MOAA State-by-State Assessment
6 Tactics to Take Effective ACTION
You’ve identified a policy change in your state that could benefit military retirees, veterans, or family members. What’s next? To make a difference at the state level, you need to be an effective grassroots advocate. Use these six tactics to take action and cultivate more supporters for your cause:
1. Go online. Visit MOAA’s on-line advocacy center at
www.moaa.org/contactcongress. You can pinpoint the top legislative issues using the State Report Card and use MOAA-crafted language from the advocacy center to write an email to your state-level representatives; most elected officials have an online constituent contact form so you can send your message through electronically.
2. Have a conversation. Identify like-minded supporters in personal networks at work, church, your neighborhood association, or other local organizations you’re a part of, and talk to them about the issues you’ve identified and why they’re important to your community, military people, or the nation.
Give supporters the phone number or email address for their state legislators and ask them to make contact and share their thoughts on the issue. It only takes a minute to tell your elected officials how you feel, quickly and politely.
When it comes to advocacy, numbers matter. The more constituents your state elected official hears from, the more powerful your voice will be.
3. Be creative. Host a letter or postcard-writing campaign at your home, a public library, or a local café and invite friends, family, and other supporters. You can use the template language from MOAA’s online action center to help constituents craft personalized messages to their local legislators. For greater impact, ask them to share their stories about how they’ve been personally affected by the issue at hand. Make the event fun, and take pictures, then write a blog post about your event or post a photo to Facebook and ask others to join in the campaign with you.
78 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2013
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