Cat Herding in Kentucky

Problem

Advocacy is rarely easy. It's particularly hard when a coalition of organizations are trying to work together to influence legislation in a state across a range of issues. Where should you focus your efforts? How can you coordinate activity to make the most impact?

Bruce Maples, the founder of Forward Kentucky understands the complexities of advocacy all too well. He has been active in Kentucky politics for over a decade and created Forward Kentucky back in 2016 with the goal of helping the state "move forward and be all that it can be."

Bruce was using BillTrack50 to provide information on legislation to his subscribers and realized that the tracking tools could be put to a wider use. A number of progressive organizations in Kentucky were working together to advocate for progressive policies but were struggling to coordinate their efforts effectively and react quickly enough to events in the legislature. Their interests covered a wide range of issues, from gun laws to healthcare to education.

"A number of these organizations had built their own tracking systems, largely using spreadsheets, which made it difficult for them to share information quickly," said Bruce. "In Kentucky, the legislature meets for 60 days in odd years and only 30 days in even years. That means that legislation can move incredibly quickly - bills can even be introduced in the morning and passed that same afternoon!" To have an impact, advocates need to identify common causes quickly and agree on a course of action, working together.

Solution

Bruce realized that the flexibility and adaptability of BillTrack50's tools were the perfect answer to the problem. BillTrack50 allows any customer to have unlimited users in their account, so Bruce was able to adapt his account to serve the needs of all of the organizations, at no extra cost. Using BillTrack50, each organization can quickly set up their own bill sheets to identify the legislation that is important to them and track it in real time. Bills are updated throughout the day, making it easy to see movement quickly, and legislator and committee pages include contact details so it's simple to make your voice heard.

A key element was the ability to customize bill sheets. As Bruce explains, "We were able to create one big bill sheet, pulling together the bills that each of us found of interest. We created a column for each organization which showed their views - strongly support, support, oppose, strongly oppose and so on. Some organizations had positions on three or four bills. Some had views on fifty or sixty. "

But, in the words of Bruce, "What really made it kick butt was when I worked with Karen (the founder, and chief enthusiast, of BillTrack50) to create extra columns for the shared master bill sheet which automatically counted up the number of organizations which had taken a position on each bill, and also calculated a score for the overall position, from -5 (strongly oppose) to + 5 (strongly support). At a glance, we could then see which issues mattered the most to the group and use that to coordinate action."

Results

The use of BillTrack50 helped Forward Kentucky and like-minded organizations transform the way they worked together, making it quicker and easier for the network to identify where they have common cause, and to coalesce efforts around certain bills. Their shared master bill sheet has also helped the coalition identify where, as a group, perhaps they aren't doing enough and need to step up their activity.

Overall, Bruce feels that the use of BillTrack50 has encouraged greater community and helped bring progressive organizations together - to allow the cats to wrangle themselves! He is particularly impressed by BillTrack50's willingness to really listen to what the customer needs and put in the time and effort to make it happen.

"Karen didn't just show us how the incredible flexibility of their tracking tools could help us, she went out of her way to suggest and then develop a bespoke solution for our particular needs - and at no extra cost! I can't think of any other tracking company that would do that."

Karen is delighted with how it has worked out. "Our whole reason for existing is to get information into the people's hands who can act on it. Multiplying that action with a coalition is that much cooler."