Advocacy: There Is No Off Season
For many organizations, advocacy activity naturally peaks when legislatures are in session. When bills are moving and votes are approaching, the urgency is clear and the focus is warranted. But legislative calendars also create stretches of quieter time, and those periods offer their own opportunities for meaningful work.
Congress Plus is built to support government relations and advocacy work year-round. Here is a look at how some organizations put the platform to use during off-session periods.
Build Relationships Before You Need Them
Legislative offices experience meaningful staff turnover between sessions. New members are sworn in, committee assignments shift, and chiefs of staff and legislative directors move on. Keeping contact information current and building familiarity with new staff before session begins can make outreach more effective when it counts.
Congress Plus automatically tracks staff changes on Capitol Hill, so contact information stays current. Off-session periods can be a natural time to reach out to new staff, build familiarity with members, and get a clearer picture of who is engaged on your issues.
Grow and Maintain Your Advocate Network
Advocate networks tend to be most effective when they are built and maintained over time. Off-session periods can be a good opportunity to grow a database, segment supporters by district or issue area, and keep advocates engaged through lower-stakes communications.
Congress Plus makes it straightforward to send targeted emails, run action campaigns, and track advocate engagement throughout the year. Organizations have visibility into their network well before an active campaign begins.
Monitor Your Issues Continuously
Legislative activity does not stop between formal sessions. Regulators continue issuing guidance. Lawmakers post about policy issues on social media. Committees schedule hearings and briefings. New legislation is introduced. There is often more happening between sessions than the calendar might suggest.
Congress Plus delivers alerts when legislators mention your issues in press releases or social posts, when relevant bills are introduced, and when committee hearings are scheduled. Continuous monitoring gives organizations a fuller picture of the landscape regardless of where the session calendar stands.
Plan and Execute Fly-Ins on Your Schedule
Many organizations schedule their legislative fly-ins and Hill Days outside of peak session. Meeting with lawmakers when their calendars are less congested often produces more substantive conversations, and arriving before a legislative push allows you to lay the groundwork rather than react to it.
Our Fly-In Manager handles the full logistics of events from 10 to over 1,000 attendees: scheduling meetings with lawmakers, coordinating attendees, tracking meeting outcomes, and keeping everyone on track through a branded mobile web-app.
Train Your Team and Onboard New Users
Staff and volunteer turnover is a reality for most advocacy organizations. New government relations professionals, communications staff, and chapter coordinators benefit from time to get familiar with tools and workflows before an active session begins.
Off-session periods can be a natural window for onboarding new users, exploring platform features, and establishing workflows ahead of the next cycle.
Analyze Performance and Refine Your Strategy
Congress Plus includes robust reporting and analytics across all of its modules: email performance, advocate engagement, legislator outreach, and more. Off-session periods give you the space to use that data: identifying what worked, what did not, and how to approach the next cycle differently.
Reviewing which advocates were most responsive, which legislators engaged with outreach, and which campaigns drove the most participation is often easier to do outside of an active session, and the insights can inform how the next cycle is approached.
A Platform for Every Part of the Calendar
Congress Plus is built to be useful whenever your organization needs it: during active sessions, in the lead-up to them, or in the quieter stretches in between. The features are there year-round.
If off-season engagement is something your organization is looking to expand, Congress Plus has the tools to support it. Want to learn more about what the platform can do? Contact us to schedule a demo: https://thesoftedge.com/contact/.
