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Using e-mail as an Advocacy Tool
By Hilary Naylor August, 2000 - Nonprofit organizations with a mission that includes social justice, human rights or environmental protection are frequently involved in either promoting or opposing state and federal legislation. The widespread use of email by supporters of these organizations, plus the (much slower) adoption of Internet connectivity by legislators, means that many are now considering the use of email as an advocacy tool. After all, it's cheap, easy and fast, so why not? Unfortunately, by being cheap, easy and fast, email comes at the bottom of the scale in terms of its impact on the target. First of all, it has to get to the right target, and the sender's relationship to the target (i.e. as a constitutent) must be clear. From OMB Watch: "Hill staffers and system administrators, in sharing their views on how incoming electronic mail is handled, continually make clear that their primary concern is addressing and responding to electronic mail from constituents, and effectively weeding out mail from non-constituents and routing that to the appropriate Member. An additional problem is meeting the expectations of people who send electronic mail. They expect their e-mail to be answered online, and immediately. It's even worse if you do manage to respond immediately to an e-mail, as that only raises the expectation for all subsequent mail to be answered as quickly. Staffers have said that if you are not a constituent, and if you do not provide contact information, including an address and phone number, then your e-mail won't be answered." However, there are ways to both use email and increase its effectiveness. One method is to turn the email into paper. This is most easily achieved by using your website to generate the email letters, and designing the page so that a copy of the email is sent to your organization's email also. This points to the need to see email as only ONE component of a strategic campaign to achieve the ultimate advocacy goal. Emails must be accompanied by faxes, letters, phone calls, Congressional visits and media visibility. When your office has accumulated a significant batch of **constituent** emails, it is time to schedule a visit with the Congressional or State representative. Take the *printed* emails to the meeting and hand them over, saying, "These are (number) email letters from your constituents who care as much about this issue as we do!" If a mass but targeted email campaign is what you want, then the Progressive Secretary cooperative may be the service for you. Progressive Secretary sends out progressive email letters to Congress, the President, and other officials on peace, ecology, civil rights and other issues. The letters are suggested by participants (currently there are 2800) in the cooperative and are sent to each member by email as a proposal. If the participant approves the letter and wants to send it, they reply "send" to the email. Then the letters are sent to Congress people and others noted in the proposal over the participant's signature and return address. A monthly report is sent to each participant. Here is Progressive Secretary's answer to the question, "Does email really work?" NetActivism offers an online training course that covers not only email advocacy, but also the use of your organizational website to promote your concerns, and the use of mailing lists and discussion boards to involve more citizens in your organization. Finally, what about those petitions for women in Afghanistan, or Congress is on the verge of terminating NEA, NPR, PBS, etc., etc. or the FCC is going to charge for Internet use? A colleague became exasperated after receiving the same e-petition from several people in as many days. So he decided to set up a site that explains the problem and tries to suggest other ways of sharing concerns. The idea is that when you get an "chain letter" e-petition you politely reply to them with this link: E-petition.org. from www.techsoup.org | ||
