What is a Grasshop Action Alert?
A Grasshop Action Alert is an online grassroots advocacy campaign. Specifically, it is an online tool for generating authentic grassroots communications to elected officials. It can be posted publicly (or kept private within the group) and sent to your members and supporters to alert them of a bill or issue at the federal, state or local level and gives them a way to let their elected officials know of their position.
A Grasshop Action Alert comes in two flavors; a User Action Alert and a Group Action Alert. A
User Action Alert is to be used for 'episodic campaigns', where an activist mobilizes people around a certain bill or issue for the duration of the campaign. A
Group Action Alert, on the other hand, is used to mobilize supporters from an existing group and/or to build an advocacy community around issue areas, as campaign supporters are invited to join your group when they take action. Hence, consider starting a group to launch your Grasshop Action Alert if you would like to build a sustainable advocacy community. See more on Grasshop Communities below.
A Grasshop Action Alert includes the following:
- A title
- A message to your members, supporters and the public about the issue and why it’s critical that they get engaged
- The message that individuals will sign and send (automatically via Grasshop) to their respective elected officials.
- Targeting options to focus your campaign on the right elected officials at the federal, state or local level.
- A deadline for the Grasshop Action Alert to expire. This can be changed if needed to keep the campaign going.
- Metrics to help you track your success.
Creating a Successful Grasshop Action Alert
Your goal in creating a Grasshop Action Alert is to generate as many authentic communications from constituents to elected officials on a bill or issue as possible. The four primary ingredients of a successful Grasshop Action Alert are: Targeting, Content, Distribution, and Tracking.
Targeting
Targeting is the first step in creating a Grasshop Action Alert. Is the campaign at the federal, state or local level? Should it focus on all legislators or just those in one chamber (such as the Senate but not the House of Representatives)? Or maybe it will only target specific legislators?
Note that Grasshop Action Alerts will route communications to elected officials from their constituents, so only those people that live in a targeted legislator’s state or district can take action on such targeted Grasshop Action Alerts. Elected officials rarely pay attention to non-constituent communications.
Content
- When creating a Grasshop Action, the first question you should ask yourself is “What is the issue, and what action would you like elected officials to take?”
- Make sure you understand the issue and, where applicable, relevant legislation.
- Focus on one specific issue at a time.
- Be factual and avoid hyperbole and sensationalism.
- If appropriate, make the message “personal” but in a universal way. Keep in mind that others are going to be signing onto the letter, so convey messages on how the issue affects individuals.
- Be short. Your supporters don’t have a lot of time on their hands, and elected officials (and their staffers) have even less.
Creating the Title
Keep this short and action-oriented. You can include the bill number, but often you’ll find terms like “Tell Congress to Support Our Troops with Funding” or “Tell Virginia Legislators to Oppose the Restaurant Tax” get the point across quickly and effectively.
Since you’ll likely want to post it to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, note the limitations and restrictions of other sites. Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters, and the link to your Grasshop Action Alert will take up some of that space. Using a link-shortener like bit.ly makes links shorter and gives you the ability to track the effectiveness of using different social networking sites to promote your advocacy campaigns. Shortened links are typically under 15 characters.
Creating the Message to Your Supporters (Description)
The Description is where you expand on the message in the title that gets the attention of others. Briefly explain the issue or bill in question and why it’s important for individuals to take action and communicate with their elected officials. If you are urging support for a bill, use a few sentences to make your case as to why support for this bill is important. If you’re urging opposition, make your case against it. If there’s no legislation involved, make your case for the result you’re seeking from elected officials. Again, short and punchy wins the day.
Don’t forget to urge your supporters to let their friends, families, and networks know about this campaign. Grasshop has provided a “Share” option for supporters to post the Grasshop Action Alert to Facebook, Twitter, and other places where they live online. If your Grasshop Action Alert is compelling and relevant, it may go viral!
Creating the Message to Elected Officials
Individuals will be signing on to this letter and sending it to their elected officials, so draft it from their perspective. Repeat many of the points you included in your message to your supporters and include a bill number if applicable. Keep the tone professional, respectful, and avoid threats or quid pro quo offers.
Keep this message even shorter than the one to your supporters. Elected officials and their staff have very limited resources, and the quicker they understand the message, the better the chance it will have for impact. If they have to spend too much time figuring out what the issue and desired action is, the probability increases that it will be ignored or misinterpreted.
Distribution
So you’ve drafted the perfect Grasshop Action Alert, but now you need people to act! In order for them to act, they need to see it. A successful Grasshop Action Alert will involve a mix of Grasshop distribution tools and your organization’s communication channels.
For many people, social networks are the new email and represent their preferred way to hear from people and organizations they care about. Grasshop provides a unique URL for each Grasshop Action Alert, making it easy to link to it from elsewhere.
- Proactive Grasshop Distribution provides tools to distribute your Grasshop Action Alert to your supporters that have joined your Grasshop group. If you used the Grasshop database upload feature, those supporters that have not yet activated their account will also receive the Grasshop Action Alert via email.
- Grasshop Action Alerts are also posted on your Group’s profile page, enabling visitors to take action.
- Post your Grasshop Action on your group’s Facebook page. Encourage those involved with the group to do the same.
- Tweet your Grasshop Action via your group’s Twitter account. Encourage those involved with the group to do the same.
- If you’re active on LinkedIn or any other social network, make sure you let your supporters there know about your Grasshop Action Alert.
- Post the title and link to your Grasshop Action Alert on your organization’s main web site.
- Send an email to your list, and use the Grasshop Action Alert’s title as the subject line.
- You can use a link shortener like bit.ly to track the effectiveness of each distribution channel. Simply create a separate short URL for each channel, and you can view click through counts for each one and compare.
Tracking and Measuring
The Grasshop Campaign Tracker lets you track the effectiveness of your Grasshop Action, including total actions taken and breakdowns by elected official. You can send a “thank you” message to those who have taken action, and a reminder message to your group members who have yet to take action. You can also send update messages to all respondents going forward to let them know what’s happening on this issue.