By Wendy Brannen, ASA Senior Director of Marketing and Communications
To do a quick study on successful policy engagement, let’s jump back to junior high English class and the lesson on prepositions. You remember prepositions – those words you stick right before a noun or pronoun that connect all the other words in the sentence and clarify what’s happening. Even in elementary school, we would play the game, “Going on a Bear Hunt,” where you encountered a log in the forest and had to figure out if you could go under it, around it, through it, over it and so forth—all the while learning common prepositions.
So, what’s the point – other than I am a grammar geek? Simple: Successful advocacy involves not only advocating for someone, but also with them. You can either try unsuccessfully to go through the log, or you can work with stakeholders and other like-minded people to discover a way around it. And that, my friends, is what we are all inevitably trying to navigate here in D.C. and throughout our member states to preserve and protect our industries’ policy interests.
Almost all organizations have a somewhat standardized advocacy toolbox. Our tools look a lot like this: countless meetings with Congressional members and their staff; many, many meetings with the administration; organized Hill visits/fly-ins to advocate and do those meetings en masse; PAC support; press releases and other proactive media outreach, along with media inquiry responses; social media messaging; member newsletters and other internal communications that encourage engagement; event participation, speaking commitments, and the occasional byline to advocate before appropriate audiences; and some sort of subscription service for “calls to action” where we and our members can all contact Congress, the president, or whoever may best help our policy cause. These are all good things, so it is not to be flip that I recount this litany of advocacy tools, rather it is to encourage rumination on our existing strategy and thoughts on how to tweak it.
At the American Soybean Association (ASA), we truly realize the greatest triumphs when we are advocating both for and with our membership and others with mutual goals. Our philosophy is to put our grower-leaders front and center: Whether fielding media interviews or strategizing advocacy initiatives, we are in pursuit of ways to increasingly involve our soybean farmers to tell their stories, their struggles, and the significance of their industry for the economic benefit of our country and nutrient benefit of countries globally. Likewise, we care greatly about state involvement; ASA has 26 state affiliate members who, in turn, help us better advocate for the country’s roughly 300-thousand soybean farmers. Their input and participation are critical to our mission. Advocating for the states and growers is important, advocating with the states and growers is what brings all of us true success.
To that end, and to aid in best advocating on top policy issues – trade, biodiesel and infrastructure, farm policy and other matters of import—we match our board members, or farmer-leaders, to their interests and passion projects each year to form Advocacy Teams. These ATs meet regularly to hold more in-depth discussions on the issues in their appointed areas and to plan fly-ins and related outreach. It is also helpful that many of these AT members serve cross-industry on the United Soybean Board (USB) and U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC), our sister soy organizations, and the National Biodiesel Board, so that we are working hand in hand with those organizations on soy goals and priorities.
Policy communication supports our policy outreach plans. We take time and care behind the scene to assure our tone and messaging are, (1) on point with the desired direction of the board, (2) that we are communicating that messaging clearly to our stakeholders, and (3) listening to their feedback. From press release copy to talking points that state affiliates can share with their farmer-members, social media strategy to board updates, the steps involved in drafting messaging and encouraging consistent messaging are key. And, we schedule regular calls with the board and state leaders to listen, collaborate and assure we are working in tandem.
This past year, we developed and launched a private board and state portal housed on the ASA website for fast dissemination of policy information. While we still email issue updates and call-to-action requests, we back up all correspondence to the new portal for our grower-leaders and states to have all information at their fingertips: press releases, policy updates, calls to action, backgrounders, talking points, Hill leave-behinds, etc. This assures they are always prepared to advocate with us on important policy issues in person, online and through the media.
When I first started as Policy Communications Director a little over a year and a half ago, my first thought about our ASA leadership development programs was, frankly, “Geez, we sure have a lot of them!” Over time, however, I have come to realize each program has a distinct purpose and all contribute to grooming better leaders both for the soybean industry and agriculture at large. No matter if it’s a student interested in ag policy, young farm family, seasoned state leader or national director, the five leadership programs we host with industry partner support each possess unique angles for aiding the audience. Those angles include, among others, media training; practice with public speaking; tips for peer and policy networking; government affairs and policy procedure training; social network advocacy training; issues briefings and more. I encourage you, if your organization does not have similar tracks, to build one. It not only will make you look good, but also will help your members immensely with participating confidently and effectively in your advocacy initiatives.
One ASA leadership program has a particularly distinct twist: Members of the Agriculture Communications Team, or ACT, are trained and tasked with the mission of responding to policy matters on social media. Participants work with media trainers to polish communication skills, work on perceived weaknesses, narrow and refine their interview message, and remain focused on relevant talking points. They also develop a strong support network with other social media advocates to self-assuredly jump into online advocacy. As ACT classes graduate each year, ASA’s ambassador base serving soy and agriculture swells. We regularly brief the ACT team on policy issues and include them in advocacy calls to action so they can share their real-life experiences on social media, personal and professional blogs, through individual and community outreach, and other vehicles for engagement.
Did you guys hear that President Trump likes to tweet?!? But seriously, we do see the president and other key decisionmakers online and paying attention. Early fall, ASA participated in a joint push for ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that resulted in 108 tweets from members of the Trump administration, 162 tweets from Congress, and other online traffic. The social push coincided with a joint USMCA rally on the Hill facilitated by Farmers for Free Trade, another tactic we have found effective: not stopping at coordinating our fly-ins with our state members, but coordinating fly-ins with like-minded ag groups, as well. We have participated in widespread social advocacy days with Farmers for Free Trade, USMCA Coalition, National Biodiesel Board, National Corn Growers Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, American Farm Bureau Federation, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and countless other ag and industry allies. During these efforts, #USMCAnow, #PassUSMCA and other group hashtags have trended online even during the craziest news cycles.
Let me part with two nerd notes on prepositions. First, be happy for a person and excited about a party. Most TV ads and reality shows get that wrong, and their B-list stars are constantly “excited for” an inanimate object like a bachelor party. Second, despite being unusual, but can be used as a preposition. My sixth-grade teacher challenged us to write down every preposition we could remember. I love both a list and a challenge, so I came pretty darn close to naming all 150 prepositions, clarifying “even but in certain cases.” Wouldn’t you know our well-intended teacher marked my prepositional “but” wrong, but (conjunction!) my mother—the high school English teacher who 99.5% of the time sided with her fellow teachers—called to correct her with this example: “Everything but the kitchen sink.”
Get excited about your advocacy plan. Throw in everything but the kitchen sink to see what sticks, but make sure you are including your members and other organizations as that plan evolves. It makes getting over, around, past, and beyond those legislative and regulatory logjams much easier and much more effective.