As a new RESULTS volunteer advocate, there are many skills to learn! We’ve created these 7 modules to help you brush up on advocacy skills, dive into current campaigns, and become familiar with support tools RESULTS has available to assist you in your advocacy. Each of these lessons will equip you will the basic skills you will need to become a powerful RESULTS advocate!
These are not meant to be completed all in one day. We encourage you to break up these lessons into multiple days over time. Each lesson will take approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour and they all include action items for you to dive right in.
One of the first steps toward becoming an effective activist is learning how to speak powerfully about the issues. To do so, we must be educated about what we are talking about! RESULTS regularly provides informational tools for our advocates to learn about the issues on an ongoing basis throughout the year.
Action Item: Read through the learning materials and take notes on the following:
Learning Materials:
RESULTS created the “Laser Talk” which is an easy tool for our volunteers to create short and compelling talks that are less than 2 minutes long. These are the backbone of our advocacy work! We use Laser Talks when we meet with our members of Congress and their aides, when we call our editorial boards, and when we invite people to a RESULTS event.
Every month, RESULTS produces a new Laser Talk that corresponds with the issues we are currently working on. We invite you to write your own Laser Talks about the issues too!
Action Items:
RESULTS empowers our volunteers to share personal stories to convey images that facts and figures cannot. It is important for you to create a personal story, because it will make your advocacy even more effective. It does not have to be an epic statement or life-altering event that brings you to this work; you just have to speak from the heart!
Action Items:
One of the first actions you can take as a RESULTS volunteer is communicating with your member of Congress through an email, letter or phone call.
This may be your first time reaching out to your members of Congress, and that’s okay! RESULTS provides all the necessary tools and support you need to effectively communicate your request.
If you need to learn how to reach your member of Congress, you can find out the name and contact e-mail for your member of Congress on the RESULTS website by using the Legislator Lookup. Hint: you can also find their DC office phone number here!
Action Items:
A key action to RESULTS advocacy is publishing letters to the editor in the local media. One of the best kept secrets from Capitol Hill is the enormous influence of media on congressional decisions — not just cable news or The New York Times — but the local papers in the communities that members of Congress represent.
Action Items:
Organizing meetings with our members of Congress and their staff is a cornerstone of RESULTS advocacy. By reviewing these learning materials, you will familiarize yourself with the process to set up a meeting with your member of Congress, learn more about who represents you, and have all the tools to make a meeting happen.
Action Items:
As a RESULTS advocate, you will be sharing about our work, the organization, and our mission quite often! Use these learning materials to help you speak powerfully about RESULTS and our mission.
Action Items:
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