Think your legislators aren’t listening? Stop spamming them!
With a click of a mouse, Americans can voice their concerns to elected officials about everything from the future of US troop deployments in Iraq to whether the word “God” should be displaced from the Pledge of Allegiance. But how effective are “point-and-click” form emails at actually influencing elected officials?
(PRWEB) July 10, 2004 -- With a click of a mouse, Americans can voice their
concerns to elected officials about everything from the future of US troop
deployments in Iraq to whether the word “God” should be displaced from the
Pledge of Allegiance. But how effective are “point-and-click” form emails at
actually influencing elected officials? From her experiences in Washington, DC,
Stephanie Vance answers this and other questions about effective advocacy with a
free online course on www.AdvocacyClassroom.com .
“While email is an
effective way to communicate with elected officials, sending spam is not!” said
Stephanie Vance, Advocacy Guru at AdVanced Consulting, a company dedicated to
providing strategic planning advice to groups looking to improve their
grassroots lobbying efforts. “Everyone is looking for a silver bullet, but
sending hundreds of preformatted emails or signing an online petition simply
isn’t as effective as one personal, thoughtful email.”
As a former
lobbyist and Congressional aide, Vance knows what works and what doesn’t when it
comes to communicating with elected officials and their staffs. To help people
understand how to be more effective, Vance developed AdvocacyClassroom.com, a
website where people can find tips and techniques to build relationship with
elected officials at all levels of government. The introductory course,
Communication 101: How to Communicate Effectively to Congress, covers advocacy
basics such as knowing what you want and how to ask for it. Students can take
the class at their own pace and check their progress with short quizzes and a
final exam.
“Clearly, many citizens feel that elected officials don’t
listen to them,” Vance said, “but this is often because citizens don’t know how
to be effective.”
AdvocacyClassroom.com represents the latest step in
AdVanced Consulting’s effort to build trust between citizens and their
government. Students, interest groups and everyday advocates can use this
resource to learn about the factors that influence elected officials and how to
use the power of constituency to their advantage. To take the class for free,
participants should use coupon code “advocate” during checkout.
In
addition, the creators of AdvocacyClassroom.com will design custom courses for
groups wishing to organize advocacy training for their members. Using issues and
objectives specific to an organization, AdvocacyClassroom.com provides a forum
for advocates to acquire information and learn the techniques to present it to
their elected officials, without leaving their desks.
The online course
syllabus is derived from Advocacy Guru Stephanie Vance’s book, Government by the
People: How to Communicate with Congress. A professional speaker, Vance presents
the concepts behind the book to organizations around the country during annual
conferences and legislative days. The AdvocacyClassroom.com is a component of
the Advocacy Classroom, an offline series of workshops held in Washington, DC
and also available on CD-Rom.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb140095.htm