ACTION PLAYBOOK:
Contact Your County Officials
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Urge your county commissioner and other county-level officials to act on a climate solution.
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Find their contact info
Send an email
Make a phone call
Tag your elected official
Report back
Ask a friend to do it too
1. Gather contact information
For this action, you’ll need email addresses, social media handles, and/or phone numbers for your county officials.
Find who represents you on the usa.gov database. After you enter your address, click “Local Officials.” Look for titles with county in the name, like County Commissioner, County Executive, County Mayor, County Supervisor, or County Administrator. These positions may vary by county and are usually directly elected.
Sometimes, large cities are either governed independently of counties (like in Virginia or Washington, DC), or the county exists but completely overlaps with municipal jurisdiction (as in New York City, where you should instead contact your borough president). If you don’t live in a county, try choosing one which is immediately outside your city, or where you formerly lived or have close ties.
Write down the contact information. Once you have the name of your county officials, try to use the county’s official website to find:
An email address
Their office phone number
Social media handle (preferably where they’re most active, otherwise your preferred channel)
2. Send a personalized email to your county officials
It might be tempting to sign your name to the bottom of a prewritten email, but personalized emails are much more attention-grabbing. They also get processed individually, whereas mass-produced letters are batched. Our Slack #wins-shoutouts channel is packed with celebratory posts from changemakers who sent personalized emails to their local officials and received awesome personal responses. It’s always worth it!
Click on the template below to open an editable email to your county officials about this campaign’s featured climate solution (or manually copy and paste the template). You can use the same email copy for both, but send the emails separately. Please bcc advocacy@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our impact.
Make sure to customize the sections in brackets and carry over any links (they’re an important part of your message!), and save a copy of your email to use as a phone script. Then, return to this playbook.
⬇️ Templates
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Do a quick Google search to see whether your county has already made progress on this climate solution. This help you craft a more precise message and encourage your elected officials to build off the progress they’ve already made.
3. Make a call
Next up: Call the number(s) you found listed on the website! These folks represent you and are therefore accountable to you. Use your email from the previous step as a call script. Start by identifying your constituent status (“Hi, my name is ___ and I’m your constituent in ___”), then just be concise and specific, and demonstrate authenticity. If they don’t pick up, don’t worry—your voicemail will be documented the same as a real-time call. (And if you prefer to leave a voicemail rather than talk to a real person, call after hours!)
4. Tag your county officials on social media
Onward! Public amplification of your message can grab the attention of policymakers and elicit a response. Revise your personalized email message into a social post, being sure to preserve the specific ask and tag their handles.
Here’s a sample post you can edit for the current campaign:
Thanks to the IRA, counties can now take advantage of tax credits to help electrify their vehicle fleets. It’s an unprecedented opportunity to cut emissions, save costs, and advance public health. This is a pivotal moment to lead our community towards a sustainable future. [@ YOUR COUNTY OFFICIALS], act now and leverage these new benefits for our city.
5. Invite others to take action (don’t skip this!)
Network effects are powerful. Talking about climate solutions and encouraging friends, family, or followers to take climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. Now that you’ve taken this action, invite your friends to do the same.
📲 Easy option: simply share this LinkedIn post or this Instagram post.
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Now that you’ve tagged your elected officials on social media, scale your impact by tagging friends in your network as well.
Borrow from the Issue Briefing for the facts, but the most important thing is to communicate why you care (share your climate “why”), and by extension, why your audience might care. End your post with a concrete call to action. Then send it!
Below is sample language you can adapt and customize:
Just contacted county officials about getting them to switch to electric vehicles. Tagging fellow [CITY] friends! [TAG HANDLES] Contacting your elected officials really makes a difference, and it’s really empowering (& easier than I expected!) Here's the step-by-step playbook (from @theclimatevote): https://www.climatechangemakers.org/preview-contact-your-county
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A great way to take this step to the next level is by considering which county or city officials you’d want to target and inviting a friend to take action who also happens to be their constituent. If you're campaigning for a policy change in your own metro area, it's strategic to involve another local resident to amplify pressure.
However, if a different metro area is the focal point for your policy solution, try to choose someone who lives there. Picture a scenario where San Francisco hasn't yet banned fossil gas in new construction, unlike Oakland and Berkeley. It seems likely that San Francisco will follow their lead. At the same time, in Salem, Oregon, where your best friend lives, a city council vote on this issue is imminent, and it's become highly contentious and politicized. In this case, your San Francisco friends can wait—text that Salem bestie immediately!
6. Report back
If it’s been a week and you haven't received a response, follow up! A friendly nudge, just checking in that they received your email and the resources, is totally appropriate and often appreciated.
If you receive a response from your local officials:
Please report back to advocacy@climatechangemakers.org or send a message to a staff member in Slack. You can simply forward email responses or send a screenshot. This enables us to more accurately track our collective impact.
Did they seem skeptical? It's really useful to learn of any barriers for your city or town. For example, local officials might be reluctant to apply for federal grants because they lack the staffing capacity to process the reporting requirements (it’s a lot of work). Anything you learn from their response is valuable, so please share! We’re trying to grease the wheels to deploying climate solutions, so the more we know, the more effective we can become as connectors and advocates.
Were they enthusiastic? Awesome! In addition to forwarding to Climate Changemakers staff, consider sharing your response publicly in our epic Slack #wins-shoutouts channel —other changemakers may find it motivating and inspiring. We’re normalizing civic action on climate, and it starts with talking about it.
And that’s it, playbook complete! Feel accomplished.
Thank you for taking action.
🎉 CUE CONFETTI 🎉
© 2023 Climate Changemakers