How to Ensure You Have Maximum Impact when Your Members of Congress are Home in Their Districts

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share how to ensure that you have maximum impact when your members of Congress are home in their districts. So stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.

0:42 It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them. Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there folks. Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so sorry that I missed you last week. I had just returned from an amazing two and a half week trip to New Zealand, and I have to admit that the reentry process got the better of me.

1:27 And when it came time to put together last week's episode, I did not have enough brain cells to make that happen. I'm happy to report that I've recovered from the totally crazy 30 hour travel process and I'm back in the game. And I'm really glad to be back at this moment. and so glad that you're here for today's episode because we are about to enter a period of opportunity to have a lot of influence over our members of Congress. They're about to be home in their districts twice in the next, roughly six to eight weeks for what they used to call recess periods and are now referred to as district work periods. But it's the same idea.

2:08 Basically, Congress is not in session during these times. And that is an opportunity for US House of Representative members and US Senators to go home to their districts and their states to connect with their constituents. So you should expect to be seeing quite a bit of them in late April and then again in late May. Specifically, there's a district work period scheduled for April 14th to 25th, and again, a shorter one from May 26th to 30th around Memorial Day weekend. Both of these represent a significant opportunity for nonprofit leaders to really connect strongly with their members of Congress while they're home, and to drive home the absolutely critical messages around the impact that the administration's actions are having right now at home in the district, in the state, where it really impacts the constituents of these members of Congress.

3:09 But it's also then what do we expect of our members of Congress to do about that? It's a great time to be communicating with them about both pieces at once, and there's no better place and time to do that than at home on the ground where there's an opportunity for them to see the actual impact for themselves. And we as nonprofit leaders have a key role to play in helping them make that connection. And we've talked a ton about that in the last many episodes. But I wanna really lift up the incredible opportunity that is represented by these district work periods that are coming up.

3:50 And particularly with the April work period, if we wanna have an impact, we need to get busy right away'cause it's coming fast. Ideally, you try to schedule something with them several weeks out, but right now is a great time to get started on that. And because they're home for almost two weeks, there's gonna be room in there for you to get an opportunity to connect. There's two main ways to connect with members of Congress during these district work periods. One of them is through having them visit your program. And if any of your members of Congress, and again, I'm always shorthanding. Members of Congress means both your US House of representative folks and your US senators.

4:34 It's just quicker and easier to say. So if any of them have not visited your program in a while, it's time to invite them to come on in and have a visit. And even if they have visited relatively recently, you can still create visit opportunities that have a specific focus. The extraordinary importance of them understanding the impact of the administration's action, and frankly, Congress's inaction for the most part, but also the games they're playing with their budget bills, The opportunity to see what impact that would actually have on real lives in their districts, in their state cannot be overstated.

5:15 This is super important. And there's no better time for them to understand that than when they are in the middle of this critical decision making. So even if they've visited relatively recently, you can make a laser focused visit that is about a specific aspect of impact. The other big opportunity is through town halls. Now there's a lot to say about town halls, but there are a lot of town hall events happening and they tend to happen when members are home in their districts. It can be for just when they come back for a weekend, they might hold a town hall, but they particularly tend to schedule them when they're gonna be home for a while.

5:57 So there's those two main opportunities. You can absolutely do both, and I encourage you to use both opportunities because they have very different strategic purposes. Generally speaking, the purpose of a town hall is an opportunity for a lot of different members of the community to come together in a room with the member of Congress and to give feedback to the member of Congress about how things are going and what they're concerned about and what their worries are. If you've been noticing the coverage of these in various media outlets, whether traditional media or social media, or both. You're noticing that these town halls get pretty intense and kind of raucous, and there's a reason for that.

6:42 People are really, really upset with what's happening, and this is exciting because it tells us that the feelings among regular community members are that stuff has gone way off the rails. That the actions of this administration are not anything anybody voted for, and it's out of control. They're harming people. It's having extreme negative impact in all different aspects of community life. That's incredibly important feedback for members of Congress to receive. Regardless of where they are on the political spectrum from the far left to far right, they all need to hear this.

7:28 They need to hear how strongly their constituents feel about all of these actions that are being taken and the impact that it's having. So a key thing that we can use those town halls for is to amplify messages about impact of specific policies. And to demand action from our members of Congress. Again, irrespective of where they are on the political spectrum. Maybe what they need to do is if they're a Republican, they need to stand up more strongly to support the needs of the constituents against the actions of the administration, to actually vote the right way on budget bills, things like that.

8:11 If they're Democrats and they're not doing a lot, they can be asked to do so much more. This is as Senator Cory Booker said this week during his extraordinary record breaking 25 plus hour speech on the Senate floor, this is a moral moment. And we are in a series of critical moral moments. It's time for every member of Congress to stiffen their spine and really defend not only democracy and the Constitution, but the interests and the needs and the concerns of the people they represent. That is at the fundamental core of democracy is that it's their job to represent us, and when they are allowing vastly harmful actions and policies from the administration to go unchecked, they are failing us and they need to be held to account.

9:08 Now, there's ways to do that that are civil and respectful, but also convey intensity and the importance of the issues at hand. So town halls are a tremendous opportunity to amplify those voices to make sure the member of Congress understands just how significant this is for people. And it is a great place for your clients, for the people you serve, for your volunteers, for any member of the community who's involved in your work and who feels strongly about it, to come and make their voice heard in large numbers. Because part of what happens in these town hall dynamics is that when a member of the community speaks about a particular harm or concern that they are worried about, what very commonly occurs is that they're not the only person in the room who's feeling that way, who feels that that thing is important.

10:03 And even if 27 people around them came to talk about some other concern, they get it that this is all tied together. And so the dynamic you start to get is that when someone raises a concern about one thing, the whole room says, yeah, that's really important, you need to do something about that. Even though they're there probably to talk about a different thing. So it's a way to rally the entire room to your cause simply by speaking up in a compelling and powerful way. If there are town halls happening, you want to jump on that. And you absolutely want to get your members of Congress to come and visit your program so that you can do much more tailored and structured messaging in a quieter atmosphere with a tight strategic focus about the exact message you want to convey.

10:57 Each have their purpose. I strongly recommend you leverage both, especially during this almost two week period in April, where you're gonna have extended opportunities to interact with them. And it should be possible to get on their calendar for at least a 30 minute visit, if not an hour. So let me talk about town halls in a little bit more detail. There's really three pieces to leveraging a town hall for maximum impact. The first thing is you gotta find out that it's happening, and you wanna know who's calling it together. That would seem to be simple, but there's actually a lot of complicated dynamics happening here.

11:39 In less intense times, typically what happens is a member of Congress says, I'd like to hold a town hall while I'm in my district. Hey, everybody, come to the town hall. It's this date and this time, come on over. We'll talk about stuff. That is happening. To find town halls that are being organized by the member of Congress, your most reliable source is first, their own website, newsletter, and social media feed. There's also good old internet search and you can just look it up. Do an internet search for town hall, name of member of Congress 2025 and see what comes up. But here's the thing. Members of Congress themselves are not the only people who are holding town halls in their own districts or states.

12:22 There's some other stuff going on. So particularly because not surprisingly, Republicans who go home are getting an earful from some very angry constituents and very excitingly, they're getting an earful from their very red districts who are not at all happy with what's happening. They did not vote for cuts to social security. They did not vote for cuts to Medicaid. They did not vote for the destruction of rural hospitals. They did not vote for an awful lot of the stuff that has already happened or is about to happen because of the reckless, destructive actions of this administration.

13:03 So even people in deep red districts and deep red states are giving their elected officials a huge earful about how they don't want this and they want them to push back on it. Unfortunately, a lot of Republican Congress people are very slow to get that message and are still trying to defend it, but they are starting to understand that this is a losing proposition with their own constituents. So that messaging needs to be kept up. However, here's the thing. A little bit like the child who learns not to touch the hot stove. Republican members of Congress are starting to learn that if they hold a town hall, they're liable to get a lot of angry constituents yelling at them. So the conclusion many of them have reached is, well, then I just won't hold town halls anymore.

13:48 They're also getting that guidance from the Republican leadership in Congress who is actively telling their members Do not hold town halls. Because this is bad press for us. We don't want there being video all over the place of angry constituents in red districts yelling at their right wing members of Congress. So here's what's happening instead. Number one, citizen groups, including Indivisibles, they're kind of the primary group behind this. Also move on.org. And interestingly, also democratic members of Congress are beginning to hold town halls in those Republican districts when the Republican member of Congress refuses to do so.

14:32 So they're saying, all right, you don't wanna show up. We'll go ahead and hold a town hall anyway. And they're pretty creative about it. They'll stand up an empty chair or a life-sized cutout of the member of Congress. Some of them have parked a little rubber chicken sitting on a chair to represent the timid member of Congress who is afraid to show up to talk to their own constituents. But then they go ahead and they have the town hall they would've had, had the member of Congress had the courage to show up and meet with their constituents. So to find out about those kinds of less traditional town hall events, you have to get a little bit more creative. And you can certainly check the websites of indivisible.org and moveon.org, as well as just a plain old internet search for town hall in your name of state or your district.

15:20 You can try a number of different combinations to find out what's going on there. But the best thing you can do is also to be tied into those groups that are sponsoring those kinds of actions. So if you're not already connected to Indivisible, if you're not already connected to move on, I encourage you to do that because they're doing some organizing that's very important and valuable for you to be aware of and potentially to connect with and work with to advance your organization's concerns. Okay. So that's kind of how you find out about town halls and how you get connected to them. You definitely want to get clear about, based on who the member of Congress is, you wanna, as always, be clear about what your core message is.

16:03 Now, town halls are not the place to do a detailed walkthrough of your services or who you serve or your impact. Town halls are the place for a short, concise message about the impact that the administration's actions are having and how it's harming people and what you want instead. It should be two or three sentences max, very tightly focused. And then again, what you're looking for is to deliver that high impact message, and then have the whole room echo it and say, yeah, that's right. That's important. We care about that too. That's your primary objective with the town hall.

16:45 It's not to have a deep and detailed discussion about the issues with your member of Congress. They're not structured that way. That's what your visit to your program is for. So you wanna be strategic about how you structure your messaging and understand what each of these opportunities can do for you. So that's kind of town halls in a nutshell. The other big opportunity is the program visit. And with that, I would say for the April visits, you want to get busy calling right away if you haven't already done so, to get on your member of Congress's schedule to have them come and visit your program. You can figure out the details of the structure for the visit later, but you wanna get on their calendar'cause the sooner you do that, the better.

17:27 You call the scheduler. The scheduler for the home visits may actually be in the district office or the state office. I would suggest you start there and say, Hey, we understand that a district work period's coming up. We would really like for senator so-and-so to come and visit our program, and meet some of the people that we serve, blah, blah, blah. How do we get on the schedule? And then they'll tell you in the local office whether they're scheduling that there or whether you need to go through the scheduler who's in the DC office. If it's the DC office, they'll tell you who to talk to, and then you make a second phone call and you get that done. So you get your scheduling right away. Do that as soon as possible. And then it's time to figure out, okay, what are we doing with this thing?

18:08 Do be prepared when you're talking to the scheduler to answer the question of whether there will be press present. cause they probably wanna know that ahead of time, and that is a strategic question for you. I would advise against inviting press for two reasons. One, the presence of press tends to make the member of Congress more cautious and frankly, less likely to say anything useful because they're very alert to not having something they say be rebroadcast in whatever form. And this visit is a situation where you really want to have a more deep and meaningful conversation with that member to help them understand impact and to fully engage with you.

18:50 You may also want to have a couple of participants involved. All of that is likely to go better and get you the results you want if press is not present. So once you've talked to the scheduler, you want to then send a formal letter of invitation. You know the drill, I'm sure you've done this before. If you don't have your plan totally figured out, you can just give a rough outline of the itinerary. You can say, well, we'd like to do a tour and then have an opportunity for them to speak with a couple of the people we serve and a couple of our volunteers, and that generally this is how it'll be structured. And then you can say, we'll follow up with more details as soon as we get that hammered out. They just need to have a feel for it. So you give as much detail as you can, and then say you can add more in a little bit.

19:34 Now, I'm not gonna get into a super detailed discussion of all of how you structure the visit and what you wanna accomplish with it, but I do wanna highlight a few key elements of a strategically designed program visit. And then for more detail, I'm gonna ask you to go back and listen to episode 31, where I did a super deep dive on all the details of how you design a highly strategic program visit for any decision maker, and that includes members of Congress. But lemme just mention a few of the key points that you're gonna wanna make sure you're addressing when you design any of these visits. And they're probably gonna be pretty similar. If you're inviting more than one member of Congress during this recess period in April or May, you're probably gonna have a very similar structure for all of those visits with the specific goal tailored to your goal for your strategic relationship with and action you desire from that specific member of Congress.

20:34 So that's the very first thing, is that any decision maker visit that you set up, there should be a strategic goal for that. One of the things you're gonna do as you figure out your goal for this, is you're gonna figure out what it is that you need this member of Congress to absolutely get about your program. And about the work that you do and the impact that it has. A lot of the time what we're dealing with, especially with members of Congress,'cause they're kind of removed and they've got a lot of stuff to pay attention to, they often don't have a deep understanding of our work and it's specific impact in granular detail. And so the more we have them understanding that, the more they're likely to be on board with whatever it is that we need them to do to make sure that those services are able to continue at the highest quality and volume possible.

21:22 And in the current environment that's gonna be in large part about funding and about making sure that funding is both sustained and is not fluctuating wildly. But they have to get why that matters. So they both have to get the impact of the federal funding you have had and the impact that it creates when that funding is disrupted. And it's not about the impact on your program, it's about the impact on the people you serve. So again, tons of detail about how to structure all of this in episode 31. The most important thing to understand about a program visit is that it is an engagement opportunity. It's an opportunity to fully engage a member of Congress in not only a two-way conversation, but a two-way emotional experience.

22:09 You are crafting an emotional experience and journey for them when you bring them to your program. And at the center of that emotional experience is going to be story. The story of the client experience is how you're gonna help the member of Congress understand whatever it is you need them to get. So you are, I'm gonna say it again. You are designing an engagement experience with story at the center. And you want the engagement experience to be as hands on and emotionally engaging as possible for the member of Congress. So you're not just taking them on a tour, you're not just having them meet a couple of participants or a couple of volunteers.

22:49 You are designing an engagement experience that they're going to have at each point in that process. The other thing you're gonna do is invite that member of Congress to engage their brain. And you can do that through a number of different techniques, asking them questions, asking them to speculate on a couple of things that are carefully designed. All of that is laid out in the strategic design process for a visit in episode 31. But these are some of the highlights you wanna be sure to focus on in your design, always guided by your strategic goal. What outcome do you want from this engagement? And how can you design an experience for the member of Congress. Ask yourself, what can they see that will drive home your message point?

23:31 What can they hear? And from whom? What can they touch or do or experience? And how can you cause them to experience emotions in this process? And always remember that surprise is an emotion. So even if you help them observe or experience something they didn't expect, that they didn't know before, they didn't understand before in the same way, that's emotionally engaging. There's tremendous opportunity in a visit that doesn't really exist in any other container. So you want to use that for all it's worth. A couple of things that I realized I didn't mention in episode 31 is a couple of pieces of follow up that are really important to your visit.

24:14 You absolutely want to do some follow up on social media, so you make sure that you have a designated staff member of yours who is taking photos. That's their job for this whole thing, is to make sure that there's a great bunch of pictures. And obviously if you have participants, volunteers who are part of that picture taking thing, you're gonna need releases from each of them to use their photo. You can set that up in advance. The goal is to have pictures that reinforce your ultimate message, your ask from your member of Congress and the outcome that you're trying to achieve. So your posts will be things like, for example, you've got a great picture of the member of Congress talking with a couple of participants or with a volunteer or with a staff member and a participant.

25:01 Whatever the combination is, you've got this great picture of them engaging and looking engaged, and everybody looks happy or at least pleasant. It's okay if they look intense and focused, but you don't want obvious anger necessarily. That's not really the look you're going for. Because the purpose of your social media follow up is three things. First of all, you are amplifying the fact that the member of Congress came to visit your program, and that elevates both of you. That elevates your stature that the member came to visit. It elevates their visibility. They did a good thing. They visited a nonprofit. Everybody wins with that basic image right there.

25:42 And then the next piece that you're doing with that is that you are reinforcing your core message. So whatever the photograph is of it almost doesn't matter. It's the member of Congress talking with some combination of your folks. If the goal was that you wanted to drive home the negative impact of a budget cut or of a reduction in funding, then you can say, member so-and-so visited our program and heard about the devastating impact that X, Y, Z cuts are having on members of the community. Tag the member. Create a hashtag or two if it's relevant, don't if it's not. But tag them.

26:22 Reinforce your core message, whatever that was, and then post it. Obviously before you do that, it's particularly helpful if you know which social media platforms your member of Congress is particularly active on. And you wanna make sure that you are posting to all of those and then post to all the ones that you're active on that maybe they're not. But you definitely wanna make sure you're posting where they already are. Visits to your program and town halls. Those are your two big opportunities in the next roughly seven weeks. Definitely grab onto both of them. There's a ton of opportunity there and chances are good that if you're part of a national group, they are also letting you know about this and saying, Hey, here's some suggested messaging.

27:09 But I'm gonna really strongly encourage you to tap into both of these opportunities simultaneously. They have very different strategic purposes. And doing one doesn't mean you've taken care of the other one. You wanna maximize your impact, and that's the best way to do it. As you do these visits and you participate in town halls, I would love to hear how that's worked out for you and what kinds of key messages you were able to drive home using each of those two strategies. And in fact, if you've got a story you're particularly proud of, I'd love to have you on the show and we can amplify that and help other nonprofit leaders see how leaders are leveraging these opportunities to really make a huge impact.

27:49 Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.