RESULTS – National Grassroots Webinar - Global Campaigns – May 2017
Transcript via captioning

Dr. Joanne Carter:  Welcome everybody!  I recently had the chance to be in Rwanda.  Rwanda is just a remarkable example of what is possible with what country leadership as well as critical support.  After the 1994 genocide, life expectancy was only 30 years.  Again, with strong leadership and a commitment to poverty, it was critical.   All of these made large health aid in Rwanda.  Rwanda has used it to build a robust system.  Death has dropped by incredible numbers.  The average number of child deaths has gone down.  That is a key part in how we can support that key leadership.  Without those resources, the country would not be able to scale up.  That has made it possible going forward.  

I also want to share some positive news that we got about the agency for development.  The next nominee as administrator came from the White House.  The wonderful news is that the administration nominated Ambassador Mark Green.  I don't think we could have had a better candidate.  He spoke at our 2011 conference.  At that time, he was a managing director in Washington DC.  

He understands the potential for eliminating diseases like malaria.  He also was the ambassador for Tanzania.  He understands those challenges.  He played a key role on many of these issues.  It is a very exciting opportunity to work on him ending the diseases and poverty.  As I said, I don't think we could have a better candidate.  

We are much more powerful together.  We need to remember what is great in the world.  On that note, we have some amazing leaders on global education and health.  I am looking forward to an amazing dialogue we will have with ambassadors on how we can end global poverty.  It will be an exciting conversation.  We will have allies in other countries as well as partners.  I want to invite everyone on the call who can possibly make us to join us in D.C.  I want to offer two challenges.  Make sure there is someone from every single group in the congress.  I also want to challenge that every group bring a new person.  

Ken Patterson has said how we historically talk about the ladder of engagement.  We bring in new people from the organization and we have people learn about RESULTS.  Progression of engagement.  The last few months have proven that people are leaping on to that ladder and climbing high and ready to take action in powerful ways.  I think that offering people the chance to come to the National Conference is a huge opportunity for RESULTS and them.  It is a gift for people to see the power that they have and for them to meet all of you and have that sense of community.  Our registration for the National Conference ends May 15th.  Make sure you register by Monday.  We want to see as many of you as possible.  I also want to thank those of you who have already signed up for our Friends and Family Spring Campaign.  It starts on Monday and runs through the 26th of May.  It is an opportunity for all of us to raise the funds we need and to raise the movement we need.  

It is incredibly important.  They are the most precious resources that we have.  For those of you who have already signed up, we thank you.  Please join us in this fundraising campaign.  Some people that we know have advocated that there are resources that we need to get going.  Finally, Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers and grandmothers out there.  I thank you for all of you who are protecting and helping support mothers around the world - not only to survive but also to have an agency to uplift their own family.  

I will turn the call over to Lindsay Plack from the USGLC.  

Ken Patterson:  As Joanne described, looking at the case at Rwanda, there is a lot of great stuff happening.  The international affairs budget covers AIDS medication as well as other things.  This year, that budget is under attack.  The organization leading the charge in defense of the international budget is the USGLC.  

We thank you for joining us.  What are you watching on the federal budget?  What are the real threats?  We are excited to welcome our advocates at the national conference at the end of the July.  They will be having face-to-ace meetings with their advocates.  How important is that and how soon can we make those occasions most effective?  

Lindsay Plack:  I am so excited to be here and be a partner to RESULTS.  We really enjoy our partnership with you guys.  I was a former staffer and I remember my RESULTS experiences very well.  Let me start by saying that the International Affairs Budget is everything you just mentioned plus much more, John.  It is security, assistance to allies, and multilateral situations.  The reason I say that is because of what I am going to be getting into in a little bit because of these projects and what is most vulnerable.  

They put out a budget proposal out in March.  We will see more details in a couple weeks.  What we do know is quite shocking for us.  One of the most endearing quotes we saw was that, "this is a soft power budget."  They really meant that.  The state department took the most federal cuts.  We took a 31% cut.  Everything else went down too.  It was not as deep as our piece of the pie.  The reason why I mention that is because there are all these other things that have to do with the budget.  At that 31% cut that we are facing, that is frankly just an average.  Something like … security or assistance for allies.  Those things will not be cut.  That leaves programs that we all care so deeply about much more vulnerable than it might look like on paper.  

As I mentioned, we will get more details on this budget in a couple of weeks.  Lots of things are leaking here in Washington and some of the details of the budget has leaked as well.  We know that the development assistance that Joanne mentioned that funds much of our educational and agricultural development will be eliminated.  There is zero funding for that.  That is shocking when you think about all the good that has been achieved over the accounts in the last decade.  It is quite shocking.  The global health account - funding for the global funds is top lined to have a 25% cut to those programs.  Again, when you think of the progress made in global health, these proposed cuts have real consequences for our ability to continue down the RESULTS progress in terms of what we are able to accomplish through that funding.  It does shock you when you see the numbers as advocates of the budget, all of you know about this and know the value and the return of investment that we get.  We have a long row to plow here in terms of protecting the national affairs budget in 2018.  

There is good news and a silver lining.  Congress has the power to turn it down.  We have seen a lot of response from Congress because of people like you.  These programs are effective and they are a good return on investment and there is no way they should be cut by 30%.  That congressional law of support is holding.  It is really fantastic.  I will say that as Joanne mentioned there is not a lot of bipartisan stuff going on in Washington D.C.  Everyone agrees that these programs should not be cut so disproportionately and so drastically.  The consequences of that are far worse than the pennies that will be saved by cutting the programs.  That is fantastic news.  Here is where the rubber meets the road.  

The appropriations process is a long one.  There are many competing priorities in terms of the budget and in terms of things that members of congress need to protect or maintain funding for.  Because of all of that, we need to make sure that as advocates of this budget that we are continuously talking to members so they remember that they need to be in our corner with decisions are made.  The act that passed a couple of weeks ago sent us on the right path going into the year.  We cannot rest on our laurels.  This is a big challenge in front of us.  It is only because of actions from constituent around the country.  We need to be vocal.  While it is fantastic that the wall of support is holding, we need to make sure it holds through December when final funding will be made.  

I spend my day talking to members of congress.  I am a government relations person here in Washington, D.C.  The constituent voice is the most powerful tool.  They really do listen.  You can look at different decisions that have been made over the last couple of months to see how powerful the voice is.  That is true with these issues as well.  I encourage you to keep going to events and talking to your congress members.  When a constituent flies to D.C. and lobbies for issues they support, that means a lot.  I encourage you guys to come to D.C. and participate.  We are identifying a week in June where everyone in our community - grassroots supporters and others - can mobilize together.  Quantity and quality is important in terms of engaging members of congress.  If we can get together and make sure that we get 85,000 calls into congress in one week will be hugely important.  We are always looking for opportunities like that.  It does not need to wait until just the July conference.  

John Fawcett:  We have a couple of questions.  

One is a question from an advocate in St. Louis.  Which programs do you think are most vulnerable in global health?  Talk about where there may be weak spots.  

Lindsay Plack:  Sure.  On global health, I say.... pretty much everything is vulnerable.  I think even programs that have been widely supported are vulnerable.  It may get some kind of cut.  Programs around family planning are extremely vulnerable.  I would say just maternal and child health is also vulnerable.  When you are talking about that kind of a cut, nothing is off the table.  I think it will have massive impacts on all programs.  The development assistance accounts from what we understand is in even worse shape.  When the full details of this budget come out, we will see a lot of zeroes.  It may be eliminated.  When you are talking about a 30% cut, there is no way around that.  It is very important.  The cut is devastating to take that percentage of a cut in a one year period of time.  Make it so that top line is as high as possible.  That decision is the only way to check all the other accounts.  

Members are going home and facing constituents and getting yelled at.  For those of you who have joined the event, you know that this is very bipartisan.  They take great pride in the fact that this is bipartisan.  We need to reinforce that.  It is huge.  You know, members of Congress love Twitter.  Thank them on Twitter if they do something positive.  They don't get a lot of votes on these issues on Congress but if they say something positive, say thank you.  Our path in this bipartisan Washington that we live in, our path is to make sure this issue remains bipartisan.  If you find yourself in a town hall and you have an opportunity to say thank you to a member of congress, say thank you.  They love to hear that.  They do get along in some things.  One of those things happens to be support in programs.  We can make sure we know that there constituent.  

John Fawcett:  By way of closing, I will ask you one more question.  Folks are plugged in with you in Florida and Utah.  If people want to get more involved or know about state based events that you are doing what is the best way to learn more.  

Lindsay Plack:  You can go to our website.  We have an interactive website to find out events in your state.  You can find out who our regional director is for that area.  If it is not on the website, they can let you know if there is upcoming events to go to.  A lot of people we work at in Florida and Seattle they sit on our advisory committee.  We are appreciative to have your support as part of our advisory committee.  

John Fawcett:  Thank you so much!  We look forward to hearing more about it.  

Lindsay:  We look forward to working with you.   

John Fawcett:  We will jump right now into the rest of our legislative update to recap some things that have happened.  We will talk a bit about what happened with the 2017 budget and give you an update on that.  We will talk about the actions that you can take to assist in the year 2018.  

Joanne mentioned some of these numbers.  I want to emphasize the tremendous results with congress finalizing.  This is really an exercise in delayed gratification.  The letters you worked on were over a year ago.  It was February in 2016 when we were working on letters for the 2017 budget.  This was so important not only because of the real increased dollars for key programs that congress appropriated but also because it was such a clear projection of the proposal.  There was $2.5 million dollar for those programs.  We saw an increase in malaria funding.  When we started working on it just a few short years ago, that item was zero.  That will be incredibly important as we go into a replenishment of the global education.  

We are moving right into 2018 appropriations.  We wrapped up the final letters.  We currently have two sign-on letters in the Senate side.  One of the letters that have been open is on maternal child health.  The art scene has really targeted that letter in particular as one we want to generate broad bipartisan support.  We also have tuberculosis funding.  We anticipate additional letters on education because of the current proposal has been out so late.  There is a link in the bottom of that slide.  You can find all of the details, background information, and other information on this.  

Lindsay mentioned that the detailed budget request comes out in a couple weeks.  We don't expect it to be a lot of good news.  We expect to be taking a budget action in June.  It will be a great opportunity to engage your action network.  It could just be a simple phone call.  Next month on this webinar we will be kicking off our campaign to kick off global education.  I will put a link to this on the chat box.  It has an investment case about the resources that they need - $3.1 million dollars to help kids in school.  We also have the Reach Every Mother and Child Act.  We have some great questions in the chat box.  I will turn over to Ken for Grassroots Cafe.  

Ken Patterson: Welcome, everyone.  This is the Grassroots Cafe.  [Rock music.]  On the slides you will see the quote from Joanne Carter in the newsletter that recently went out to funders and activists.  They spearheaded meetings.  There were 200 meetings with congressional staff.  They generated 200 pieces of media during this short three month window.  I want to dig deeper to look at the global numbers around us.  

On this slide you can see that 80% of global groups participated in face to face meetings for a total of 228 meetings during this first four months.  Our goal was to get 100% of groups to participate in this and we got 80%.  That is good.  60 of those meetings that you had were in personal meetings with your representatives.  I did some checking on the last three years to look at how those years started with face to face meetings with representatives.  The most we had in any of the preceding years that we took a look at, 2015 was the biggest year.  We had 37 face-to-face meetings with members of the house in the end of April.  I think this was the best we have done.  It is fantastic work!  

In the beginning of the year, I threw out a challenge to our global groups to organize 500 outreach activities in 2017 to really take advantage of this new activist environment.  Looking at the first 100 days and what was happening at that time, the numbers are not outrageous.  So far, we reported 125 outreach activities during the first 100 day period.  This is fabulous work.  People are getting out there and talking to their communities and taking advantage of this moment.  

Imagine if 100% of groups were doing this.  We would be halfway done and up to our 500 at the end of April.  We can do this!  Let's build momentum in doing our outreach and engagement for the end of the year.  We did not have any media pushes this year.  We had a couple of activities to do.  49% of groups participated in generating 135 pieces of global media.  We will see that number go up as time goes on.  Your outreach is critical to what we are doing.  We are moving members of congress up to the scale.  

We are demonstrating to all of our friends, donors, and foundations that RESULTS is one of the most powerful citizen lobbies around.  We are in action in a serious way.  We want people to know that at a time where many people are confused about what to do or are feeling beaten down, that RESULTS is focused and relentless in taking action.  You have proven that in the first four months of the year.  

How do we keep momentum going for the balance of the year?  We can't let up.  There is some really serious threats to our global poverty plans right now.  There is a couple of ideas for us in how to keep the momentum going.  We want a bold plan.  We did a plan for the First 100 Days.  Create a bold plan with working with media, congress and your community.  Ask your members to submit our request to the chair and senators Graham.  That is another thing we can do.  Request meetings now for Memorial Day.   Request your meetings now for the International Conference lobby day.  Follow up on them so you can be face to face with your senators.  Register with the conference before the deadline.  Walk the halls of congress.  Participate in the friends and family campaign in May.  

The First 100 Days success that we had is a great way to let people know that Results is on the job.  We need momentum for the end of the year.  Use this data and stats and get people to support us for the balance of the year.  

I wanted to give a few of our advocates an opportunity to share what they are doing to keep the momentum going on the issues.  

I want to start with Ana from the Philadelphia group.  

Ana:  Hi, can you hear me?  Great.  I just wanted to share with the advocacy training a couple of weeks ago, I found it inspiring.  We are small and fairly new but it was a great reminder to know that we have a group of people behind us.  On June 24th we are bringing on two political academics who will be doing a lecture around the theme of mending a broken system.  They will be talking about the expansion of executive power.  We will follow that with a networking event for community groups to talk about their experiences with advocacy.  We will go right into an advocacy workshop.  

Ken Patterson:  Thank you so much.  Let's go next to Steven.  

Steven:  One of the things that the training brought to my mind was the democracy demands beyond just voting.  The action beyond voting is advocacy.  We have to take action.  That became clear in the training.  I am trying to instill that in the group here.  One of our biggest issues is that Louisiana ranks right in the other global countries in measures.  One of our goals is to have a RESULTS representative in every district.  Joyce James is the leader of Louisiana best.  It is a coalition of nonprofits that focus on asset building.  We joined her and presented at her last statewide congress.  Our goal is to train her staff and then offer the training to the nonprofits around the state so we can get representatives in each congressional district.  That is what we are working towards.  

Ken Patterson:  That is really exciting!  Thank you for sharing that.  

Let's go to Rachel.  

Rachel:  Hi!  Thanks for having me today.  I was really fortunate to have advocacy skill training the other week.  I left training feeling empowered.  I am so excited to work in my community.  I encourage them to take action - big or small and to influence leadership in global poverty issues.  We have a lot of work to do here in Iowa.  We want to reach out to our community.  We don't want people to be lost in the crowd.  We are very excited.  We are in the process of planning an advocacy workshop.  We want them to share their excitement with working with Iowa constituents  

Ken Patterson:  Now I will go to Howard.  He is in Asheville.  

Howard:  I am here.  I am doing good.  Can you hear me?  Good.  [Difficult to understand.]  I have spoken with one of the state directors and the local director of common cause.  We are pretty close to doing that.  I have arranged for a contact in the Baptist church.  It is one of the larger churches in the area.  A beacon is an activist.  I wanted to get a friendly known group on to my area.  I am familiar with many of the members.  Lastly, I know that we have a local activist Justin Goldstein.  

Ken Patterson:  Thank you, Howard.  Now let's hear from Joanne.  

Joanne:  Hi everyone, I wanted to share an experience with you.  In 2015, I almost did not come to the national conference.  I thought I could get stuff done at home without the effort of the conference.  I changed my mind and I did come.  I was meeting with the aid and unexpectedly my congressman showed up.  We managed to have a 15 minute face to face meeting.  Since that time, congressman Donavon has been passionate about our issues.  He has done everything asked of him.  He testified in front of a subcommittee on appropriations.  He was on the committee for global health in Africa.  This past year, I have met with him face-to-face three times.  

He is part of a Tuesday group of 40 moderately republicans and he invited me to speak to the group.  I am really excited about the possibility to speaking to up to 40 congressional republicans.  I have been lobbying since 1986 and as a lobbyist I have told you that there were many times I took action that did not produce the outcome I wanted.  My philosophy is that if you do nothing, nothing happens.  If you do something, then something may happen.  That something could even be something you can't imagine right now.  I invite you all to register for the national conference.  

Ken Patterson:  That is really inspiring.  That relationship has been a phenomenal development.  

Thank you for demonstrating what is possible and for all of you talking about how you are keeping the momentum going.  The last couple of slides are a couple things.  The May 15-26 Friends and Family program is a great opportunity to share our successes.  You will see ways in which we can support our actions in the community.  Having these numbers is very important for all of us to keep our momentum going and to inspire people and let people know outside of the organization that Results is on the job.  There is also an early bird registration on May 15th.  There is a fabulous webinar on May 23rd on engaging community.  Finally, there is some good information here about the Grassroots Board Nominations.  There are two seats being nominated this year.  You can nominate yourself or someone else.  

I want to hand things over to Mark Campbell.  

Mark Campbell:  Happy Saturday and Happy Mother’s Day.  We are going to model a conversation you can have this weekend.  Howard is on to model this conversation with me.  

You ready, Howard?  

Hi, Howard it is good to see you.  How are you?  

Howard:  Well.  How are you?  

Mark:  I volunteer with an organization called RESULTS.  The first 100 days we have had 200 meetings with congress and their staff.  

Howard:  That is a lot.  

Mark:  It has pushed me forward.  July is our moment to build our advocacy skills and get face to face with congress.  I know you are passionate about making a difference in the world.  Would you come with me?  

Howard:  I think I will.  I have been lacking in my involvement.  I like the fact that there is action and this could help.  

Mark:  I think the International Conference would be just the place for you.  If you are fired up about coming to the conference, register this Monday.  

I would like to thank you all for joining us today.  Don't forget to have that conversation with someone and invite them to come this weekend.  Please let us know how many folks have joined us for the webinar today.  You can also email that information to Lisa Marchal.  Thank you so much everyone, and happy Saturday.  

[End webinar.]