Since the Congressional Management Foundation began conducting detailed research of citizen engagement with Congress, we have seen a clear trend: identical form email campaigns from grassroots groups are becoming less effective. Our research has shown that building relationships – emphasizing quality over quantity – is more effective at influencing lawmakers. (See CMF’s “Citizen Centric Advocacy: The Untapped Power of Constituent Engagement.”)

Recent research supports this finding - University of California at Irvine Ph.D. student and former CMF Research Assistant Samantha McDonald presents a new paper, “Constituent Correspondence in the U.S. Congress: A Survey of Staff Perspectives.” Sam’s work focused on surveying Legislative Correspondents to understand the flow and impact of constituent communications on Capitol Hill. It is an outstanding contribution to the growing body of work in this field. 

A few notes:

• For the sake of transparency, Sam conducted some of this work from our offices last summer.
• This research focused solely on junior level staff, so these findings cannot be applied to senior staff who are more likely to be policy advisors to Members of Congress.

We congratulate Sam on her work and look forward to future collaborations!