ACTION PLAYBOOK
Contact Your State Legislators
Step 1: Gather contact information for your state senator(s) and representative.
State legislatures are like a mini Congress: there’s a state Senate and a state Assembly, House of Delegates, or House of Representatives – each state calls it something different. The only exceptions are Nebraska, D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where there’s only one legislative body.
Enter your address in the usa.gov database. Click “State Officials” and locate your state senator(s) and state assembly member (also called state representative or delegate in some states).
Write down the contact information for each legislator’s:
Phone Number
Social media handle (preferably where they’re most active, otherwise your preferred channel)
You may have to click through to their official website to find all the contact info!
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Create a new contact for each of your county officials. Include their office phone number, email address, website, and social media. This will make it so much simpler to contact them in the future.
While you’re at it, follow them on social media, and look for a “Subscribe to my Newsletter” option on the official website. Receiving their content in your feed & inbox on a regular basis will make you an infinitely more effective advocate. You’ll get a sense of their priorities, get the chance to meet them at community events, and learn about new issues to contact them about.
Step 2: Get to know their priorities & record on climate action.
To be the most effective advocate possible, you need to build an authentic relationship with your elected officials. And no, this is not just for fancy donors or political operatives. County officials are shockingly accessible, and they genuinely want to get to know their constituents.
Relationship-building starts by learning more about them. When you know what issues they care about and their history of climate action, you can tailor your outreach to resonate with them personally.
Follow this worksheet to research your state legislators.
Pro tip: Save the file to your computer so you can add to it over time. Build it out with research on other elected officials, and update it as you learn new information.
Step 3: Send personalized emails to your state legislators
It might be tempting to sign your name to the bottom of a completely prewritten email, but personalized emails are much more attention-grabbing. They also get processed individually, whereas mass-produced letters are batched. It’s always worth it!
Use the tool below to personalize and send an email to your state legislators about the featured policy priority. In the template, make sure to customize the sections in brackets. You should also save a copy of your email text to use as a phone script.
This letter is customized to your state legislators depending on their political ideology and the status of the featured policy in your state. If you see two or more legislators' names below, they will all receive the same letter. If you only see one legislator's name, it means your legislators are divided by political party, and you will be prompted to email the other(s) on the next screen.
Tips & reminders:
Customize the sections in brackets
Save a copy of your email text to use as a phone script in the next step
The letter is pre-customized depending on the political ideology of your elected official. . If you see two or more legislators' names below, they will all receive the same letter. If you only see one legislator's name, it means your legislators are divided by political party, and you will be prompted to email the other(s) on the next screen.
Above, you’ll see our Climate Changemakers current featured advocacy campaign. Want to work on a different policy solution? You can find email templates for other climate policies here, or write directly to their email address about whatever’s on your mind.
Step 4: Call them
Next, call the number(s) you found in Step 1, using your email from the previous step as a script. If you’re nervous, just remember: Your reps and their staff are fellow humans. They’re also professionals: They are literally paid a government salary to listen to you. Your job here is to convey your authentic concern about an issue – you don’t need to be an expert.
If they don’t pick up, don’t worry—your voicemail will be documented. And if you prefer to leave a voicemail rather than talk to a real person, call after hours.
Step 5: Tag your state legislators on social media
Onward! Publicly sharing your ask has the power to really grab the attention of policymakers and elicit a response. Elected officials are sensitive about their image, so they take serious note of what their constituents say in public. Also, policymakers run their own social media accounts sometimes, so you may even reach some of them directly with your post. You can even try sliding into their DMs! Use the template below to start a post, customizing everywhere you can, while being sure to preserve the specific ask and tag their handles.
Step 6: 5x, 10x, 100x your impact
Now that you’ve taken action, multiply your impact by talking about it!
“The most important thing you can do to fight climate change is to talk about it.”
– Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and communicator
Network effects are powerful. Connecting others with opportunities to take productive climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. We're not the only ones asking, “What more can I do?”. Answering that question for others is an important climate action.
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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 [CLIMATE SOLUTION]. Tagging fellow [CITY OR STATE] 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-state-legislator
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A great way to take this step to the next level is by considering which state legislators 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 state, it's strategic to involve another local resident to amplify pressure. But if you think pressure should be concentrated in a different state, try to find someone you know who lives there instead and send them this playbook!
Step 7: Report back
If you receive a response from your state legislators, please share it with advocacy@climatechangemakers.org. You can simply forward email responses or send a screenshot. This enables us to more accurately track our collective impact.
Did they seem skeptical? Anything you learn from your legislator’s response is valuable—including barriers to action. We’re trying to grease the wheels for deploying climate solutions, so the more we know, the more effective we can become as connectors and advocates.
Did you get an enthusiastic response from your state legislator? Awesome! In addition to forwarding to the Climate Changemakers staff, consider sharing your response publicly in our epic Slack #wins-shoutouts channel — other changemakers may find it motivating, and it may inspire more action-taking! 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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