Activists Encouraged to Use Video Testimonials

By Nicole Wallace

A Washington research organization thinks that charities have yet to fully harness the potential of the Internet for advocacy — and it is promoting a new approach that it hopes will better take advantage of what the medium has to offer.

Russell E. Morgan Jr., president of the Setting Priorities for Retirement Years Foundation, says the organization started looking into online activism when September 11 and the anthrax scare made it more difficult for individuals to lobby Congress in person or through the mail. The group found that encouraging members to send large numbers of form e-mail letters to Capitol Hill wasn’t an effective way for charities to make their case, and that sending such messages gave people a false sense of participation.

“It got a lot more e-mails, that’s for sure, and it got a lot of members of Congress and their staffs quite irritated,” he says. “But it really didn’t get into providing a more solid communication mechanism.”

The organization brought together people from the fields of advocacy, aging, public policy, and technology to brainstorm about new ways to use the Internet as a tool for activism. Participants at the meeting suggested developing short video presentations that deliver messages from constituents to legislators via the Internet.

To illustrate the idea, the Setting Priorities for Retirement Years Foundation has developed a mock presentation in which a fictional organization, the Long-Term Care Association of America, attempts to persuade a senator from Florida to vote for a bill that provides subsidies for nursing-home fees and home health care for the elderly. The presentation features documentary-style messages from three of the senator’s constituents: a man who is worried about the cost of the home health-care services his mother receives, a doctor who works at a Florida nursing home, and a retired schoolteacher who says she might have to leave the long-term-care facility where she lives if the bill doesn’t pass. The presentation also includes research and statistics on the subject, which can be downloaded.

Mr. Morgan says that kind of approach could be an important tool to reinforce the work of an organization’s paid lobbyist or volunteer advocates, and that the Congressional staff members who have seen the mock-up were interested in the approach. He says that charities also could use the video to help educate their members about the issues and train them to be better advocates.

The mock presentation and a report that summarizes the organization’s research on Internet advocacy are available on its Web site (http://www.spry.org).