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Assessments

Rate Your Grassroots

Ultimately, leadership determines the advocacy culture. Culture determines behavior, and behavior ("exemplars vs. banners in the hall") determines PAC and grassroots participation.

The success or failure of many PAC and grassroots programs can be traced to whether the organization is imbued with a political involvement culture (PIC).

Why is a culture of political involvement important? Because we waste time and effort reinventing interest in our issues if we only encourage activity in an election year, or when a high profile issue is being debated. I have seen too many EYO (Election Year Only) grassroots and PAC programs. They simply are not as effective as those with a disciplined, consistent program.

Here are some culture cues for your own assessment. Portions of this assessment are from TSG’s exclusive benchmarking study of Fortune magazine's "Power 25" list of the most powerful lobbying groups.

Rate Your Grassroots (answer Yes or No)

  • We have a grassroots communications strategy and plan that is consistently implemented.
    • Yes No
  • We have enrollment grassroots (opt in) program.
    • Yes No
  • We experience budget increases more often than budget decreases.
    • Yes No
  • The importance of political involvement is consistently communicated to new managers and/or new board members.
    • Yes No
  • We have a grassroots advocate recruiting strategy that we consistently implement.
    • Yes No
  • We have role descriptions and/or performance standards for our key volunteers.
    • Yes No
  • We seek regular employee feedback through either surveys, conference calls with key grassroots leaders, and/or committees comprised of our grassroots advocates.
    • Yes No
  • We measure our grassroots progress beyond counting the number of responses to action calls.
    • Yes No
  • We train our key volunteers on how to persuasively communicate with legislators.
    • Yes No
  • We see a trend toward higher Action Call response rates, especially on those issues that our members/volunteers have previously been activated on.
    • Yes No
  • We have a communications strategy that focuses on persuading, not just educating our advocates and potential advocates.
    • Yes No