The Public Affairs Council awarded its top honor for innovation in grassroots innovation to the International Franchise Association (IFA) for their IFA Franchising Votes mobile application developed by Beekeeper Group in support of IFA’s 2012 Public Affairs Conference.

“We are honored to receive this award that recognizes the power of grassroots within the franchising community,” said Matt Haller, IFA vice president of Public Affairs and Chief of Staff to IFA President & CEO, Steve Caldeira. “Working with Beekeeper Group we were able to develop and deploy powerful tools that our members could use to communicate IFA’s message to lawmakers. The app’s integration with social media amplified our ability to promote the economic impact of the franchising industry in every state and congressional district.”

“We are very proud of our client and thankful for the opportunity to work with them on this award-winning grassroots innovation,” said Mike Panetta, Partner at Beekeeper Group.  “We are all increasingly living in a world where there is no ‘offline’ any more. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the increasing speed of wireless connections enable organizations to develop and distribute robust tools that create powerful opportunities for associations and issue groups to advance their causes.”

The IFA Franchising Votes application empowered the IFA franchisee membership by providing all the tools needed for effective grassroots lobbying within a single mobile platform. Using this application, IFA members were able to:

• Review organizational talking points to ensure IFA presented a unified message on key issues in meetings with legislators
• View conference and congressional meeting schedules
• Watch videos from organizational leadership related to IFA’s issues
• Consult congressional directories and Wikipedia entries to gain additional intelligence on Members of Congress before meetings
• Submit feedback from meetings with legislators
• Monitor social media posts that were using the event’s hashtag, #franchisingvotes

The application increased the “public echo” of the franchisee’s efforts on Capitol Hill. By using Franchising Votes, IFA members were able to generate social media content related to the conference that would be automatically appended with the appropriate hashtag and posted on the member’s Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare profiles. Through IFA Franchising Votes their members could:

• Provide status updates on to Twitter and Facebook related to congressional meetings
• Post Videos or photos from the events to Twitter and Facebook
• Check-in at Foursquare locations that were curated by IFA, such as House and Senate office buildings, the U.S. Capitol, or the IFA Public Affairs Conference

The application was available as a free download via the iTunes and Google Play stores, for iPhones and Android devices respectively.