The Sunflower Foundation is currently hosting an event called the Advocacy in Health Speaker Series, an educational program that supports nonprofit advocacy through leadership and civic engagement. One of the presentations of the 2012 Speaker Series, called “Telling Your Story to Make a Difference,” features communication trainer and educator John Capecci, who is also the founder and owner of Capecci Communications. Capecci recently co-authored the book Living Proof: Telling Your Story to Make a Difference. More information about his book and background can be found at LivingProofAdvocacy.com.

Capecci’s presentation takes place on Wednesday, May 23, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM with a reception following from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. The presentation will be held at the Hotel at Old Town Conference Center in Wichita. This event is free and open to the public, but requires advance reservation by May 16. To make a reservation, visit SunflowerFoundation.org or call (785) 232-3000.

We will be there, and we hope to see you there too!

Recently I have been unsatisfied with all the current free “find your legislator” tools available to Kansans.  KU’s IPSR lookup tool is frankly awkward. There is no real need to ask someone to first choose their county, then enter the numerical part of their address in one field and street name in another. It may seem petty, but even a couple unnecessary steps can become real barriers to motivating people to take action.

So we’ve built something better: introducing openkansas.org. A free and simple legislator lookup tool with one and only box.

It’s free and simple and our gift to you. Include it in your action alerts – or anytime you need to lookup legislator info.

Now – for the my fellow techies – Here is how I built it.

#1 – Download GIS shapefiles with your desired geo data  - there are several places to download free data online. There is nothing special about state legislative districts. You could also build similar tools for counties, city council districts, etc.

#2 – If you are a genius at POSTGRES then learn to use POSTGIS to upload and query against the shapefile. I am not that cool, so I took a different route. Using a free tool called shpescape - I converted my shapefile into a google fusion table .

#3 – When you enter an address, I use google’s free geocode API to convert an address into a lat/long coordinate and google fusion table’s rich API to determine which of my uploaded geographic polygons contain that lat/long point.

Everything else with the site is basic php/css with some mysql thrown in to pull legislator data from our statehouse app.

Props to google for making some awesome open-source tools and Chris Keller for a great example of how to use them.

There is another major change that will we will see in 2013: proof of citizenship at registration. This update will mean that when an otherwise eligible voter registers to vote, they cannot exercise their right to vote until they produce a birth certificate or passport to the election officer in their county.

Now Secretary of State Kris Kobach wants to make that change before the 2012 election.

Let’s call this what it is: Voter Suppression.

Will Kris Kobach's agenda leave you ballot in one of these boxes?

It’s voter suppression if it is implemented in 2013, and it will be voter suppression if it is moved up to 2012.

The fraud of voter fraud has been exposed, and these new rules – both Photo ID and Proof of Citizenship – are designed to put up barriers to participation.

Aside from the fortune that the State of Kansas will spend to implement these laws, educate citizens about the changes, and eventually defend in court, the incalculable cost will be the missing votes of our neighbors and family members who have enough other drama in their lives to jump through the hoops of these new laws.

This week the US Justice Department intervened in Texas. In Wisconsin judges have stopped similar laws from impacting upcoming elections. And Pennsylvania marched right into the fray by passing its own voter suppression legislation.

We are dedicated to encouraging citizens to get engaged in their communities and express their opinions everywhere from their kitchen table to the ballot box. The last thing we want to see is civic engagement discouraged. And we will be doing everything we can to make sure people overcome whatever obstacles the Secretary of State and the Legislature put between Kansans and the ballot box.

But sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. Making people pay to vote is wrong. And intentionally setting up obstacles to make it more difficult for Kansans to vote is wrong.

And for the Secretary of State to move Proof of Citizenship up to 2012 when election officers and poll workers will just be getting to know the new Photo ID requirements is just another example of his transparent goal of reducing the number of young people, low-income people, women, minorities and Kansas seniors who cast their ballots.

Photo from Keith Bacongco, via Creative Commons

Mitt Romney is surrounded by the press at Webster Elementary School in Manchester, N.H. Photo by Rhys Heyden.

The Kansas Presidential Caucuses are coming up.  This year, Republicans are caucusing on March 10th, and Democrats on April 14th.

This the first you’ve heard of the 2012 Kansas caucuses?  I’m not surprised.

It seems like Kansas gets taken for granted in presidential campaigns.  Even during the primaries, candidates rarely make campaign stops in the state.  In some elections, the closest most Kansans ever get to a presidential candidate is when they campaign cross the border in Missouri.

Instead, Kansans are faced with what Fox News political correspondent Carl Cameron called a campaign of “TV ads, airport rallies and news coverage.” Kansans don’t get up close and personal with the candidates, so when it comes time to cast their vote, Kansans make their decisions via the media.

In January, I had the opportunity to travel to New Hampshire to observe something wholly different–the first presidential primary in the nation.

New Hampshire voters take pride in their role in the primary process.  While the Iowa Caucuses may be the first official presidential contest, the New Hampshire primary is the first state-run primary election in the presidential race, and most presidential candidates campaign hard to win the state.

Which means that New Hampshire voters have extraordinary access to the candidates.   Candidates start campaigning months prior to the primary election, meeting voters at rallies in middle school gymnasiums and on visits to restaurants and coffee shops.  Voters across the state are able to meet the candidates in person, ask questions about their positions, and base their decisions on those interactions.

But there’s also a downside to living in such a competitive state.  When New Hampshire voters host the candidates, they also host the media.

At a New Gingrich forum in Manchester there were only seats for about 30 voters.  The rest of the tiny restaurant was packed with cameras and reporters, who were standing, sitting and squatting anywhere they could find to get a shot of Gingrich.  And I was there too, press credentials in hand, pushing through crowds to stake out my own spot.  While there, I overheard a woman say, “How are we supposed to get in?  There are too many cameras!”

She was right.  In the last week or so before the primary, the media almost overwhelms the state, and in a lot of ways they limit the ability of New Hampshire voters to get the direct contact with candidates that they usually enjoy.

Here is a case in point––on election day, several candidates stopped by the Webster Elementary School polling place in Manchester to try and shake hands with the few voters heading in to cast their votes.  But the media, who swarmed the candidates as soon as they stepped off of their buses, made that an impossible feat.   It was a completely absurd scene.  When Mitt Romney stepped off of his bus and into the fray, hundreds of cameras pressed in around him, trying to ask just a few questions and capture a few quotes.  Those scrums contained reporters from across the country, some of them reporting for national news outlets, and others for their local TV station.

And at that point, it was clear that Romney and the other candidates were no longer talking to New Hampshire voters.  They were talking to voters in Florida, South Carolina and even Kansas.  Despite how excessive the hordes of reporters seemed when I saw them in person, I was also struck by how important they were.  Sure, it’s frustrating for New Hampshire voters to have to fight with the press to meet a candidate.  But for those of us in Kansas, those cameras may be the closest we will ever get to the people who are asking us to make them President.

Dear Friend,

As a long standing supporter of _______, we thought you’d be interested to know that a bill was introduced into the legislature           yesterday to change ________.  Please contact your legislator today and tell him/her you oppose any legislation to change _______.

Emails like these can be an important part of engaging your groups’ members and getting them to take action toward your goal.

But here’s the biggest problem with action emails––How can you guarantee that legislators are listening to them?  If you’re only relying on one-on-one contact between your members and legislators, you can’t.

While email is a convenient way to get your members to write their legislators, it’s essentially a private method of contact, or a closed communication loop.  Even if a legislator reads every email your members send, if the world doesn’t know that thousands of constituents support or oppose your issue, how are you going to hold that legislator accountable?

By making them public!  Enter social media.

Those Facebook and Twitter accounts you created for your organization aren’t just good for communicating with your supporters, they can help magnify your message and make legislators publicly accountable to your advocacy efforts.  By using social media networks, you can increase the effectiveness of your advocacy efforts just by making them public.

Working social media into your regular advocacy campaigns can be as easy as having your organization or your members to post the action alert email message on a legislator’s Facebook wall or write to the legislator directly through Twitter.

Incorporating social media into your advocacy efforts can provide an added bonus as well.  Not only are you using public means of communication to hold legislators accountable to your efforts, you are also opening up an opportunity to engage new activists who don’t have a prior relationship with your organization.

For more information on using social media in your advocacy efforts, check out this presentation by Alan Rosenblatt, an online advocacy expert at the Center for American Progress.

There is so much we are grateful for here at Kansas Grassroots. At the top of the list is getting to spend every day working with great clients doing the important work of getting people involved in shaping our state for the better.

Personally, I am also grateful that we live in an age where more and more people are recognizing their own power to shape our political processes. For too long, most people have viewed themselves as passive participants in a political process beyond our control. We have watched with dismay as decisions were made that did not reflect our values and took our communities in the wrong direction. We were made to feel powerless in our ability to insert our voices or our values when those decisions were being made. We saw clearly that power had shifted dramatically to the corporations, the wealthy, and the insiders and that the everyday people we were no longer important.

And then something amazing happened.

No longer content to standby at watch “politics as usual” – large groups of people decided to make their voice heard. Some joined the Tea Party, others flocked to the Occupy movement, and many, many more became active in less visible movements or volunteered with their favorite non-profits. Suddenly, we live in an era where the people are center stage once again. We understand now we can weaken the power of those who have hijacked our system simply because we are willing to pay attention and make some noise. In some instances, that grassroots response has been met with brutal resistance, yet it grows stronger everyday.

Regardless of their particular brand of politics people are hungry to “get involved” at a level we haven’t seen in a long time. I’m excited about the opportunities this provides to the organizations we work for, as they are able to tap in to this energy and give people a sense of their own power once again.

This holiday season we are grateful for the chance to surround ourselves with the people we love, and while the news can sometimes paint a bleak future about the economy or numerous other concerns, we can still find so much to be thankful for – and it almost always comes down to people. The role of people in our lives, and the role of people in our political process.

So when I reflect on what I’m thankful for, its the optimism I feel when I think about what is possible when we put people first.

As Stephen Colbert noted this summer, research by the Brennan Center revealed fraudulent votes accounted for a whopping 44 one-millionths of one percent of the votes cast in our democracy, so the sense of urgency created by Secretary of State Kris Kobach and allies in the Legislature in 2011 was perhaps a bit overdone.

Technology and innovation could make voting easier. While Kansans will find new obstacles to voting awaiting them in 2012, disabled voters in Oregon are testing out iPad voting. Oregon already has all-mail elections and had 10% higher turnout in 2010 than Kansas.

Nevertheless, the new laws are on the books in Kansas and and although Kobach’s office has not been able to show that a single fraudulent vote has been counted, voters will have some new rules to navigate when they go to the polls in 2012.

So much attention has been on what has been done to make it more difficult for Kansans to register and vote, I wanted to just do a quick refresher on what the rules actually are for next year’s elections.

Voter Registration

There is a principle in aerodynamics that if you want to increase efficiency, then it is necessary to decrease wind resistance or “drag”. It seems to me that the same basic principle is applicable to grassroots organizing work: If you want to boost civic participation then a form of civic “drag” is worth considering.

I once received an email action alert from an Kansas non-profit organization about a very important cause that I support. The email asked me to call my elected representatives and deliver a six page, 1500 word script of talking points. The script was peppered with specific questions they wanted me to ask my legislator like “Do you have any questions for me about the public health infrastructure?” or “Do you have any questions for me about eliminating health disparities?”.

Following the email script would likely take anywhere from 20-45 minutes of my time. Each talking point that I had to read was verbose, and every question I was expected to field was intimidating. I was nowhere near prepared to answer questions about the public health infrastructure in Kansas, should my legislator have additional questions.  Not surprisingly, I didn’t make the call. My guess is that not many other people did either.

With each additional layer of complexity or difficulty you increase resistance and with every additional degree of resistance you will lose potential advocates. If you want someone to act – keep the request simple and concise by following these rules.

1. If you need them to contact a specific person – provide the contact information. Don’t rely upon them knowing who their elected officials are, or even where to look them up.
2. Keep the talking points to minimum – ask people to share their own story or reason for caring in their own words. Speaking from experience is much less intimidating, and more effective, than speaking in someone else’s words.
3. Simplify your recruiting forms. Look at your recruiting tools – are your forms asking for more information that you really need? Keep your forms as simple as possible. Chances are that the other info you want is publicly available form other sources like the phone book or voter file.
4. Facilitate action through clean design. Your website, brochures and other printed materials should feature one clear desired next action. Remember if your website sidebar is promoting *everything* then you aren’t really promoting anything. Keep it simple. Make sure the news isn’t drowned out by a lot of noise.

Sometimes we must call on our people to do some tough tasks – and thats ok. I’ll never advocate that you dumb down the process or underestimate the ability of your advocates, but if you want to maximize results, then minimize resistance by making the process as simple as possible. The organizer’s primary job is to facilitate action and reduce “civic drag”. Sometimes that means a little more work on our part, but your investments in making the process as simple as possible pay dividends in grassroots participation every time*.

*As a side note, this is exactly why I am opposed to recent efforts by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to impose greater restrictions and additional requirements on the voting process. With so few cases of actual voter fraud in our state it seems these laws are designed to disempower voters and depress participation to the benefit of his political allies. 

Occupy Wall Street has created easy headlines for newspapers and ready-made media moments for TV news. At first the coverage was dependent on tabloid-worthy conflict between the protesters and law enforcement.But once it became apparent that Occupy Wall Street was not going away overnight, and was in fact spreading beyond Zuccotti Park, “The Search For Meaning” ensued.

Much has been made of the movement’s ability to sustain its energy without – gasp! – a consistent set of demands or specific policy goals.

It would certainly make life easier for those in the media obsessed with balance when assigning blame for the discontent on display across the country if Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were mirror images.

Thus the incessant need to identify some fundamental goals of #occupy groups across the country that can translate into specific policy planks that 24 hour news networks can debate.

And yet the Occupiers persist with their focus on values.

The 99% are opposing the “greed and corruption of the 1%”. The bailouts. The bonuses. Bankers setting up system to benefit them and sticking working Americans with the bill.

Sound familiar? This is where the Tea Party started in 2009.

Mike Konczal has analyzed the text of the “we are the 99%” photos springing up on Tumblr and the results are equally familiar:

College graduates with crippling student loan debt struggling to find work. Young familes stressed out about access to affordable health care.

As the protests have spread, Occupy movements have been using meetup.com allowing literally anybody to schedule an Occupy event.

A leaderless movement. Content to express its frustration and question the fundamental values of a Wall Street that unleashed the current economic crisis on the 99% while it continued to profit.

While this might make it more difficult to report and pontificate about on cable news, it does nothing to undermine the validity of the movement.

Their fears are real. They are worried about their jobs and a fair economy, their kids growing up with the deck stacked against them, and the prospects for an entire generation to improve their situation in the future…real, everyday concerns.

How difficult is that to understand?

I was asked to speak on the topic of how to grow a strong grassroots advocacy presence and move people to action. Here is the short presentation I gave:

Here at Kansas Grassroots, we love any opportunity to spread our message about the power of grassroots advocacy and we’d love the chance to come speak to your group as well. Contact us and let us know how we can help.

More notes from the presentation (from youtube description):

Jake Lowen from Kansas Grassroots speaking at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved discussing Grassroots Advocacy, which he defines as learning to take the passion you have for an issue or cause and engaging an “army of advocates” to produce change.

Health serving non-profits engaging in advocacy build better relationships and offer better services to their clients

How do you get busy/lazy/apathetic people to get involved in advocacy? Jake argues that this isn’t really apathy, but rather an environment that is ineffective at motivating or empowering people to get involved. Specific changes to the environment will allow you or your organization to embrace the power of the people you serve.

Jake introduces his audience to the Fogg Behavioral Model developed by Stanford’s BJ Fogg, which states that

(Motivation + Ability) + Trigger = Behavior

You can create an activation threshold by:

Building Motivation and Enhancing Ability through simplicity. Then, initiate a Trigger by asking or providing an opportunity for action and begin working with your grassroots base.

Also introduced is the power of story banking, used in the Clean Air Kansas campaign, which employed a grassroots strategy that effectively passing an indoor smoking ban statewide in Kansas. Engaging with people and having them share their story is a great example of Fogg’s Behavioral Model in action.

More information on BJ Fogg’s behavioral model can be found at http://www.behaviormodel.org/.