Association Leadership - July/August 2008 - (Page 34)

government relations Help for Government Relations professionals TSAE, ASAE offer a variety of valuable resources By David Mintz, CAE Mintz Consulting What skills do you need to be a government affairs professional? How can you measure the effectiveness of your efforts? Whether you have a one-person shop or a full-ﬂedged government affairs team, measuring your own skills and evaluating ways of improving your efforts can be a challenge. After all, most learning about testifying, negotiating on bills, developing collateral materials, communicating with members and building coalitions is done through on-the-job learning and lots of trial and error. Just because one tool works on a certain bill doesn’t mean it will work the next time. Likewise, you can’t always judge the success of your legislative program by whether you were able to get a bill passed or defeated. Sometimes, it is keeping a measure from being introduced; sometimes it is getting an amendment. Maybe you know there is no way to stop a measure, but you can delay the implementation date to give your members more time to comply. Or maybe you can only get one year of funding for a program and know you’ll have to come back next time to justify continued funding. Sure, there are some books and Web sites devoted to helping government affairs professionals improve their efforts, but what tools exist speciﬁcally for those of us who represent trade or professional associations? While TSAE’s Government Relations Committee provides resources for GR professionals in Texas, another great source of information is the American Society for Association Executives’ Government Relations Section Council. In particular, ASAE has created a core competency tool to help improve your own skills as a government relations professional and evaluate the effectiveness of your legislative program. The core competencies give you an in-depth exploration in areas such as direct lobbying, grassroots fundraising and effectively managing money, as well as communications and management issues and resources. While this is a particularly good resource for people who are new to government relations, even experienced professionals will appreciate up-to-date resource references that are listed in the document. The core competencies, last updated in 2007, can be accessed at www.tsae.org. Look under the Resources section – Government Relations. Another resource is a self-assessment tool which can also be used as a peerreview evaluation of your overall GR program. The tool is broken into a number of categories, including direct lobbying, political action committees, governance/management and volunteer leadership. Within each subsection are series of questions to help you analyze the effectiveness of your program. Like the core competencies document, the peerreview program self-assessment tool also includes a resource guide within each of the subject areas. This tool can be found at www.tsae.org under the Resource tab, Government Relations. For ASAE members, there is a government relations listserv. The Web site also offers a number of articles on government affairs topics. The next legislative session is coming soon, so take advantage of these educational tools to improve your knowledge and process. ◆ Training in Texas Look for several GR topics on the program at the TSAE annual conference in Corpus Christi, including “Hiring an Outside Lobbyist” and “PAC Fundraising.” In addition, the committee has planned a half-day program on Nov. 13 in advance of the 2009 legislative session. 34 Association LEADERSHIP | July/August 2008 http://www.tsae.org http://www.tsae.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Association Leadership - July/August 2008

Association Leadership - July/August 2008 Contents Chairman’s Column Homepage 60-Second Solutions Cover Feature: Association Lessons Learned Perspectives Association Case Study TSAE Annual Conference CEO Strategies New Members Community Spotlight Government Relations: Resources Technology: Web Site Redesign Global Summit Photo Page Great Ideas Beaumont New Mexico Index to Advertisers Advertiser.com The Lighter Side of Associations

Association Leadership - July/August 2008

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