Nothing beats a good message: RecreAction Network is a good resource for NRPA - Advocacy Update

Parks & Recreation, Feb, 2004 by Richard Dolesh, Michael Phillips

A little more than 10 years ago, the National Recreation and Park Association leaped boldly into electronic advocacy by launching the RecreAction Network--an online advocacy network that allows NRPA members to contact their legislators. In those days "electronic advocacy" consisted of nothing more than blast-faxes sent to a core group of about 100 park and recreation advocates nationwide. By today's standards it was pretty primitive--one-way communication by thermal-printing fax machines, with no opportunity to edit or receive feedback, or to even verily if the message had been received much less responded to.

Today, the RecreAction Network has evolved into something quite different--an advanced messaging system enabled by powerful, precise software that allows thousands of advocates to send editable messages to their own members of Congress by just one click of a mouse.

NRPA's advocacy for legislation and national public policy development takes many forms. It ranges all the way from the most personal one-on-one contacts to literally millions of members and advocates with mass distributions of messages in cooperation with other national organizations. The astonishing growth of the Internet as an advocacy tool has enabled this revolution and changed the way membership and service organizations and associations like NRPA get messages to members.

The explosive growth of this Internet-based communications medium has also dramatically changed the way congressional offices deal with the daily flood of incoming messages. A time-honored axiom of advocacy is that "Nothing beats a personal letter." And even well into the Internet age this remains true--a well-crafted personal letter from a constituent to a representative or senator is read, often by the legislator, and generates a letter in response.

However, fears of terrorism and the unprincipled mailing of deadly chemical or biological agents to congressional offices such as the widely reported mailing of anthrax spores in 2001 have changed that time-honored tradition irrevocably. Yes, a letter still may be the single best way to get your message to a member of Congress, but unfortunately, it may take three months to arrive and be brown and crumbly from irradiation and storage. Unless you are willing to take the long, and we mean long view, the personal letter has lost much of its effectiveness as the best advocacy tool.

But there is still power in people, and the more writes that are raised from communities across our nation about the value of parks and recreation in every community, the more legislators sit up and take notice. NRPA's RecreAction Network gives that power to our people. A well-crafted, carefully written, addressed and personalized email has the capability to be an effective message that gets results, and just one year's worth of experience has shown that members are using this tool and value it for its effectiveness in advocacy for parks an recreation.

"I think this is a tremendous service to NHPA members," wrote Parks and Recreation Director Steven Grimes in Bettendorf, Iowa. "Keep up the great work. This is the type of service that will help make NRPA and its members a more effective organization."

NRPA's public policy staff in Washington, D.C., upgraded NRPA's advocacy capability just one year ago in early 2003 by licensing software from a national advocacy provider. This software enables the creation of advocacy campaigns, action alerts and dedicated e-mail messages in HTML and plain text formats that can be instantly sent to the entire NRPA online membership, who in turn, can edit and personalize these messages, and with one mouse click, send them directly to their senator or representative.

The upgrading and modernization of the RecreAction Network has been so successful in such a short time that since its implementation, more than 400 individual messages have been sent by NRPA members and advocates to more than 400 individual members of Congress. NRPA's e-mail messages, action alerts and online advocacy campaigns have prompted thousands of direct phone calls and hundreds of Beltway meetings. In this short time, NRPA Public Policy staff have launched six critical issue campaigns and 20 action alert messages. NRPA's online advocacy has generated positive feedback from advocacy experts outside of NRPA, and NRPA messages have been quoted on national Web sites and media outlets.

Perhaps even more important than the e-mailing of targeted messages to legislators, has been the extraordinary value of this Internet tool for instantly getting accurate, correct information to thousands of NRPA members who learn the issues and legislative developments more quickly than ever before, and thus are able to take effective action with unprecedented speed.

NRPA's electronic advocacy does not stop with the RecreAction Network. In addition to the advanced messaging campaigns of the RecreAction Network, NRPA's advocacy efforts are enhanced and expanded on the NRPA Web page at www.nrpa.org. Background and issue papers are posted on the NRPA Web pages and members can take time to explore legislation in depth and follow links to even more detailed information from linked sites.