5 Tips for Planning a State Lobby Day
Many organizations find that holding a lobby day at their state capitol can be a meaningful way to engage both their membership and their state legislators. In the digital age, we often overlook the power of personal interaction. This applies to advocacy efforts as well. If your organization is considering hosting a legislator lobby day in your state, make sure you come prepared and know how to make the greatest impact on your legislators in order to create lasting change. Here are some tips:
1 — Start planning early
In the U.S., state legislatures have autonomy from the federal government and from other states. This means that each state legislature determines its own schedule. If you’re not sure when your state legislature is in session, check out their website. If your organization spans across several states, check out this comprehensive guide from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
Once you have an idea of when your state legislature is in session, you can begin to map out when you should hold your advocacy day. Beyond planning a day when your state legislators will be in session, you also want to make sure you start planning early to give the legislators’ schedulers enough notice in order to make it on their calendar, and give your members enough notice to get it on their calendars, too!
2 — Have a representative member base
Speaking of getting on members’ calendars, you’ll not only want to make sure that your members attend but also that the members who do attend are representative of the legislators’ districts. Experienced advocates will tell you that in order to make an impact on your legislators’ decision making, you should not waste your time by flooding their offices or inboxes with stories from people outside of their district. Their loyalty lies with those that they represent. In order to make your lobby day a success, you should ensure that the legislators you meet with represent the members you bring.
How do you do that if you don’t already know your members’ state legislative districts? Well, it can be as simple as uploading a spreadsheet of addresses to a tool like District Match. You can find out your members’ legislative districts and elected officials in 3 easy steps:
- Upload your spreadsheet
- Select the districts and officials you want matched
- Download your results!
If you’re looking for a way to add this information to your member database, check out this tutorial.
3 — Have a clear message
Once you have the district data for your members, you can choose to target specific legislators based on their voting record or party affiliation, or you can attempt to have your members meet with every legislator you can secure meetings with. This may depend on the issue you’re choosing to focus on that day, the size of your legislature (sorry if you’re from New Hampshire and want to speak to all 450 state representatives), and/or the number of members you’re able to rally for your lobby day.
Communicate your message for the day to your members. Give your members talking points to make sure they hit the main points of your message. Include statistics and figures when helpful. If, for instance, you were activating the Philadelphia 76ers to lobby for more basketballs for PA public schools, your talking points might be:
- We love basketball (“10/10 76ers love basketball!”)
- Kids love basketball (“9/10 Philadelphians under the age of 18 love basketball!”)
- Basketballs aren’t that expensive (under $20!)
- Basketballs improve health metrics across the board (“Having more basketballs will improve the cardiovascular health of our commonwealth by 30%!”)
- Vote on Senate Bill #1776 on March 31st to increase the number of basketballs in our schools.
Come prepared with materials and supporting documents for your issue. Make sure that after you leave your meetings, you legislators know:
- What your ask was
- Why they should support it
- What action they can take
4 — Bring engaging materials
Everyone loves a visual aid. Don’t worry if you don’t have an in-house graphic designer, or the resources to hire someone outside your organization. There are a plethora of free or low-cost tools that will turn your data into compelling visuals. You don’t need to be artistic yourself, either. Tools like Canva and Venngage come with preloaded templates that help you make smart design choices.
Using our example of the Philadelphia 76ers from above, we created this dynamic visual to bring to our Pennsylvania State Senate lobby day in order to get more funding for public school basketball programming in State Senate District 1. This graphic pulls in district information for the members attending our lobby day that we retrieved through District Match. You could also visualize things like dollars spent per district, the number of students in a district, health metrics, or anything else that supports your talking points.
5 — Follow up!
Your work isn’t done when the clock strikes midnight on lobby day. You want to be in touch with all involved in the day to make sure your message was communicated effectively and to keep your member base engaged. To make sure your efforts aren’t in vain, be sure to follow up with everyone involved in your lobby day. Send electronic copies of the materials you shared with the legislators and remind them of the action(s) they can take to support your organization’s cause. Send out thank yous to your members who participated and let them know about the next activity they can partake in. Track the legislation you want changed and share success stories to motivate more of your members to participate in the next lobby day.
Planning a state lobby day is a lot of work, but it can be a really effective way to activate your member base and create lasting change in your state. Just make sure to center on your message, have a strong representation from varying districts, and communicate effectively with all involved and you’ll have a successful lobby day! And if you need help matching your member base to legislative districts, reach out.
