Delivering Letters to Your Member of Congress

Members of Congress want to hear from us, their constituents. Time and again, staffers tell us how important it is that they hear from their constituency. They say that personalized letters from constituents delivered directly to their office are very meaningful.

Below you’ll find a suggested process for organizing and delivering a batch of paper letters and postcards. 

Paper versus online letters

Submitting letters online using CCL's online tools is the best and fastest way to deliver letters to Congress (and the letter authors are automatically captured, if they opt in). If you decide to collect and delivery paper letters, see the guidance below on how to process and deliver them. See CCL Community's Paperless Grassroots Outreach training for benefits and details on using our online tools. 

Add letter authors who have opted in to the CCL database

We ask that you enter the names of those that have completed paper Constituent Letters into our database when you collect letters at your outreach events. Be sure to only enter the contact information from the forms of people who have “opted in” to receive follow-up CCL communication (their box is checked at the bottom of the form). You can enter them into the Chapter Roster Tool to add them to the CCL mailing list.

Delivering letters

Letters for other districts

If you collect paper letters from people who live outside of your local district it will be your responsibility to mail them to the corresponding Congressional offices. So to keep thing simple, ask the out-of-towners you meet during your tabling to use CCL's online tools - see Paperless Grassroots Outreach. Note: CCL National no longer processes or delivers constituent letter forms to offices in D.C.. 

Scheduling a meeting at the district congressional office

To deliver letters to your own members of Congress, schedule a meeting in the Congressional district office to present the constituent letters. It’s a great reason to ask for a meeting: “We have over fifty handwritten constituent letters which I would like to go over with you.”  If the district office is too far away or inconvenient, you can put the letters in an envelope and mail them to the D.C. congressional office. Allow three weeks for letters to pass anthrax screening and be delivered. You can, of course, bring constituent letters with you to the June Conference in D.C. and deliver them during your lobby meeting. 

Log an Action

Tally up all letters being delivered and log your action via the Action Tracker to track the number of letters being submitted.