While the overarching goal of grassroots and grasstops engagement with candidates is the same, the two tactics employ different strategies in service of that goal. Grassroots engagement demonstrates your narrative power through storytelling and people power showing that voters support your policy issues.
Grasstops engagement involves reaching candidates through influential individuals who have access to or credibility with them, such as major donors, business leaders, board members, faith leaders, or other respected community figures. It leverages trusted relationships to demonstrate influence and strengthen connections.
To use this tactic in a 501(c)(3) context, it is important to reach out to all candidates for a given office. For that reason, if trying to leverage grasstops engagement, it will be important to consider your organization’s network broadly, to find pathways to each candidate.
Grasstops meetings are a key opportunity for your organization to establish connections with and build relationships with candidates.
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- Do your homework before grasstops engagement. As always, learn where candidates stand on your issues. But in this case, that homework is research on the candidates as people and potential policymakers that will inform how you proceed with grasstops meetings – what are their priorities, who is in their circle of influence, and where is there overlap with your network?
- Utilize powermapping. Power mapping is a tool for identifying, analyzing, and influencing key players to achieve a specific goal: increasing a candidate’s knowledge of and support for your policy issues.
- Identify the players. Who influences the candidate? (i.e., who are the key “players”?)
- Map their influence and support for your issues.
- Analyze relationships between the players and the candidate.
- Look for overlap between the players and your network.
- Utilize powermapping. Power mapping is a tool for identifying, analyzing, and influencing key players to achieve a specific goal: increasing a candidate’s knowledge of and support for your policy issues.
- Do your homework before grasstops engagement. As always, learn where candidates stand on your issues. But in this case, that homework is research on the candidates as people and potential policymakers that will inform how you proceed with grasstops meetings – what are their priorities, who is in their circle of influence, and where is there overlap with your network?
- For support power-mapping, you can find a worksheet here to help you identify your pathways of influence and conduct in-depth research.
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- Do your policy research before engaging candidates. This doesn’t only mean learning where candidates stand on your policy issues. It is equally, or arguably more, important to map the candidates’ policy priorities and look for overlaps and connections between your priorities and theirs.
- Sample questions to consider as you engage in power mapping and policy research.
- Who are the lawmaker’s top staff, advisors, and donors? Which campaign relationships do they appear to most closely maintain?
- Who manages their communications and media relations?
- Where does the lawmaker live? Are there child care centers or Head Start programs in their area?
- Do they have children or other family members who may be familiar with PN-3 issues?
- What issues do they care most about? What do they talk about the most? What moves them?
- Identify your most effective grasstops supporters. After power mapping, identify which of your key stakeholders have direct connections to the candidates. This shared connection will make their meeting on your issues more effective.
- Do you and the candidates have any overlapping donors?
- Is anyone on your board, staff, or in your organization’s network close to them or those who influence them?
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- To begin mapping relationships and connections between key stakeholders and members of your network, try using this worksheet to help build a personal relationships profile.
- Prepare your grasstops supporters. Your grasstops supporters, especially those connected to candidates, are strong advocates for your policy issues. To ensure they are as effective as possible in communicating the importance of your issues, provide them with relevant information to engage with the candidate.
- Homework on the candidate’s position on your issues.
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- Organizational materials about the problems and policy solutions relevant to your issues.
- Approved key messages or talking points to help ensure supporters communicate consistent, accurate information about your issue.
- Use grasstops meetings with candidates to build relationships. Grasstops meetings should largely follow the structure of grassroots meetings; however, they should also take the opportunity to build longer-term relationships on behalf of your organization.
- Discuss their shared connection. Your grasstops supporters who also support the candidate are great ambassadors for your issues because they are coming from a trusted source.
- Ask about any personal connections to your issues (e.g., is their partner a pediatrician? Do they have young children or grandchildren in child care?). This information will be useful as you engage in your own relationship building.
- Look for opportunities for grasstops engagement with candidates. While grasstops engagement may occur in the context of a meeting, it is also valuable to look for opportunities where they might be in the same place for other reasons (e.g., campaign, donor, or organizational events). It is important to prepare your grasstops advocates early in the election cycle so that they are ready to seize spontaneous opportunities to engage with candidates, build the relationship, and grow the profile of your issue regardless of the setting.
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- Follow-up is essential. Because grasstops engagement with candidates is part of a larger relationship-building strategy, it is important to debrief the meeting or interaction with your grasstops supporter and identify any next-step opportunities, such as those outlined below. Before moving forward with opportunities, ensure that you are offering information equally to all candidates in the race.
- Follow up and offer a briefing on your policy agenda to both the candidate from this meeting and all remaining candidates in the race, to ensure you’re offering the same opportunities to all candidates.
- Work with the grasstops supporter to ensure your organization has opportunities to provide information and resources for all candidates they engage with.
