DC Meeting Coordination

What we do

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How we do it

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Sample planning calendar

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What we do

Whether it's 50, 100, 200 or 1,500 advocates coming to town, Advocacy Associates can coordinate the individual meetings for your advocates with appropriate congressional offices.  We can also help you utilize Web 2.0 and other strategies to get advocates motivated and energized for your event, and beyond!

Our coordination services include:

• Drafting meeting correspondence
• Scheduling and confirming appointments
• Maintaining a customized database of appointments
• Providing online access to a regularly updated list of confirmed meetings
• Providing final itineraries for participants
• On-site assistance and support during your event

• Identifying and implementing social networking strategies to keep advocated engaged (ask us how to use Twitter to keep advocates coordinated during your event!)

How do we do it?  We're glad you asked!

Our Process

Our Advocacy Day process is designed to take the pressure off of you. We begin by creating a detailed calendar that outlines dates and deadlines to keep us on track.

After that is prepared, our next step is to get your registration information and integrate it into our database. We also work with you to draft an effective meeting request letter that includes all of the commonly requested information such as the constituents’ city and state, as well as some brief information about your issues.

Then we put together and send out the first round of faxes. This is followed up by phone calls to each office confirming receipt of the fax and resending if necessary. Our first request is always for a meeting with the elected official. As the event gets closer, we continue calling those offices that haven’t communicated with us, and as appropriate, begin scheduling with a staff person who focuses on your concerns.

We are committed to scheduling as many meetings as possible for your advocates, and so we continue calling offices right up until the day of your event. When we arrive on site, we bring printed copies for each advocate that details their meeting schedule, as well as master schedules for your staff organized by state and by time. We also stay on site as long as needed to answer questions and make last-minute changes.

Sample planning calendar:

Six Weeks Out

• Conference call with Advocacy Associates to finalize plans for scheduling and discuss content for training workshop (if applicable)
• Receive first-round of registration information
• Create merge with your registration information and our database program
• Draft and finalize letter requesting a meeting

Five Weeks Out

• Send initial meeting request faxes

Four Weeks Out

• Begin follow up calls
• Send additional requests as needed

Three Weeks Out

• Continue follow-up calls

Two Weeks Out

• Continue follow-up calls

One Week Out

• Continue follow-up calls
• Consider posting schedule information (as known) online.

Day Before Event or Day of Event

• Bring printouts of participant schedules to the event
• Bring printouts of master schedule by state and by time to the event

Day of Event

• Advocacy Associates staff on site to answer questions and make last minute meeting changes

We KNOW We Can Help! Over 99% of participants in an Advocacy Associates coordinated lobby day had 2 or more meetings. No more unhappy members with time on their hands! So far in 2009, we scheduled an average of 94% of the meetings requested by our clients. We have trained over 15,000 advocates on how to get heard on the hill. Our training services are offered by Advocacy Guru Stephanie Vance, a former Congressional Chief of Staff who spills the secrets to getting legislators to “listen up.”