Musings on 350.org’s Chamber Advocacy Campaign

At Englin Consulting, we live where politics, policy, and the strategies required to win meet. It’s a fast-moving world, and it’s critical we stay current.  So, we keep an eye on what the innovative organizations we’re not yet working with are doing out there.

A few months ago we offered our reactions to a clever, genre-busting video produced by AJWS (“News Flash: Downloading the Angry Birds App isn’t Charity“).  More recently we’ve been intrigued by 350.org’s campaign taking on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As was true with AJWS, 350.org isn’t a client (though we’d love to work with them).  So the three things below reflect our reactions based solely on being on the receiving end of their communications.  They may already have all three in place, or maybe we’re offering up some new ideas they can try.  In any case, with humility and respect for the yeoman’s work 350.org is doing to protect our planet… 3 things on 350.org’s “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” campaign:

1. We understand you do lots of other things, but it’s really quiet out here.

As a progressive small business with membership in our local Chamber of Commerce, we were excited to add ourselves to the list and get involved.  We work for progressive causes and progressive candidates who are regularly outgunned by the Chamber – bring on the counterbalance!  We signed on at chamber.350.org on February 25th, got a (very) lengthy thank you email with some language to forward to our friends and links to a quick toolkit… and then not much more.

A quick search through the last month of email brings up a couple of invitations to the DC PowerShift conference (with no mention of the Chamber campaign), an ask to support the Climate Ride, and then, finally, last week, an invitation to a conference call on the Chamber campaign tonight.

It’s been a little lonely out here, so taking those personally risky next steps of canvassing other small small businesses owners in our area and speaking up to our local Chamber feels harder.  We couldn’t help but wonder if we were “the dancing guy” or out here dancing around on our own.

Leave us off the Climate Ride and PowerShift lists unless we explicitly sign up for those, too, and keep us focused, supported, and up to speed on the campaign we signed up for, instead.

2. Secure early wins through strategic targeting.

It’s a big country with lots of small businesses (according to the Small Business Administration, small businesses are 99.7% of all employer firms!) and lots of state and local Chambers.  We know 350.org is a scrappy organization with a small staff that leans heavily on volunteer leadership to do its work.  Once this campaign gets going we’d bet it’ll have a life of it’s own – but it needs a solid start to get there.

350.org should (and maybe already has – again, the point of this exercise is to take a look from the outside in) pick 5-6 communities to dive deep, learn what works and what doesn’t, build a roster of good stories to tell about small business owners of all stripes joining the movement, and demonstrate some political savvy. Ideas for targeting:

• Pick communities that have a high concentration of small businesses and high representation on 350.org’s lists
• Pick low-hanging fruit – progressive localities that consistently elect progressive, green representatives.
• Pick localities that have supported environmentally friendly policy –  ”Eco Cities”  like our home base in Alexandria, VA
• Pick localities with political importance (maybe Louisville, in Senator McConnell’s home state of KY).
• Make targeted, strategic alliances. We hesitate to put this on here because we don’t want to advocate for yet another coalition with all of the upkeep and management it requires.  We’re suggesting taking advantage of limited targets of opportunity.  For example, the Board of Directors of the Richmond, VA Slow Food group includes at least two small business owners who have demonstrated commitment and ability to organize.  Pair up with Slow Food to reach out to just a few of those folks and see about the potential.
• Pick localities that you’re running other campaigns in.  Small business owners are a compelling political power right now – loop us in to what you’ve got going on not by adding us in to the big email list but by including us in your power map and incorporating that into the larger effort.

3. Inform, Report, and Make it Easy to Share

We small business owners are busy!  We need more than PDFs and window stickers and another conference call to join.  We need easily shareable, persuasive pieces of information that we can put to use every day, including days we don’t have time to canvass our fellow small businesses.

What’s the thing I should know today or this week?  Do you have a success story to tell me? An example of a small business owner making a difference?  Send me factoids about small businesses in the U.S. so that I understand how important my involvement is.

Lots of this content is already out there, it’s just not out there in a way that’s supporting the campaign.  US Chamber Watch’s Twitter feed often has relevant information. There’s a wealth of news we can use about how small businesses drive the US economy on the SBA’s site that most of us don’t ever see.   Make alliances, pull content, and get it out to us in a dedicated way.

And to finish kind of where we started: remember that by and large we’re not college students or otherwise in the PowerShift demographic.  Nor do you need us to ride a bike (at least not first – I’d think first you want us to work on this Chamber thing, right?).  Segment us, and communicate to us as if we have a critical role in this battle, because we do.