Services, Training, and Publications for Congressional Staff
For more than 40 years, the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) has been working with Members of Congress and their staff members to improve their offices’ management, operations, and interactions with constituents. We offer a range of products and services to support you.
Senior Managers
- Professional Development Training: In collaboration with the House Chiefs of Staff Association (HCOSA), CMF offers training sessions to senior House staff, including Chiefs of Staff and Legislative Directors. View our current programs here.
- Guidebooks on Setting Up and Managing a Congressional Office: CMF conducts independent research and offers guidebooks, briefs, and research papers that provide information and advice on managing a congressional office. All of our publications are free to congressional offices and include: Setting Course: A Congressional Management Guide (our flagship publication) and the 90-Day Roadmap to Setting up a Congressional Office.
- Management Advice on CongressFoundation.org: Almost all of CMF’s publications and advice can be found online, including:
- the New Member Resource Center for setting up a new office;
- a clearinghouse of professional development opportunities customized for congressional staffers;
- guidance on improving your website and constituent communications; and
- resources from our “Life in Congress” research series including the Workflex Toolkit for Congress, with guidance on establishing flexible personnel policies to recruit and retain the best staffers, and the Congressional Benefits & Personnel Practices study, which outlines common practices and norms.
Legislative Assistants and Correspondents
- Training - Legislative Operations for Congressional Staff: CMF and the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown will offer a two-day course on how to excel as a congressional staffer. Topics include: conducting legislative research; writing briefing memos; making policy and vote recommendations; answering constituent mail; understanding the Rules and Appropriations committees; and staffing the Member's committee assignments.
Communications Staff
- Communicating with Congress: Nothing is more important than the relationship between Members of Congress and the citizens they represent. Every year CMF conducts research and publishes the results and our guidance through our Communicating with Congress series. We offer advice to both congressional offices and citizen advocates to improve their communications practices, including guidance on social media practices, staff-constituent meetings, and constituent mail.
- Gold Mouse Awards for the Best Websites on Capitol Hill: From 2002-2013, CMF conducted an annual review of all personal office congressional websites and created awards for the best. CMF’s Gold Mouse Awards research shows offices exactly what your constituents expect and how to build great websites. They also highlight some of the best social media practices in use by House and Senate members.
District/State Staff
- Keeping It Local: A Guide to Managing Congressional District & State Offices: Now in its third edition, this results-driven manual provides guidance specifically designed to help offices create an equal partnership between the district/state and DC offices and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of district/state operations.
- Manuals, Forms, Worksheets, and Checklists: We offer many resources and templates here that you can download and adapt for your office use, such as sample job descriptions, an event planning checklist, scheduling request form, and several casework and constituent service manuals.
Office-Wide Resources
- Management Consulting: CMF provides customized management services on a strictly confidential basis. We offer everything from a complete staff retreat to establish a strategic plan with associated goals and metrics, to teambuilding and improved communications or executive coaching. We also have extensive experience in working with new offices to get them up and running. Please call us at 202-546-0100 to discuss how we can tailor our services to meet your needs.
- Office Toolkit: In our 40-year history, CMF has identified a range of practices that can have significant positive impact on Member office operations and constituent interactions. From 2016-2017, we conducted research with 17 congressional offices to test better methods for common tasks. The research included surveys of constituents, measuring their level of satisfaction with these new methods. The result is the online CMF Office Toolkit. The toolkit provides a general overview of some of the easy-to-implement suggestions CMF has found to have the best positive impact on offices' constituent interactions, with a focus on: Mail Operations, Constituent Satisfaction Surveys, and Telephone Townhall Meetings. We are regularly updating this resource and adding new materials.
