Transcript

Brandy Dillingham:

Hello, everyone. We’ll get started in just one moment.

Hello, everyone. My name is Brandy Dillingham. I’m director of advocacy for the American Alliance of Museums, and welcome to this webinar on In district advocacy, advocating to state and federal law make A little housekeeping up front. If you have any questions, you would like to ask, please type that into the q and a box.

We invite you to share in the chat any experiences you’ve had within district advocacy.

That you think would be helpful to share with those who are attending.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with in district in district advocacy is, advocating to your lawmakers basically at home, in the districts and states that they represent. Your federal lawmakers whenever they’re not in DC, they are back home in their district and state meeting with constituents, with businesses, interacting with the people they represent. So, this is a great opportunity to interact with them without having to travel very far.

For today’s webinar, we’re gonna go through we’re gonna start off with some advocacy reminders. Or if you’re new to advocacy, these may be, first time tips. We will also cover various ways to engage with your lawmakers in the district, how to prepare for those engagements, and how to get the most out of those engagements.

So, starting off with some advocacy reminders. Advocacy is a long-term consistent effort. Policymakers have a lot of competing priorities. And so, making sure that your issues, your museum, is, in their minds constantly is being able to consistently advocate to them. If they’re not hearing about your issue, it’s easy for them to forget about it. Every communication you have is helpful in pushing forward. Their education of the issues.

And every time you touch base with your policy makers, you’re often sharing a new story or new statistics or new information that they may not have heard. In your previous interactions?

Building relationships. This is a big part of that long term advocacy effort. Whether you’re building your relationship mayor, your state ledge legislators, your members of congress, and their staff. It is incredibly helpful in your advocacy efforts.

And while we’re talking about that, for those who may not be familiar, when it comes to building relationships with staff, particularly with your members of congress. Staff often are the ones who are doing a lot of the research on policy issues and making recommendations to the members of congress. They have so much on their plate that staff play such a valuable role.

And the staff in their DC office, they are primarily the policy folks, but their district staff are the staff that really get to know the folks in the district, what their needs are. So, it’s really important to actually have that connection with both their DC and their local staff.

And when it comes to building relationships, you never know where your policymaker or their staff will end up in the future. Was talking to someone the other day whose, member of congress used to be their, the mayor of their city. So, it’s very common for, your lawmakers to continue to move up. And so having those relationships can be very valuable as you continue to, to advocate.

Education. You should never assume that they know your issue, or the impacts on your museum. It’s so important that you’re sharing with them what the impacts of their policy, the policies that they’re that they’re creating are on you and your museum, and it’s important for them to understand some of the challenges that you experience. If you in order for them to be able to help, it’s important for them to know.

All politics is local. Every elected official wants to get reelected, and so that makes you, the constituent, very important.

And do your homework. We’re gonna talk about this a little bit later in the webinar, but doing your homework knowing your member of congress, being well prepared for any interaction you have with them. Is going to make a big difference in, in your success.

So, let’s get started a little bit in different ways that you can engage with your lawmakers that come in the district.

Particularly for your federal lawmakers. They have local district offices, maybe you’re aware of that, maybe you’re not. When you go to their websites at house.gov or senate.gov, you can look all the way at the bottom of their web pages. It’ll have their dish their DC office along with what district offices they have. For house members, they may have, one or more offices down in the district. For your senators, they often have offices all throughout the states.

And they’re often in their district offices at various times when they’re home. So, this can often they may be in one part of the state one day and then another part of the district another. So it kind of varies which off office that they might be in if they have more than one office.

Cecelia, if you could include link number one and two into the chat, that would be helpful. In the chat, Cecelia will be adding, the link to our website if you would like to look up your member of congress. If you don’t know it already, and that will tell you who your members of congress are so that you can look them up. And the second five, calendar for when the house and senate are in session. This is helpful for planning when to contact them.

So, you, when we say that they’re in session, that means that they’re gonna be in DC.

If it says if it’s, if they’re not in session, that means more than likely they are back in their home districts. This is very common for the entire month of August, extended weekends, those happen occasionally. And then typically, weeks where there’s holiday. So, for example, this week, Memorial Day was on Monday. Congress is not in session this week, so most of them are in their home districts.

And you can meet with them in their local offices. Just like you would in DC. You just reach out to the office. They usually have an online form for in most cases and, request a meeting. And be like meeting if you would if you were in DC. The only difference is you probably won’t have a policy staff person with them. It’ll be their local district staff. But as we mentioned before, the district staff are incredibly important. In getting to know the office. So, this is just another way that you can help you can reach out to them. Maybe some of the other activities aren’t a good fit for you right now, but being able to meet with them in their local offices might be a good way to do that that doesn’t take up a lot of resources. Another activity to look into is, joining local public events that are hosted by your lawmaker, attending a town hall is probably the most, well known one. We actually included in our April alert a link to a really good blog by the Congressional Management Foundation. On how to have an effective town hall meeting. Cecelia, this is link number three, if you can include that in the chat. If you would like to review that that blog, as a resource. Feel free to do so. It’s got some really great advice that I highly recommend, and I’m gonna echo some of that right now.

Whenever you’re attending events like a town hall, be respectful. We’ve seen in the news recently, some, not as polite, interaction at town halls. And while that might make you feel better if you’re unhappy with your lawmaker, that is not an effective way of getting them to hear your concerns. So going in, being respectful, and being professional is a better way to get them to hear what your concerns are.

And make sure that you go prepared. Think ahead of time. What do I want to ask? What point gonna be key for me to make? What story do I want to tell? What kind of numbers do I want to use? You know? We 50 staff members. We provide this much economic benefit to the local community We host this many visitors and tourists every single year. We educate this many students through some of our education per programs. So, think about what are going to be in the limited time you have, what’s gonna be a good way to get their attention. Especially when you’ve come very well prepared.

While you’re at the town hall, find their staff person and talk to them and start making that connection. Especially if it’s a federal lawmaker that doing the town hall, they will definitely have staff in the room. If it’s more of a local lawmaker or a state lawmaker. They may or may not have staff with them, but that’s a great way to start that connection. If you haven’t already done so.

And follow-up with that staff person afterwards. And say, this is the issue that I had mentioned during the town hall. Here’s some additional information. It’s a great way to start, continuing that conversation. And being on a town hall is a great way to hear about some of those other priorities that the lawmaker is hearing about from other constituents. And what issues that the lawmaker is bringing up. It’s very helpful to know what else is going on.

And there may be some topics that come up that is that you hadn’t heard of before but might impact you. So, it’s a good opportunity to learn more about some of the other issues going on. And Tom Hales is a really easy way to engage with a lawmaker. It takes minimal effort. On your part. You just have to show up and have your information ready. Some other activities to consider are whenever your lawmakers host, constituent meet and greets. Or if the lawmaker advertises that they’re gonna be at a local public event, like a local fair or that I mean, that does happen.

So, making sure that you’re on their official newsletters, looking at their press releases, viewing their social media so that you can take advantage of those opportunities when they come up.

And this is also another way if you’ve been, interacting with staff. If there are some special events where maybe they’re connecting with local businesses about particular issue that might, also be relevant to your museum. If you’ve already been building those relationships with staff, that can help get you onto those invite lists when there are some of those more limited type events.

Another big opportunity and probably one that that has the biggest impact is inviting your lawmaker to your museum. Whether that is, touring you to tour touring the museum or specific exhibit, maybe you opened up a new wing of your museum, or you have an exhibit that was funded from state or federal funds and you want to show them, you know, thank you so much for so supporting our grants for this exhibit. We’d like to show it to you. You can invite them to an opening of a new exhibit, whether you want them to speak or just to come view. There’s also inviting them to see a program in action. Such as, let’s say, your museum has this really great STEM education program. Invite them to come seethe students that you’re educating and seeing how you run that program. That’s a great opportunity to see you interacting with the community and the value that you’re bringing.

And think about what staff, volunteers, board members, youth like to have present? Like, do you want you know, who’s gonna be your bet your best representatives? Another thing you could do is host a meeting at your museum. So instead of going to their district office to hold that meeting, invite them to come meet at your museum. Many times, you would probably combine this with, like, the a tour of an exhibit so they can actually go hand in hand.

But another thing you could do is work with some of the other museums in your area If you’re in a city or you have a county that has a number of museums, you can have work with the other museums and maybe host a meeting with the lawmaker at the different museums. Or have different lawmakers at each museum. That’s a great way to work together and show the strength of the museum community.

Coming up, we’ll be doing invite congress, the AAM, pushes out. So, what is invite congress? So, it’s basically inviting your member of congress to come tour to come visit your museum. And any way that you’d like, whether you want it to be, a tour or meeting.

Wewe have invite congress scheduled for August 11 through the fifteenth. Now you’re a member of congress may not be available during that week. That is okay. Anytime they could come visit is great. But I do recommend starting to get those invitations in now. And this, QR code actually takes to the invite congress page on our website that gives some tips And, Cecelia is gonna include, link number four into the chat that, also takes you to that page.

And I would just note that when you do invite congress, whether you do invite congress or any lawmaker, I would just say be flat flexible. I mentioned earlier you know; they may be in different parts of their or state on different days or different weeks. So just note that when you submit an invite, that you’re flexible, so that they know that they can gonna required to do that specific date. This is such a great way to them firsthand the important value of your museum and the work that you’re all doing.

And, if you do invite congress, please share with us, that you did have your member of congress come visit. Cecelia, that is link number seven. Let us know about it so that we know what kind of interactions are happening so that in the future, you know, when we’re doing museums advocacy day, we know which offices have visited, museums, in their district. Solet’s say you’d like to take advantage of either requesting a meeting in their local offices or you want to invite them to come visit your museum. What are some tips that we can give you for that? When you go to submit your invite, put make sure that you are clear on what you want to discuss with the office. Whether you want to discuss, federal funding for museums or you want to speak about, the charitable tax act, or maybe you want to talk about, state art funding. Whichever of the topic is that you’re looking to speak to about, make sure that you make it clear in the invite that that’s what you want to discuss.

So just a few dates and times but note your flexibility. I just mentioned that. They have incredibly busy schedules, and it does fill up quickly. So, the more flexible you are, the better chance you have of getting something scheduled.

If you’re doing a traditional meeting, include who will be in the meeting. So that they know ahead of time so that they can prepare. And if it’s an event, you don’t have to give, like, exact names, but generally, who’s attending. Like, if it’s a tour of your museum, you can say, it’ll be staff and volunteers and board members attending.

And where is the requested meeting or event taking place? Are you requesting them to come visit your museum? Or are you requesting a meeting in their district office? In which district office? As mentioned before, they have multiple offices. Now if it’s a congressional office, most of them have forms on their website for scheduling meetings. And so, you’ll answer a lot of these questions in that form, which is so it’s helpful to already have that written out as well.

But for any invite, whichever process the office prefers to use to collect, scheduling requests and invites. This is all information that’s good to have. And if you’re requesting the member to visit your museum or attend an event, note what you want the lawmaker to do. Like, are you asking them to speak, such as, like, speaking at a ribbon cutting for an exhibit or, are you just asking them to tour the museum and then talking to the staff? Afterwards? Or just attending a normal event without a speaking role. The more clear you are about the expectations, the better the office can decide what’s the best course of action for them.

If you’re not sure what the best method is for that office, for sending an invite, just call up the office and ask. They’re more than happy to send you if there’s a particular email, they want you to send it to or if they have a form. They’re more than happy to tell you what the best method is. And if you do have a direct contact in the office, whether it’s someone you met with when you came from museums advocacy day, or maybe you met with somebody in the district office at another event, and you have that connection. After you send the invite in, make sure to let them know that you did so. That way, they might be able to help increase your chances of getting that scheduled.

After you submit an invite, make sure you follow-up, I’d give it a couple of days, but just to make sure I’m just checking in to see if my invitation was received and if any additional information is needed. You may have to follow-up again later on.

Just to make sure that they that they’re staying on it. But, just making sure to check-in after a couple of days just to make sure it was received if you didn’t get an email back.

And before any event or meeting, verify with the office some key details such as, if press is invited. Obviously, you’re probably not inviting press for a meeting, but you might, if it’s an event, at your museum. So, make sure you get that you work that out with the office beforehand because they don’t like surprises. And also clarify whether photos are allowed.

If most of the time, they’re gonna say yes. You can take photos, but it’s more of a courtesy thing just to check with them. And when you’re deciding type of event you want to have and what you want to get out of the event the event. There are a few things to take into consideration. Who do you want to be present? Staff, volunteers, board members? When you were doing your research, maybe you discovered that the lawmaker is interested in, veteran issues. And it turns out that you have a couple of volunteers that are veterans. It might be helpful to see if they would be willing to share their story with the member while they’re there. Why they choose to volunteer, the value that the museum is to them. That’s a great way to get that kind of connection in. And board members do any of your board members have connections to the office? And it’s really great to have them in attendance as well.

And your staff, like, your you’re helping the economy by employing people and their constituents as well. So, it’s helpful to have them present if it’s, event at your museum. And what is your goal?

Are you looking to show them a program that’s related to a policy issue? Like STEM education, or are you showing them the use of some government funding you received? So, you have a state legislator Maybe you want to show, something that, state funding provided. Or maybe you want to talk to your federal, your member of congress about, an IMLS grant that you lost, and it was supposed to help fix your roof. And so, you want to show them the leaky roofs. So that they can see firsthand, like, what that is. So, decide what your what your goal is, when you’re picking and choosing what to show.

What do you want to discuss? So that fits right in with what we were just talking about. Same with the exhibit. What do you want to show them? What’s gonna be best to show the member?

And then is this a lawmaker visit? Or staff visit? When it comes to lawmakers, especially your senators. You have a higher, a, it’s much more likely you’ll have staff visiting as opposed to the senator in that case just because they cover the entire state. However, if it’s a member of congress or state legislator or your city council or your mayor, they’re more likely to be the actual lawmaker, present. So, think about who you’re inviting, and maybe you want to do both. So just think about that when you’re when you’re deciding the invite. And even if you do if you do invite the lawmaker and this and the office offers to send staff, that can be very helpful. You may have to adjust what you want.

To show. Okay. One of the most important things with any interact you have any interaction with your lawmakers is to do your homework. That’s researching your elected officials, knowing your museum’s impact, museum data, what policies and legislation you want to talk about.

So, researching your elected officials. Something to keep in mind is that every elected official is different. Even if you’ve got two elected officials that are part the same political party, they are two different people. They’ve had different life experiences. Their districts are different. Their motivations are likely different. So, it’s really important toto research the individual and think about it from how do I persuade this individual?

And so, the type of research you should be doing beforehand is visit the lawmaker’s government website. On that site, you should be able to find what their key priorities are. What their committee assignments are, and that’s very important because committee assignments are an indication of what topics they have most sway on. Because legislation or funding bills on those topics go through those committees. So, keep that in mind. When you’re when you’re when you’re looking that up. Take a look at their bios. Sometimes there may be some helpful little nuggets in their bios. Yeah. Maybe they know a personal interest in in antique bikes, and it turns out you have an antique bike exhibit. That’s an excellent talking point right there to grab their interest. Make sure you’re reading their press releases.

What are they talking about? What’s most what is, what are they thinking about right now?

Sign up for their newsletters. Follow them on social media, be aware of current events that are impacting the areas they represent because that’s also gonna be top of mind for them. Now given that you’re a constituent, those issues are probably also impacting you. So that those are good to know. And do an Internet search. You can search the member’s name and the word museum and just see what pops up.

They may have made statements before, supported certain things, or opposed. So, it’s good to know what they may have said. In the past. And this is helpful to know where you’re starting from. When you’re having a conversation with them. And setting reasonable expectations for any outcome. Do they do they currently have a position on the issue you want to talk to them about?

If they are opposed to your position, why?

That’s helpful to know before you go in to have that conversation with them, so that you can better formulate your argument. And when I say have reasonable expectations, chances you’re not gonna get them to do a one eighty on an issue.

In just one visit. So, what is a reasonable outcome for that meeting if they are completely opposed? Maybe it’s just purely educating them Maybe they are not as familiar with some of the challenges that your museum may be facing. And so, this ends up being more of an education issue as you’re slowly, trying to move the needle in the direction you’d like it to go in. So, knowing where the member currently is and meeting them there and having an understanding of what a reasonable expectation will be from that outcome.

No. Putting together information on your museum’s impact on the community. We actually have some draft templates on our website, for preparing an economic or edgy educational impact statement. This will be link number five, Cecelia, to add into the chat. Thank you. And the economic and education impact is a great way to show the impact you have on your community. Like I said, we have some samples on there for you to take a look at. You’ll see museums have done different things based on their different needs, their different, impacts. So, think about what is gonna be most helpful for you to share. Economic numbers is always helpful.

You know, we employ this number of people We have this many visitors every year. We contribute this much to the economy. That kind of information is very helpful to have. And then highlighting your education programs.

Finding some state and local museum data is also helpful. Helpful to have. AAM has the museum as economic engine information that does do a state breakdown. It’s all the way at the bottom of the link, link number six, Cecelia. Thank you. That and you can find, the state museum.

Data that we have. You can also try reaching out to your state or regional museum associations and seeing if they have any data that you can use. They might have some, they may not, but it doesn’t hurt to reach out and find out. You could also try reaching out to state arts or humanities councils in your in your state. And see if they have any information that could be helpful about the value of arts, if you’re an art museum, how much arts contributes. Something like that. So, think about what kind of numbers could be helpful to have. And think of and consider reaching out to your local chamber of commerce or visitors bureau. They may have some info information on, local museum tourism, that could be helpful in your argument.

Some additional advice for you to consider. I mentioned this earlier. Always be polite and professional. Keep in mind that you are representing not just yourself, but your museum and the museum field. You want them to have a positive view.

Of the field. You also should keep in mind even if you’re right now, the lawmaker may not agree with you on the issue that you’re going in there to talk about. Keep in mind that there could be other issues that come up in the future where there could potentially be common ground. You never know when or what that might be, but that is why it’s really important to make sure that you are not burning those bridges and that you’re keeping a good positive relationship.

If you don’t know the answer to a question when you’re talking to them, tell them you’ll get back to them. That is and it’s okay to not know an answer. That actually gives you an excellent opportunity to continue the conversation after your interaction whether you had a meeting or they were at your museum, this is a great way to follow-up after the fact with that information that they had asked about.

Think about what message you want to get across. We just talked about that a few slides ago, but that’s very important to think about when you’re choosing what story you want to share, what, data you want to share, what exhibit or program you want them to see, it’s important to know what message you want to get across.

Engage and build relationship with lawmaker staff. Just like to continue to highlight that that is so important for, for your future outcome, and it gives you somebody you can directly contact to. Keep in mind, you know, when we do many of you have participated in our write your rep campaigns And if you’ve built a relationship with staff, you have that direct contact already that you can directly go to. Instead of having to have your letter included in, the mass collection.

Both are very valuable, but having the direct contact really is incredibly useful. Be concise. They often are very busy so when your, whether it’s in a meeting or they’re visiting your museum, Try to be concise. Try to make the most out of what time you have with them.

Always send a thank you note after an event or meeting. A, it’s a nice thing to do, but it’s also helpful and can continuing to build those relationships. It’s a great touchpoint. And they have your information. You have theirs. It’s and it keeps you front of mind.

And always follow-up, whether it’s following up on an invitation or following up on a request you made. Maybe you ask them to cosponsor a piece of legislation. You haven’t heard back in a couple weeks.

You should absolutely follow-up. It’s as we mentioned before, there is competing priorities, so making sure that they don’t forget about yours is very important. So, you should always follow-up. Okay. So why don’t we go to some of the questions that we have in the chat? And I’d like to encourage folks toto put questions in the chat.

Yes. This is being worked recorded and will be available later. So that’s a good question. And one and we’ll also include a link to the recording and our next advocacy alert.

Which hopefully you you’ve all signed up for. Okay.

Are there any issues with copying your advocacy items from your website and posting them on our advocacy section of no. That’s fine. Many other, folks do that. So, if you think our advocacy materials are helpful, you’re welcome to to link back to AM’s resources. Or adding them to your site, noting that it’s from AAM, that is perfectly that is perfectly fine. Especially if you find it particularly helpful.

And, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I did not include to the link to the advocacy alerts, but they are on our main advocacy web page. So, hopefully, you all have signed up for those.

Okay. We had a question about finding, the local staff names. So, the best thing I would recommend doing is calling up their local office and seeing who the best person is for you to speak with. So, for as I mentioned, for your federal representatives, in this case, it’s, senate. You can actually if you scroll if you go to their main website and scroll down to the bottom, they will have all their low offices listed at the bottom and find the local office that’s closest to you, and I would just give them a call and most of the time, they’ll give you that information.

Okay. And thank you for seconding that advice. Sarah. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Cecelia, for adding in the job form. For signing up for advocacy alerts. And that also does remind me that if you’re pretty sure you’ve signed up for advocacy alerts, but are not getting them, it may be a server issue. So just reach out to our advocacy email address that I am putting into our chat.

Right now. And just mention that you were pretty sure that you signed up for them, but you’re not getting them, and we can look into that As I mentioned, it could be a server issue, so we can, help you resolve that.

Okay. I am not seeing any additional questions. But if you do think of any additional questions, you should feel free to reach out, to us. I just provided the advocacy email address in the chat. And we’ll be more than happy to answer any of your questions. We do have an more webinars coming up later this year. Our next one will be in July focused on, year-round advocacy. So, hopefully, you all will join us for that webinar.

And thank you so much for joining us today.