Who’s Your Enemy?

Documenting the Advocacy Disconnect

Nearly half of all adults in the US have contacted Congress at least once over the last several years. Millions of advocates to have generated hundreds of millions of messages to Congress. The vast majority of those advocates acted because an organization asked them to.

What was the result of all of that citizen communication? How was it received on the Hill, and what role has it played in policymaking? It’s a question we began to look at in earnest last year when we explored the Great Advocacy Disconnect.

This spring, we’re taking it to the next level: A national study of advocates and senior Hill staff to document the contours of the gap between advocacy and the Hill.

We are working with nonprofit organizations with active grassroots advocacy programs to survey their activists, and hitting the Hill for in-depth-interviews with current and former senior Hill staff from both sides of the aisle.

The result will be a first-of-it’s kind analysis of the advocacy experience from both sides: advocates and targets. And it will point the way to bridging the gap.

We have funding to include as many as four more nonprofit organizations in the survey side of the research. If you would like to talk about participating, give us a call at 202-683-8465 or email ten.nilgnenull@hcraeser.

Who’s Your Enemy?

“One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

So counseled Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky.

His advice boils down to this observation about motivation and human nature: mobilizing people requires an enemy. A positive call to action is rarely enough.

This year we’re working with several clients new to advocacy. They’re nonprofits that have focused on providing excellent services to people in need, and have left the advocacy to their political friends. But this year, as federal and state budget cuts are hitting nonprofits exactly as demand for services rises, they’re engaging for the first time to advocate for smarter, more humane, and more future-friendly state budgets.

For these organizations, the enemy is poverty or disease and they provide services to combat it. The angels are people, and the devils are the forces that conspire to keep people from living full, healthy, happy lives.

The leap to advocacy is a culture shock: in politics the angels are people, and the devils are, too. And there’s no time to work it out: politics move fast; blink and you’ve missed your opportunity.

This year promises big changes: big changes to who does advocacy, how it’s done, and how it works. We’re honored to help those who make a difference by serving people in need play a winning role in all of that big change, even if it means holding hands and leaping into uncomfortable territory.

Let us know how we can help you this year.

Winning in 2012

2012 is already shaping up to be an exciting political year. Win this year by building your offline advocacy muscle, working in the states, and minding the advocacy gap.

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Influence Federal Policy Inside the Beltway, In-District, and Across the Nation

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