ACTION PLAYBOOK:

Contact Your City Officials

  • Urge your mayor or city council to act on a climate solution.

    1. Find their contact info

    2. Send an email

    3. Make a phone call

    4. Tag your elected official

    5. Report back

    6. Ask a friend to do it too

1. Gather contact information

Every community is represented by local elected officials. For this action, you’ll need to identify your mayor and city council member(s) and gather their contact information: email address, social media handles, and/or phone numbers.

America has over 19,000 municipalities, so there isn’t one central database of everyone’s local representatives.

  • For large cities and county officials: Use the usa.gov database. Larger cities have city council districts, so you’ll enter your address to first determine your district and then who represents that district. And if your city councilor or mayor doesn’t show up on usa.gov, Google: [name of your city/town] + mayor. That should yield an easy result.

  • For small towns: Google: [name of your city/town] + mayor/city council. Note: you may have a uniform town council that is not subdivided by district, so in that case, you can contact any city council member(s) you want!

If you live in a smaller town, you might find a page like this:

In larger cities, your council is likely subdivided into city council districts:

Write down the contact information. Once you have the name of your mayor and one city council member, try to use the municipality’s official website to find:

  1. An email address

  2. Their office phone number

  3. Social media handle (preferably where they’re most active, otherwise your preferred channel)

2. Send a personalized email to your local 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 mayor and city councilor about this week’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

  • Do a quick Google search to see whether your city or town has already started made progress toward the climate solution. This knowledge can 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 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 mayor and city council member 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 this campaign:

Thanks to the IRA, cities can now take advantage of tax credits to help electrify municipal 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 LOCAL 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.

  • 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

  • A great way to take this step to the next level is by considering which 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 city, it's strategic to involve another local resident to amplify pressure.

    However, if a different city 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.

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