Identify good surrogates for your organization

Non-profit executive directors usually handle meetings with elected officials, but including strong surrogates will help you deliver the message. Elected officials are more likely to take a meeting request from someone "important" than a non-profit staffer. Surrogates need to be respected members of the community and have name recognition.

Good surrogates include:

• Your board chair
• Other influential board members
• Your largest donors
• Local business leaders
• Influential supporters like local or state celebrities
• Other elected officials (we'll call them "champions" in later posts)

The Conservation Trust for North Carolina, on whose board I sit, lobbied the North Carolina General Assembly to restore funding to the Clean Water Management Trust Fund. CTNC sent three people to lobby the legislature:  the executive director, the board chair, and Eric Montross, a board member and UNC basketball standout from the 1990s. Legislators were eager to meet with Eric and restored $1.5 million to the trust fund.

If you can't think of people who fit this bill, invest time in finding surrogates for your organization. Consider adding influential people to your board or even developing an honorary board of local and state celebrities. Also, talk with you donors about your government relations needs and cultivate them as potential surrogates.

You may want to consider organizing a Government Relations Committee for your board to follow the legislative process and serve as formal surrogates for the organization.