Food banks in California saw a great need, but there was concern they could "sell" a solution to a majority of their state legislature. The challenge was to frame the issue in a way that appealed to a wide swath of lawmakers, not just those normally supportive of the food bank community.
The problem: food bank clients weren't always getting access to the fresh produce and high protein products they needed, such as milk, eggs, and meat. This is in the #1 agriculture producer in the U.S., a state with an abundance of these products. To change things, the California Association of Food Banks led a coalition of anti-hunger and health organizations to secure California's first-ever commitment to encourage the CalFood program to use California-produced foods. The effort resulted in an additional $2 million in the state budget for food banks to purchase and deliver California-grown foods, which has allowed food banks to focus on hard-to-deliver local products that are essential to healthy diets.
The strategy: frame the language of the "ask" in a way that appealed to both liberal and conservative lawmakers. Natalie Caples, Program Supervisor at Community Food Bank in Fresno, California, explained how she used her advocacy academy training to develop a more nuanced strategy. "The majority of our [state legislative] delegation in the Central Valley is pretty conservative," she said. "When making appeals for the CalFood program, we focused primarily on the economic impact to California and local growers and manufacturers. Money into these local economies and providing a 'stimulus of sorts' that benefitted our Ag community really sold the program. What the Academy taught me was know your target audience."
Excerpted from "Citizen-Centric Advocacy: The Untapped Power of Constituent Engagement," Congressional Management Foundation, 2017. Download the full report here.
