The 10 Most Powerful Ways to Influence Politicians

According to Congressional Management Foundation, the most powerful ways to influence politicians are to interact with them directly through meetings, phone calls, and personalized emails and letters. Unfortunately, protesting in rallies and signing onto form letters have little to no impact.

How to Identify your Congressional Representative and Senators

Click the links below to identify who represents you in the House of Representatives and Senate:

Once you know who represents you in Congress, it’s time to tell them what you want them to do. Remember, they were elected to represent your and their other constituents’ interests when setting federal policy and funding programs. If you live in their district or state, it’s your responsibility to tell them what your interests are–don’t have the ability to read minds!

How To Guides for Influencing Congress

Much of what I’ve learned about lobbying Congress comes from being a RESULTS volunteer for most of the last 30 plus years. Since 1980, RESULTS has been training people in how to connect with their personal political power and use that power to create the political will to end hunger and poverty. While that training focuses on interacting with Congress, the same tools can be used with politicians at all levels. RESULTS’ training materials are linked below and provide excellent how-to guides.

Lobbying Congressional Representatives, Senators, and their staff

The link in the heading above provides how-to instructions for

  • Emailing
  • Phone calling
  • Writing a personalized letter
  • Building relationships with congressional staff
  • Asking a question at a town hall meeting
  • Meeting with a MOC and/or their staff

Using Media to influence Politicians

The link in the heading above provides how-to instructions for

  • Writing a letter to the editor
  • Writing an op-ed
  • Generating an editorial or article
  • Building relationships with media professionals