Careful Planning Is Key to Success of Online Advocacy, Charity Leaders Say

Nonprofit organizations have learned that running a successful online advocacy effort

takes more than asking members to flood their elected representatives with e-mail messages.

Advocacy and technology experts say organizations need to plan carefully how to integrate technology into their overall plans and to think through such issues as how to attract and keep activists, how often and when to mobilize an advocacy network, and whether to ask members to take action online through e-mail messages or offline with postal letters, phone calls, or faxes.

These experts offer the following advice to help guide nonprofit groups:

Keep alerts simple. Effective action alerts are brief and to the point, says Karen Holgate, director of policy at the Capitol Resource Institute, a socially conservative organization in Sacramento that is active on issues that affect families. “Make sure that it is clear what the action is that you want them to take and why you think it’s important for them to take that action,” she says.

Ed Yohnka, director of communications at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, adds, “Get a format that people like and stick with it, so people know where to look for what information.”

Explain strategy. Nonprofit organizations not only should spell out exactly what they want activists to do, but they also should explain the reasoning behind their recommendations, say advocacy experts. Bill Bradlee, Northwest program manager at the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, recently sent a message to activists in Washington state urging them to add their own thoughts to the group’s sample messages, explaining that elected officials tend to give more weight to personal appeals than to form letters or scripted phone calls. After making the plea, Mr. Bradlee says he saw the percentage of activists who modified the group’s sample text rise from 20 percent to 50 percent.

“The activists are willing to listen, but we have to explain why we’re asking them to do what we’re asking them to do,” he says.

Give tips for e-mail responses. For those activists who choose to contact lawmakers via e-mail, Audrie Krause, executive director of NetAction, a San Francisco organization that promotes grass-roots online activism, says groups should be sure to tell advocates who use e-mail to include their full names and addresses so legislators know that they are constituents.

While Ms. Krause doesn’t think that e-mailing government officials is the best way for activists to express their opinions, she suggests that groups that take that route can have a greater impact if they also make sure to get copies of all the messages and print them. Then when nonprofit officials call on a legislator, “they can take in a stack of printouts and say, ‘You’ve received e-mail from all of these people. Here’s a copy of it,’” she explains.

Ms. Holgate, of the Capitol Resource Institute, tells her activists who send e-mail to clearly state in the subject line of a message, “No on this bill,” or “Yes on this bill.” This way, she says, the e-mail messages have a shot at being counted even if the recipient never opens the message.

But Hilary Naylor, education program manager at CompuMentor, a San Francisco organization that offers technology assistance to other charities, advises against advocacy groups suggesting a standard subject line for activists to use. E-mail software, she points out, can easily be programmed to delete incoming messages that all bear the same subject line.

Follow up with phone calls. Tom Geiger, outreach director for the Washington Environmental Council, in Seattle, suggests that activists use e-mail to engage officials in dialogue by saying, “I think that you should do this, and this is why. I’d like to know how you’re thinking and how you ultimately end up making your decision.” If they don’t hear back, Mr. Geiger recommends that activists make a phone call to follow up.

He believes legislators’ respect for e-mail as a communication tool will grow if “people actually call a legislator and say, ‘Hey, excuse me, I sent you a note 10 days ago via an e-mail asking for your position on this issue, and I haven’t even heard back from you. What’s going on?’”

Carefully decide how many alerts to send. Since sending e-mail to activists can be easy and inexpensive, advocacy groups run the risk of using the strategy too frequently. “You’re asking people to give their time up to do this, so you should only do it at critical times,” says Mr. Yohnka of the ACLU of Illinois. “You can’t go to the well too often.”

Ms. Holgate puts it this way: “The last thing we want is for them to get so much e-mail from us that they dump it like junk mail.”

Nevertheless, Paul Knepprath, vice president for government relations at the American Lung Association of California, says it is a mistake to be too timid about sending out action alerts. “You have to stay active to keep people motivated and worked up and active on your advocacy network,” he says. “While we all get way too much e-mail, if you start getting gun-shy you can lose out on some really good opportunities to activate people on key issues.”

Give something back. Successful online advocacy programs are built on reciprocal relationships, says Jon Stahl, program manager for ONE/Northwest, a Seattle charity that helps environmental organizations in the Pacific Northwest make use of technology to carry out their missions. He says nonprofit organizations can’t expect their activists to take action over and over again without offering them something in return, such as news and analysis. “Hopefully, by the time you’re ready to ask for action from people, you’ve already been doing your groundwork of communicating with them and building a relationship with them,” he says.

Think beyond online. Looking to online activism to solve all of a group’s advocacy challenges is the single most common mistake nonprofit groups can make as they consider using e-mail and the Internet in their advocacy work, caution nonprofit technology experts.

“Online activism is one tool in our toolbox,” says Ben Smith, manager of Environmental Defense’s Action Network. “A well-rounded campaign also has to involve your members in offline advocacy strategies and opportunities — getting them to come out to public events, write letters to the editor of their local papers, and actually meet with their elected officials in person.”