Thanks for
visiting my web site.
Let me
begin with a little about me, my name is Kevin Hughes. I have
been an advocate to government on behalf of many different
clients since 1986. The majority of my work has been for the
arts & cultural community on issues such as, budget, tax policy,
and land use. I have also done a lot of work for corporate
clients. I have experience lobbying all four levels of
government: Federal, State, County and City.
A few years
ago, I was asked to teach a class at Seattle University in the
Masters of Arts Administration program; a class called Advocacy,
Public Policy and Collaboration in the Arts. While creating a
curriculum and teaching , I realized that a majority of people
could benefit from the type of information in this class. In
general, people’s capacity to effectively work with government
is fairly limited for a variety of reasons. I teach with the
premise that no matter what you do in the arts and cultural
community or running a business, at some point in your life,
government will come knocking at your door or you will need the
government to help you. I am now offering trainings and
presentations to help anyone (community groups, businesses,
cultural organizations) to effectively work with government if
and when issues arise.
There are essentially two ways in which
you might find yourself working with the government. One is you
identify an issue;
a funding issue or government policy that you would like to
change. Simply put, you create the issue and you approach
government. The other way, and actually a way that is much more
typical, is that government will come to you on an issue;
something that may or may not be beneficial to your ability to
do business. You need to have some capacity to either help them
bring that policy issue to fruition or to stop it.
I will give you an example;
during my classes at
Seattle University, I bring in administrators of arts
organizations from around the Seattle/Puget Sound region;
seasoned professionals who have been running arts organizations
for a long time. I start with one basic question, “when you took
this job, how much time did you anticipate you would have to
spend dealing with government?” Then I follow with, “How much
time are you thinking about and working with government now?”
Invariably the answer will be that when they took the job they
rarely thought about government, and they didn’t think about
government as part of the job. To the follow up question, how
much time do they spend now, the answer is usually about 25-30%.
This is not atypical. So, as we start out in arts administration
or start a business in any arena, it is extremely important to
have some basic knowledge of how to deal with government. This
is the foundation of what I teach. In my experience, I have
identified 14 steps in what I consider the basics of advocacy. I
will share a few of them with you now.
First of
all, you need to identify the issue; there are generally two
ways of doing this. The first one, as I mentioned before, is
proactively; you need funding, or you need consideration from
some level of government about a policy issue, or a change in
the law. In this instance you approach the government. The other
way, and again not uncommon, government comes to you with an
issue that you didn’t know about, or they create some kind of an
issue that affects your ability to do business. In that
situation, you need to be able to work with government to either
stop that law from being implemented or to help make it happen.
So very simply put, these are two different ways to identify an
issue.
Once you have identified the issue, the
next step is to identify the solution. Sounds simple enough, but
it is not always as simple as it sounds. While the solution to an
issue may seem very obvious at the outset of the process, it may
become much more complicated as the issue evolves.
Who will your opponents be, and what other issues are
currently facing the level
of government you are working with?
For example, if it is a funding issue, what is the
current budget climate? You
need to build a new building, so you need money to help. You
need to make that ask in the context of the government you are
going to approach. Therefore, you must have a fundamental
understanding of that government; who are the players, what is
the process, what is their election cycle, who are the long term
advocates for the issue that you are dealing with, who are some
of the long term opponents. These are the fundamentals that you
must grasp, in order to develop a viable solution to your issue.
Once you
have identified your issue and potential solution, you create,
what I call, a preliminary case statement; this is where you
define what the issue is and what you think the potential
solution is. Once again, it sounds simple, but there is some leg
work you are going to have to do to get to that point, including
informal discussions with some of the people who can solve the
problem.
Fourth, you need to identify the elected
officials that have the authority to solve the problem. For
example, if you are going to the County Council on a funding
issue; you need to know which Councilmembers not only have an
interest in your issue, but also the capacity to solve the
problem. There may be Councilmembers that are interested in your
issue but aren’t in a position to help you solve the problem. In
contrast, there might be some Councilmembers that have very
little interest in your issue, but have the capacity to solve
the problem. You
have to identify who has the interest and the capacity. This
takes some basic knowledge about who the players are at that
specific level of government.
The fifth
step is identifying the constituency to assist you in the
process. In other words, starting from your inner circle; your
staff, your board, your friends, how do you reach out to other
constituencies that might benefit from the issue that you are
going to be working on? If it’s a capital project, are there
donors that might be interested, or the artists; are there
businesses in your vicinity that might benefit from the
development of this project? If it’s a tax issue, are there
other entities in the community facing the same problem? This
where you begin to broaden your base of support.
So, very briefly, there are my first 5
keys points to building a successful advocacy plan.
There are nine more steps in the process I define, and
they are not always done in sequence; sometimes many steps
overlap and sometimes you have to go back and revisit previous
steps.
My main
reason for offering these trainings is to share my knowledge and
experience with you as a business owner, arts administrator, or
community leader. At some point you will find yourself working
with the government and you will need some basic knowledge of
how to proceed.
Over the
years, I have seen many organizations get hit by a tax bill from
government unexpectedly, have a land use issue pop up, or start
a building project and realize they need the help of government
to either find funding or change a law to give them more time to
build. Government issues will crop up and I believe a basic
understanding of how to address them when they do is fundamental
to doing business.
Yes, there
are advocates and lobbyists that you can hire to help you with
this process, but how much easier would it be if their client,
you, have a fundamental understanding of the process? You can
also save yourself time and money because, with this type of
training, you can actually get a jump start on the process
before bringing in an external advocate. If you are interested
in learning more about the process or how I can assist you, I
invite you to contact me at
kevin@khughes.org
or 206.954.6150.
Many thanks
for visiting my web site.
