PART 1: Scheduling an Appointment  |  PART 2: Preparing for the Meeting  |  PART 3: The Meeting  |  PART 4: Following-up after the Meeting

 

 

PART 4: Following-up after the Meeting

 

• The most important thing to do after the meeting is to fulfill any promises you made during the meeting. If you agreed to get more information, do it as quickly as possible, then get it to the aide or Member. You may be able to get another meeting to discuss the new information. It never hurts to try.

   

• Regardless, it never hurts to send the Member or staff a note thanking them for the meeting, and restating the points that were raised and the agreements that you think were reached.

   

• If you met with a staffer who promised to deliver your message to the Member, it's fine to call in a week or so to find out if it actually happened, and if so, how the Member responded.

   

Tips for building relationships with Members of Congress

Members of Congress are people just like us. They feel the same stress, and struggle with the same issues as we do. Their days are filled from morning to often late night with meetings, hearings, markups, and public speaking. In between that, they are expected to consider and vote on legislation constantly being brought up in committees and on the House floor.

 

Members make many sacrifices to serve the public. They spend much of their week away from their family and friends, and when they are not in Washington or in their districts, they spend their time traveling between the two. Try to imagine the life of Neil Abercrombie, for instance, who travels all the way to Hawaii every two weeks, having to deal with being away from his family, the time change, jet lag, and everything else that comes with such a trip.

 

One of the best ways to reach a Member of Congress is to acknowledge what he or she has done. Simply noticing positive actions they have taken and thanking them can be very powerful for Members, who often feel overworked and unappreciated. Another way to emphasize your "thank yous" is to make them public. Members of Congress, just like us, want to be held in high regard. They are sensitive to the press that they get, and thanking them with a letter to the editor, an op-ed piece, or speaking up at a public event of some sort and thanking the Senator or Congressperson in front of a number of his/her constituents is a great way to impress upon them the difference they make to us.

 

 

Tips for building relationships with congressional staff

For the most part, congressional staff are good people who are extremely overburdened with work. They lead stressful lives — working very long hours for little pay, and often receive little in the way of thanks or acknowledgement for their efforts. While our issues are very important to us, (and probably to them too), we should keep in mind that most staffers have far too much on their plates on any given day. They may not act on your request right away, not because they don't intend to do so, but because of the staggering volume of work (often emergency requests from the Member for speaking points, floor speeches, etc.) with which they are faced.

 

The best avenue to take with these harried people is to be friendly, respectful, knowledgeable and time-efficient with your requests. Given that congressional staff have so little time with which to complete their mountain of work, the best way to endear yourself to them is by not taking up a lot of their day with repeated and long phone calls. This does not mean that you shouldn't follow up if an aide hasn't gotten back to you as promised, but give him or her a reasonable amount of time to follow through. Ask the aide about his/her schedule and try to work out a time for following up that you both can agree on, rather than automatically calling back two days later. Let him/her know you understand that he/she is very busy, and that you want to find a time that will work.

 

Writing thank you notes and expressing your appreciation for their efforts when they do produce results is a great thing to do. Everyone likes to feel appreciated and respected, and congressional staffers are no different. Think of them and talk to them as if they were our allies in the fight against injustice. Know that mostly they are not trying to be obstructionist, they're just struggling with a myriad of other problems and drains on their time.

 

If we take the time to get to know congressional staff and inquire about the pressures that they face in their jobs everyday, they'll sense our understanding and be less resistant to what we want to accomplish through them. They'll also be more willing to work with us when we have an emergency request.

 

 

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