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Take Five...Advocacy Made Easy for Busy People
TAKE FIVE...Advocacy Made Easy for Busy People
Just like the famous Paul Desmond refrain, here’s something deceptively simple — and as likely to stay with you.
Experienced advocates know three things.
- (1) Phone and letter campaigns remain effective. Elected officials (and their staff) note the issues that generate the most letters and calls; they are a useful gauge of community support for/against an issue. But,
- (2) Broad appeals for action don’t work. Alerts that sound too general, or too complicated, get set aside.
- (3) The competition for attention is very keen. By now, there are so many groups sending out emails and “snail mails” requesting action that readers ignore much of what comes their way. And groups with tight budgets can’t afford to waste scarce staff time or resources on maintaining lists, postage, paper/emails, for long alerts that don’t get results.
If you want your appeals to produce results: make taking action easy; make it time-limited; & design it to fit into busy lives. Here’s one version that gets results.
A few years ago U of Washington social work students tried to get other students to write letters about legislative proposals they thought might harm children, but the answers they got just seemed like excuses. In response to their pleas, people said:
- I don't have time
- I don't know what to say
- I don't know my legislator
- I don't know the address
- I don't have any envelopes/paper/stamps
- I can't.
To their credit, the students took the “excuses” seriously, treating them as real barriers to be eliminated. In the process they developed "TAKE FIVE FOR KIDS" -- a way to be an advocate for children in just five minutes or less.
At a strategically located table, during lunch hour, they provided answers to all the excuses: sample letters, brief fact sheets, people to answer questions, blank paper/ envelopes/stamps, plus the names and addresses of all the legislators. Visible to all was a big sign reading: TAKE FIVE FOR KIDS.
Right off the bat, they generated a couple dozen letters. A week later they were back at their table with new information — and this time they got twice as many letters. Before long, people were referring to the take five tables and inventing variations.
Some advocates have adapted the idea by renaming and re-formatting their legislative alerts, with a section for actions you can take in 5 minutes or less: TAKE FIVE FOR ... (HOUSING, or WHALES, or ...). Like the students at their table, these alerts include all the key ingredients, in a simple, easy-to-accomplish format that enables concerned citizens to fit advocacy into busy lives.
On a single page, usually within a box, are brief information, brief messages, and the information needed to contact a legislator by mail, email, or phone.
People who get TAKE FIVE (a.k.a. Legislative) alerts in written form say they prop them on their telephones or computer keyboards every week until they've made their calls or written letters. (Guilt, they admit, is part of why it works: "You mean I couldn't take 5 minutes a week to help out?") Those who work for public agencies get their TAKE FIVE alerts at home; they cannot lobby while on the public payroll, but on their own time they are citizens like anybody else, and lobbying is allowed.
TAKE FIVE TABLES are popping up everywhere: in the lobbies of social agencies and hospitals, after services on Sunday, at PTA or professional group meetings. Some bring laptops or cell phones and let participants send a message immediately.
Take Five alerts and tables work to: generate letters/emails/calls, ... sign up members for a grassroots network, ... win involvement in a community education campaign. People who take part say that just knowing they can be advocates for something they care about, in five minutes or less, is empowering.
Tips: because they get so much computer-generated mail, many legislative offices make a distinction between "astro-turf messages" (i.e., identical cards or letters that might all be signed by the same person using different pens) and real grass roots messages. Both are noticed, but real grass roots communications get more attention.
To make sure the letters/emails/calls generated by your Take Five Tables fall in the "real" category, even when the basic message is identical, have senders do three things;
- sign and print their names (if the message is written)
- give their home address
- add a personal note - even something as brief as "I really care"; or, "this means a lot to me", makes clear this isn't astro-turf. The possibilities are endless...
Prepared by Nancy Amidei for the Civic Engagement Project.