Using sign-on letters to petition legislators

If you are looking to write a sign-on letter to a legislator that your members and supporters can sign on to, there are several options available. Below are some options I have encountered that allow you to petition legislators.

Free hosted petition services

The advantages of using a hosted petition service is that it does not require any technical skill. Reporting tools are frequently made available from these services.

• I found CitizenSpeak.org to be very simple to use. It has great reporting tools – I was able to download a spreadsheet with the following information: the number of letters sent; who sent them (including their contact info); and how the letter may have been customized by senders.
• Change.org is another service, and what were once considered “premium” features are now free. They have also included good advice for writing a sign-on letter to representatives.

Host your own petition service in WordPress

This is my favored approach. It appeals to my inner control-freak. Reporting is available (similar to CitizenSpeak above). It can be hosted directly on your organizational website.

• I am grateful to Dagon Design for developing this WordPress plugin: “Secure Form Mailer Plugin For Wordpress.”

I have used it twice – once for Great Streets ABQ and once for the Main Street Alliance. I have been able to store the results in a text file which can be imported into Excel.

When your petition is ready

To encourage people to use the sign-on letter, I would:

• Link to it from your organizational website.
• Send an email blast to the sign-on letter.
• Tweet your followers and encourage them to re-tweet.
• Link to it from your organization’s Facebook page.
• Link to it from your organization’s MySpace page.
• Find a blog post related to the subject of your sign-on letter and include a link to the petition within a comment. (Make sure to write something relevant to the post, do not just include link.)

Have you used any of these options before? What have been your experiences? Do you know of a better way to petition legislators? Let me know, comment and share below!