Recently one of our clients, the Georgia PTA, had their “Advocacy Day at the Capitol” to engage their members and explain how GAPTA has worked to address the issues that are important to parents and teachers across the state of Georgia. GAPTA, a user of our Grassroots Advocacy System, knows how their grassroots advocacy system is used from an administrative perspective; they have a database full of members that are geo-coded to their legislative districts, they can create and launch grassroots email campaigns. However, many of their members were unaware that GAPTA even had an advocacy system, and they didn’t know what tools they had at their disposal from an advocate’s perspective. GAPTA asked Capitol Impact CEO Andy Paul to come down to the capitol and address their attendee advocates on how GAPTA’s Capitol Impact Grassroots Advocacy system can do for them. A grassroots advocacy system is more than just a tool for grassroots managers, it is a way for you to provide your members with the ability to become empowered advocates.
Inform Your Advocates
At the “Advocacy Day at the Capitol” Andy Paul explained to the GAPTA audience of advocates how they can use their Grassroots Advocacy system to get valuable advocacy information. By logging in and becoming an advocate for the GAPTA, members are able to get dynamically geo-coded by their home address and in return can see who their elected officials are, including US Congressmen and State House and Senate Members. Members have access to an online database of all the Georgia elected officials so they can see a biography, contact information, and which committees their elected officials sit on. Because GAPTA tracks legislation with the GeorgiaTrack Legislative Tracking System, members can log in and see the current legislation that GAPTA has indicated could have an effect on the issues that are important to the association. Using the News Module, GAPTA can publish stories and push out blast emails to their members as well, further getting out the message. The Grassroots Advocacy system is a one-stop-shop for all the information an advocate would need.
Enable Your Advocates
GAPTA is also able to empower their advocates to participate in advocacy in more ways than just sending emails to legislators. With the grassroots advocacy system, GAPTA advocates are able to log in and indicate who they know at the capitol. If a GAPTA member has a relationship with an elected official, they can log in and connect themselves to the legislator. Now, when a particular legislator needs to be contacted, GAPTA has the ability to reach out to specific advocates and have them contact their elected official friends to pass along the GAPTA message. Additionally, when viewing legislation in the Legislative Tracking System, advocates can comment on bills, passing along their feedback directly to their advocacy manager. By enabling your advocates to participate in advocacy efforts beyond just the standard call to action, you give them the chance to become more engaged.
Many of GAPTA’s member’s never knew they had all these tools at their disposal. Have you ever thought about what your grassroots advocacy system can provide to your members?