Make a Staffer's Day

Contact your DC legislators

In the March 8 Serve60Sharp, your Civic Serve Bingo card task was to follow an issue or specific bill in Congress. How’s that going?

Fair warning - this is a 180-second note, but mostly because of a soapbox moment describing what it’s like to be a low-level staffer in DC.

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This week is a 2-for-1 follow-up to March 8. You can mark off “I-1” and “N-4”:

Those representing you in the U.S. Senate and Congress are easy to find. Most cities, counties, and states have them listed on their elected officials contact pages. We prefer the shortcut directly to their Senate or House websites: lastname.senate.gov and lastname.house.gov. If you don’t know your federal legislators’ names, please visit vote411.org to enter your address and find that information.

Each of their websites will have hyperlinks to email from your email provider or a contact form, sometimes both. We encourage you to use their contact form to avoid any email firewalls or filters which might unintentionally block your email address.

When contacting your elected officials at any level:

1. The Intro: PLEASE thank them for their service. Your email won’t be read by the legislator, but by an overly-educated, underpaid staffer who’s likely met their boss only once in passing, and spends all day reading nasty-grams from frequent-flier constituents with nothing better to do. (In Taylor’s words, we know that world All Too Well.)

   1. Say something nice - it’s more likely to get forwarded up the chain and seen by the boss.

   2. Even if you strongly disagree on the issue you’ve been following, or any other issue, it is not helpful to tell them you don’t like them or didn’t/won’t vote for them.

   3. Your mom’s adage about flies and honey vs. vinegar rings true here.

2. The Why: Explain the issue you’ve been following and how it impacts your home, business, family, or why it was of interest to you.

3. The Ask: How do you want them to vote on the bill? Or is it in their committee and you have a recommended change to improve it? What do you want to happen?

4. The End: THANK them for hearing your position. You can even acknowledge you recognize a staffer is reading this and thank them for their commitment to public service.

Let us know if you hear back,

Happy serving!

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About Serve60Sharp

Serve60Sharp is a weekly, read-in-60-seconds newsletter, which provides readers with actionable ideas to serve their communities.