Any successful meeting requires advance preparation and knowing what you're trying to accomplish. CMF offers a range of resources to get you started, including a checklist for hosting events. When you've got the basics of planning and preparing for an event down, consider adding some elements to get more out of the events.
Why You Should Do This
Douglas Wagoner is the Communications Director with Congressman Larsen's (WA-02) office. He discusses his office's participation in the Congressional Management Foundation's Congress 3.0 project, specifically their participation in the experiment on telephone town hall meetings. By participating in CMF's experiment, Douglas saw how focusing on a single, relevant issue can increase engagement and the constituent experience and make for a more substantive town hall experience.
What We Learned
- Plan your process. Have your goals clearly in mind and develop a process that accomplishes them. Also consider what constituents will be expecting. If you know constituents will want to vent, plan a process that allows a little of that then moves as quickly as possible to a more productive exchange. Consider involving a moderator or a panel of constituent stakeholders to take some heat off the Member, but still make him the star of the show.
- Prepare the Member. Many Members are conducting telephone town hall meetings with little preparation, running from a political event, committee meeting, or floor vote to jump on a call. Members should have a minimum of 15 minutes preparation time to relax, focus on the task at hand, review remarks and (if appropriate) demographics of the audience. Given that telephone town hall meetings usually include thousands of constituents, it is wise to build in just a little prep.
- Personally invite people. Constituents like to be personally invited to attend meetings with a Senator or Representative, and they are more likely to participate if they've been invited. The event shouldn't be construed as exclusive, so post it publicly, as well. Just try to personally reach out ahead of time to people you especially want to hear from and/or those you don't normally interact with.
- Prepare your boss to keep comments short. Members of Congress tend to ramble on with many talking points, but keeping comments short is important in telephone town halls which have no video component, especially at the beginning of a call. Introductory remarks should be very brief (1 minute or less) and include a warm welcome and instructions on how to participate. Our observations showed that Members who did "introductions" for longer than 3 minutes started seeing participants hanging up the phone. Plan to get to constituents' questions as quickly as possible. Telephone town hall meetings are as much about listening as communicating the Member's activities and stances on policy.
- Focus on a single issue. While some telephone town hall meetings necessarily need to be "general," meetings on a single topic have the following benefits. First, Members can better prepare for the calls. Second, the constituents' learning experience increases – legislators become "educators" as well as leaders. Consider also developing a neutral 2-page overview on the issue for people to view ahead of time (CRS and CBO are great resources for developing these) so everyone is on the same page. Do NOT include partisan or biased information in the documents. Constituents' trust level increases when leaders demonstrate the strength to offer a balanced view of a topic.
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