email

This summer, Rasmussen Reports conducted a public opinion survey that found that only 21% of voters feel that most members of Congress care what their constituents think. There's plenty of blame to go around as to the cause for voters' cynicism. Highly polarized politics, partisan rhetoric, the media, and shows like House of Cards serve to reinforce the misperception that power in Congress is limited to just a few Members in leadership positions and constituents don't matter.

The Advocacy Leaders Network workshop on November 17 considered another contributor – Bad writing!

I admit it. I launched my fair share of grassroots advocacy email campaigns in the two decades I spent working as a professional advocate for national nonprofit organizations. Once a campaign was launched, my government affairs team would track success measures that reflected our ability to mobilize our supporters to take action. Metrics included click-through rates, open rates, and the number of letters sent.

Unfortunately, we didn't have a good way to measure how well our citizen advocates' emails were influencing decisions made by their Members of Congress.

As the volume of incoming constituent communications rises exponentially across Capitol Hill, the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) has pulled together information that might help your office deal with the deluge.

Please read on for our advice – whether for phone, email, social media, or your website.

Imagine you're a Legislative Correspondent on Capitol Hill. Your Correspondence Management System is overflowing with identical form messages from multiple campaigns. Although you're still new to your job, you doubt that hundreds of people conspired to send the exact same message to your office. You suspect that an advocacy organization is behind it, but it's unclear which one it is. You may even wonder if the senders were aware that they sent email to your office.

I was giving a speech to a group of citizens visiting Washington for a fly-in, and was asked this question: "What's the most frustrating obstacle to enhancing the democratic dialog between citizens and Congress?" I surprised myself by responding quickly: "Bad writing."