In simple terms, legislative advocacy is working with individual lawmakers and law-making bodies to gain support for your cause or initiative, for the needs of a specific population, for an organization or group of organizations, or for specific services.

Also, legislative advocacy is the most direct way for public affairs teams to cause change in government policy. This includes helping a legislator introduce a bill that could help your organization or working with legislators to stop a bill that could harm your organization.

IEG Team has an extensive expertise and background dealing with legislative bodies and has detailed knowledge of such bodies and the angles from which they work.

Engaging with legislators has become easier with the presence of social media, as elected officials now use the medium to announce policy positions and discuss issues with constituents. Several key strategies can be used to raise awareness of the issues you care about, and we have a clear overview of such strategies. We know how, when, and where to implement them in order to maximize results for our clients.

You need to be specific and crystal clear about what it is you’re advocating for, whether it’s funding, legislative language, a new policy or a change in policy, recognition of a particular need or concern, or some combination of these. To be sure that your message is one that all your allies can happily support, you can develop it through a process involving representatives from all constituent groups. Alternatively, if there’s an advocacy group that everyone supports, it could be agreed that the message developed by that group will be the message voiced by everyone.

The advocacy message must make sense, be easily understandable to those unfamiliar with the issue, and effectively address the issue in reasonable ways. If it offers solutions, they should be feasible, given the economic and political climate and the resources available to the state or federal government, or to the agencies which will implement laws or administer funding.