Deep Dive Breakout 1: Bridging the Gap: Navigating your Government Affairs Priorities at both the National and State Levels

Your organization likely has several overarching priorities and legislative goals – but they can’t always be achieved in one fell swoop at the national level. With 50 different states, all with different laws, a patchwork approach may be daunting. Thankfully, our expert panelists can help navigate this evolving paradigm.

Danielle Bubnis, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Colleen Sague, Distilled Spirits Council of the United States
David Pryor, Microsoft
Alisa Mairone, BAYADA Home Health Care

Notes

• Ongoing standing meetings to determine priorities and issue areas at both the state and federal levels help to keep objectives straight.
• Creating listening sessions where state-level advocates get training on a similar federal issue can be beneficial
• Finding advocates who can engage and activate in several key jurisdictions should be a goal
• Managing the complexity of multiple legislatures
  • A patchwork approach to get issues resolved in the states to build momentum toward federal policy change
  • Take learnings from one state’s win/loss to make the argument stronger in the next session
  • Have to have the ability and strategy to be both proactive and reactive depending on the environment in a given legislative body
    • Cohesive high-level messaging is important
  • Use successful advocates in neighboring states to mentor nearby state advocates on what did and did not work
• Cohesion in messaging and among advocates with varying goals
  • Leaning into message testing and polling to fit a state or region
  • Create assets that can easily be repurposed to specific messaging in different states (eg a video where you can just change the voiceover for each state)
• Working with coalitions
  • Bring in adjacent organizations into coalitions and train them to do advocacy on your behalf, especially if you can find organizations with similar goals that are not actively doing advocacy effectively or at all
  • Importance of power in numbers through coordinated grassroots advocacy
    • Value of increased resources and reach
    • Makes it easier to find a specific individual who will make the ideal advocate for a particular issue
  • Steering committees can be helpful to make sure all parties involved can meet consensus around a solution to a particular issue or strategic direction for a campaign