Contacting friends to contact Congress

Bravo Jonathan!

Looking forward to reading what personalized outreach messages have worked for others as well! Relatedly here's a suggested script from CCL's program staff you can use as well:

Hi [friend name]!

I have a big favor to ask which you are free to say no to (and it's not money!).

If you share my concern about addressing the climate crisis, and feel comfortable reaching out to your U.S. Senators in Washington, D.C., now is the time to act. The next three weeks will be critical in deciding what measures go into the Senate’s reconciliation bill, which needs only 51 votes to pass. Please email and call your Senators to ask them to include a price on carbon to drive our economy toward zero carbon emissions. There’s a tool on Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s website that makes it really easy: https://cclusa.org/senate/.

It takes just a couple minutes to email and call, and I would be happy to step you through if you need help. 

Now is our chance to enact a bold carbon price. Thanks so much for your consideration, and please reach out if you have questions. 

P.S. We need a lot of calls & emails to make this happen, so please feel free to share this with your concerned friends and family so they can participate too. Or share it on social media!

And here's a short-ish text message I've been using to personally invite non-CCL friends: 😀 (so far over 40 have replied YES!):

Hey XXX! Hope this message finds you well these days. I'm texting to ask a quick favor (feel free to say no). Here's why: the reconciliation package being drafted now in the Senate is the best pathway climate advocates have had in a long while to enact a carbon price. Citizens' Climate Lobby (the organization I work for) has launched a big priority campaign to generate as many emails and calls to our Senators as possible. We know it’s crunch time for climate policy! I’m asking you to spend five minutes today or this week and goto this website cclusa.org/senate to write and call your Senators, and then if able commit to get another 3-5 more friends to do the same! Text me back with any questions and when you've emailed/called and thank you again for your help! We’ve been building up to this moment in history for a long time—so let’s do it with hope in our hearts and give it everything we’ve got!

Hey all, adding two scripts for phone calling, adapted from above (and credit / thank you to @Diana Schoder )

Voicemail

Hey [Friend name]! Hope this message finds you well these days. I'm calling to ask a quick favor (feel free to say no). I’m asking you to reach out to your Senators about climate policy. It’s especially important now because the reconciliation package being drafted now in the Senate is the best pathway climate advocates have had in a long while to enact a carbon price. Citizens' Climate Lobby (the organization I volunteer with) has launched a big priority campaign to generate as many emails and calls to our Senators as possible. Could you spend five minutes today or this week to write and call your Senators, and then if able commit to get another 3-5 more friends to do the same? You can even go to cclusa.org/senate, which makes it easy to call and email. Text me back with any questions and when you've emailed/called, and thank you again for your help! We’ve been building up to this moment in history for a long time, and I’m excited to take this action for climate solutions with you!
 

Call

Hey [Friend name]! I’m calling to ask a quick favor (feel free to say no). Do you have a couple of minutes?

If they say yes:

I’m asking you to reach out to your Senators about climate policy. [Feel free to insert some personal background here, such as past conversations with your friend about climate change and why you believe it’s important.]

The reconciliation package being drafted now in the Senate is the best pathway climate advocates have had in a long while to enact a carbon price. Citizens' Climate Lobby (the organization I volunteer with) has launched a big priority campaign to generate as many emails and calls to our Senators as possible. 

Could you to spend five minutes today or this week to write and call your Senators, and then if able commit to get another 3-5 more friends to do the same? I can also answer any questions you have about this campaign and why it’s so important to be a part of it!

If they’ll call/email:

Thank you for your help! You can even go to cclusa.org/senate, which makes it easy to email and call. We’ve been building up to this moment in history for a long time, and I’m excited to take this action for climate solutions with you!

If they have questions, you can use the FAQ here: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/. 

If they will not call/email:

Thank you for hearing me out, and please let me know if you have any questions I can answer. 

We have been using this script when approaching people at farmer's markets, entrances to parks, public spaces. It is nice to be standing near a CCL banner or more specifically the Senate Push banner so it seems more official. It is good to walk yourself through the online tool so that you are familiar with all the required fields:

-Hi, my name is xxx xxx and I am with Citizens Climate Lobby, are you concerned about climate change?

-If they say no "Ok thanks, have a good day" and move on to another person.

-If they say yes, we say, "would you be willing to help us by reaching out to your Senators and let them know that you would like to see a carbon price as part of the reconciliation package? It is a quick action that only takes a couple minutes of your time." 

-In some cases you may be asked to explain more

-"Do you have your phone with you? Carry a clipboard again to seem more official and have the 1/4 page flyer with you so that they can scan the QR code or if they don't have their phone or don't want to do the action right then, give them a flyer and ask them to commit to doing it when they get home.

-While they scan the code say "This is a nationwide effort. Our goal is to have as many citizens as possible reach out to their Senators by August 10. Initially we were aiming for having 10,000 people take this action across the country and we have already gone past that goal and are up to xxxx. We see this time as a critical time for action on climate and want to be sure a carbon price is included in the reconciliation process-knowing that a carbon price is the most powerful tool that could be used to reduce carbon emissions."

-When they open the tool, direct them through the form walking them through the process so that it expedites their experience while answering any questions they have.

"Thanks for taking the time to do this, we really appreciate it. Please feel free to share this action with your friends and family or anyone else who you think would be willing to help!"

I'm collecting a whole bunch of scripts and putting them here for examples of outreach to friends and family. I'm including the examples from Madeleine's All Leader call roleplay, Nick Huey's call to his mom, and also the script from the August Action Sheet. I hope this is useful if you're leading folks for family and friends outreach parties

Great discussion! I wanted to share one additional approach that I've tried out. I used Gmass to send a quick personalized email to my network of friends (non-CCL related), some of whom I hadn't been in touch with for some time.

Two wonderful things about Gmass (beyond that it's free):

1. it personalizes your email to each email so that you can send the same email message with custom fields like FIRST NAME or SHARED BACKGROUND (i.e. school), etc. with the click of a button saving time without feeling like a bulk big bcc email.
2. It tracks open and click rates - so you can instantly see how many people you sent the email to have taken action! So far it's been about 15% of the folks that I've sent out to have taken action.

Note:  Gmass requires your permission to access your account info in order to send out the email, so some may not feel comfortable with that. It gave me pause, but I went ahead and plan on opting out of that when this campaign is over.  But for those interested here's my quick instructions, let me know any feedback 😀

Using GMass to send customized mass emails to your contacts

There are detailed instructions here.  Basic steps below:

1. To create your list(s) in a spreadsheet in plain text
   
   1. Go to your Gmail contacts
       
   2. To the left of the names, scroll down to find “export”
       
   3. Click export and check the list you want to export and choose “Google CSV”
       
   4. The list will be downloaded as a spreadsheet - open it
       
   5. Edit the contents to at least three columns.  Labels should have no space between words, i.e. FirstName,  Last Name,  Email
      1. You can make separate tabs on your spreadsheet for different lists -  just make sure :
         1. each tab has a unique name 
         2. each tab has the titles for the columns
         3. each tab has at least four blank columns free for the responses
         4. If you manually add names to your list, make sure there are no <  or other symbols in there other than @
             
   6. Label the spreadsheet(s) so you can easily find it/them among your googlesheets
       
2. Download GMass to Chrome - click on button “Add to Gmail”
    
3. Log into your Gmail account
   
   1. Go to the above link and scroll down to “How to send a mail merge with Google Sheets” 
       
4. Connect GMass To Your Spreadsheet
   
   1. Follow the above link - that is mainly what you will need
       
   2. If you have more than one spreadsheet/worksheet or another special situation, look at the other steps.
       
5. Optional - Personalize Your Email using the {} - I only personalized with the person's first name, i.e. Hi [FirstName}!
6. Write the rest of your email
7. Make sure it looks good
8. Click on the red Gmass button to send 
9. Wait for the results!  And since the email looked like it came from me personally, some folks emailed me back and we had a nice connection.
10. It takes some getting used to, but I'm getting great results!
     

I've been encouraged to paste this here, after it went out to our Lutheran Action Team members. Please feel free to modify, using a link not specific to Lutherans!  I know the Presbyterians have published advocacy for CF&D, or for EICDA.  There's also a new page that asks Why Put a Price on Carbon, on CCL's website (not community), that is awesome and could be used quite effectively.

I've been trying to put the ELCA Advocacy carbon pricing basics in my church's newsletter occasionally. I submitted a paragraph similar to this one, below, two weeks ago but with a request to call our Senators. I've modified that one and will submit this next week. Our chapter got one new member after the last request!

ELCA Advocacy published the Carbon Pricing Basics primer in the fall of 2019. Click here to read it and learn how carbon pricing can be a just and fair climate solution. We have an opportunity NOW, before August 31, to ask our US Representatives to support a price on carbon in their upcoming work on climate! This link will make it easy and quick. Your children and grandchildren will thank you.  

And don't forget, our action team's google drive has recorded video presentations that you can access! You could send out a link to one of them in your newsletter, or host an event and show the recording. If you have questions about any of that, please ask!

I am having a blast with Messenger.  I want to share how I am doing that!!

So far, 28 people have called and/or emailed their House member because I asked them to on Messenger!!  I also helped 4 family members make their calls/emails in person. So, I am up to 32 now!! Whoo hooo!!

Usually, several times a day, I doom scroll down Facebook. This makes me depressed and grumpy!

Since the House Campaign started, I've added a little twist to my Facebook scrolling. No longer is it feeling so doom and gloom as a result!

Here how it goes:

1. I open Facebook.
2. I click on the name of the person whose post pops up at the top of my feed.
3. If I don't know what they think about climate, I will click on their friend list to look for our mutual friends which helps remind myself of how I know them and gives me a clue as to how receptive they might be to my message. 
4. If I know what they think about climate change, I don't bother checking their friends list.
5. I click on “Message” and then I paste a message that includes a question for them to respond to.
6. I do this for 20 minutes. 
7. It takes less than a minute to copy/paste and only a few seconds to check on the friend list and scroll down the feed. So, I get 15-20 done in a sitting.
8. I've sent 150 messages and gotten 28 to make the call or send the email or both.

I have tried it the other way by going to my friends list and messaging people there. But, not everyone is on Facebook as frequently as I am. So, instead, I go to my feed to see who has posted in the past 24 hours.  I have had a wide range of people respond yes including folks I have never asked anything of before!

Here's my message: 

I’ve been working on a campaign to contact our senators about including powerful climate policy in the budget reconciliation. 

I just learned that all together over 20,000 people made over 50,000 calls or emails in just three weeks!

We have been heard in the Senate. They understand that the people want big solutions to climate change. 

Yahoo!!

It’s time to turn to the House next. 

Any chance you can help me out?

We’ve got a short window of time to influence Congress and get carbon pricing in the budget reconciliation. 

I have got a personal goal of 55 friends or family calling their House member about this. So far, 32 people have helped me!

You can say yes or no, of course. 

Would you be willing to call your Representative using this link (and let me know when you do so I can count you towards my goal?)

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/house/

I wait for them to respond. And, if they say yes, then I reply:

Thank you!  Would you please let me know when you have called and/or emailed so I can thank you and add you to my list.

Once they confirm that they have called, I send a floating heart emoji. And, I reply “Thank you!  Feel free to share with others. The more the merrier!”

In Messenger, I can see if they have read my message. If they have read my message and not responded, then I send a different message that goes like this:

I realize that I sprung this on you without a lot of information.

Do you have any questions I can answer about this campaign?

Maybe knowing more would help you decide yes or no on making the call/email to your representative.

I would be happy to give it a go in answering your questions.

Someone actually thought I was a bot!!  

Like I said, I have had about a 16% return rate on this. That seems low, but I have a lot more friends I can contact.  I have reached out to only 150 of my 1,860 Facebook friend. So, this is a numbers game. And, its a real boost to see who helps!

Also, I did NOT post my request for help on Facebook as a post. I am only doing this as a Messenger message. I tried a Facebook post and didn't get any response.  Messenger is the way to go.

And… my friends are all over the country!  So, I hope this is helping in a wide range of Congressional districts!!

Thank you for letting me share!

Love,

Elli