We have micro-finance, microbiology, and Micronesia; what we need now is micro-lobbying.Any small group of people that is committed to lobbying lawmakers around a set of issues is a micro-lobby. My own mico-lobby, TimPAC, is dedicated to lobbying Illinois state legislators on behalf of public education, health care, and human rights.
Here's the problem. Bills get introduced on the floor of the House or the Senate; they're either good, bad, or ugly. When they're particularly egregious, or brilliant, then interest groups will call upon their members to get involved by making a phone call, sending an email, etc.
The problem is that the response rate is usually very low. People are willing to let others make the calls, and the net result is that very few calls actually get made relative to the number possible. I think it's about relationships. I'm more likely to put down the Doritos and make a call if I know a friend is doing it; if it's just some guy in Springfield, well, that's not enough to combat inertia.
The answer is to micro-lobby. I'm a person obsessed with legislation; I track the action alerts of 3-4 organizations that I support, and I know I can influence five close friends. It isn't very hard for me to get five of my smartest friends committed to sending an email or making a call when I ask them to. And each of my five friends has a small circle of people that they can get commitments from as well. So, leveraging my close relationships, I now have a larger group-- my coalition, that can be relied upon to get off the couch and get on the horn when there's an important bill up for a vote. Micro-lobbies build coalitions, and it's based on strong personal relationships. It's more effective to aim for your small circle of totally reliable people than it is to simply broadcast a distress signal to people with whom you have thin relationships.
Even if each member of my micro-lobby only brings in one other person each, I now have eleven people contacting legislators, whereas before, it would have been me alone. I can't tell you how many times I've called my representative and been told that mine was the only call they've received on the issue. Eleven calls is a lot.
If your coalition grows, there's a good chance that you can get multiple callers within a legislative or senate district. In my opinion, if you can produce five phone calls to a single representative, then you are a power player in the state of Illinois. Representatives often vote with their finger to the wind, and if it's your five calls versus the silence on the other side, you're going to prevail most of the time.
A micro-lobby is built on relationships, but a coalition is built on technology. Seek out members who are connected to the internet and Twitter. Time is of the essence in a micro-lobby. If your action call sits for more than a day, it's not going to get action. Learn how to make a Google form to collect responses, and then report on the responses in some social media setting. The more your coalition feels that it is accomplishing, the stronger it will be. You can't be effective if you're reaching out to people who don't check their email every day.
Once you've committed to micro-lobbying, there are all kinds of things you can do to guarantee a rapid, authentic response from your group. More on that in a later post.
So that's micro-lobbying in a nutshell. Anyone can do this. But please don't if you're all about privatizing the schools.
Posts
