators of its vendors are their own
and do not represent those of TheCapitol.Net.
All custom training from TheCapitol.Net is tailored for each organization and
audience. Topics from this program can be combined with
topics from our other programs and with topics from your
existing training programs.
Public Course
If you don't have enough staff for a custom, on-site
training program, you can still train your staff
using our
Capitol Learning Audio Courses.
Our faculty for this program all have more than 10
years' experience working with the media, on
grassroots or national education/advocacy campaigns.
Internal Marketing
To help you publicize and market a custom program to
your organization's audience, we can provide printed
materials and language for your own internal
promotion and publicity.