Welcome to MacGyver Advocacy

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Welcome to MacGyver Advocacy!

• Please call in to
• [phone]
• access code
• 161-367-363

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Whos talking?
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Topics

• About the Webinar
• About the Advocacy Roundtable Program
• The MacGyver Approach
• Scenarios
• Specific Ideas to Take Home!

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About the Webinar

• Muting
• Wondering if theres sound? Please call in!
• Questions
• Toolbar
• Follow-up Materials
• Recording

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About the Advocacy Roundtable Program

• What is it? What have you gotten yourself into?
• What are the main benefits?
• Webinar subscription
• Online social network
• Discounts on services
• More Information

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Why Are You Here?

• Lets go to the poll

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Who Is MacGyver?
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What did MacGyver Do?

• List of Problems Solved by MacGyver

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The MacGyver Approach Five Key Themes

• Leverage
• Simple Tools
• Knowledge
• Willingness to Take Risks
• Luck (and persistence!)

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Approach 1 Leverage

• Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will
  move the whole world
• Who said that?

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Leverage in the Advocacy Context

• Who do you need to move?
• Who can move them?
• How can you get to those who can move them?
• What are other sources of leverage?
• Powerful policy arguments?
• Cash?

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Approach 2 Tools

• Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find
  him without tools without tools he is nothing,
  with tools he is all. Thomas Carlyle

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The Advocates Tools
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Approach 3 Knowledge

• MacGyver plugs a sulfuric acid leak with
  chocolate. He states that chocolate contains
  lactose and sucrose (chemically C12H22O11), which
  are disaccharides. The acid reacts with the
  sugars to form elemental carbon and a thick gummy
  residue.

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Knowledge in the Advocacy Context

• The rules of the game
• The strategies that might work (or have worked in
  the past)
• The campaign context

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Approach 4 Willingness to take Risks

• Take calculated risks. That is quite different
  from being rash.
• George S. Patton

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Risk-taking in the Advocacy Context

• Public approaches / confrontations
• Media
• Protests
• Voting strategies
• Calling for a recorded vote
• Election strategies
• Opposing an incumbent in an effort to get a
  better fit

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Approach 5 Luck! (and persistence)

• Remember that
• 95 of bills introduced at the federal level go
  NOWHERE
• External events (such as wars, the economy, gas
  prices, etc.) can dramatically impact even your
  unrelated issue
• Creating your own luck is about mastering the
  other four approaches

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What were those approaches again?

• Lets go the poll

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Scenario 1

• Its the end of the session and a member has
  introduced a bad amendment to a larger omnibus
  bill that has nothing to do with your issue.

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Scenario 1 Ideas

• Leverage
• Who will decide? Who can move them? How can you
  get to those people?
• Tools
• Phone / e-mail campaigns
• Coordination of visits to district office
• Knowledge
• The Rules is there a germaneness requirement?
  Can you win on a procedural vote? How many
  readings are required? Have those requirements
  been fulfilled?
• Risks
• Media / public approaches
• Luck and Persistence
• Election strategies

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Scenario 2

• Committee Chair doesnt want your bill because a
  neighbor of his doesnt want it. This is despite
  the fact that hundreds of thousands of his
  constituents want it and told him so. The bill
  was killed by him.

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Scenario 2 Ideas

• Leverage on member (besides constituents)
• Other members of Committee? Leadership?
• Media
• Leverage on neighbor
• Other neighbors?
• Tools
• Knowledge
• Why does the neighbor object? Is there another
  way to solve the problem
• Risks
• Media / public approaches (public protest with
  constituents? Exposes?)
• Election strategies
• Luck and Persistence
• Connections to larger issues

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Other Scenarios?

• Just think WWMD?

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The Five Minute Action Plan

• What are you going to do next? Lets go to the
  poll!

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Contact Information

• Stephanie Vance
• The Advocacy Guru
• Advocacy Associates
• 1640 19th St., NW
• 2nd Floor
• Washington, DC 20009
• [phone]
• vance_at_advocacyguru.com