Program on the Environment

Lobby Days are advocacy events that connect constituents with legislators to express community support or concern for bills under consideration, and they are increasingly important in shaping environmental policy in Washington State and beyond. Despite their widespread use, there is limited research evaluating which outreach strategies most effectively invite public participation or whether these events influence legislative outcomes. This project seeks to assess the impact of Lobby Days and the outreach strategies used to engage Washington residents in these efforts. During my internship with Washington Conservation Action, I attended multiple Lobby Days and designed a survey for attendees and non-attendees of these events. The survey aimed to investigate how previous attendees learned about Lobby Days, what convinced them to participate, and how non-attendees find out about similar events. I also conducted a literature review of the existing research on the legislative outcomes of grassroots lobbying, advocacy events, and communication strategies for nonprofit organizations. The results indicated that email newsletters are currently the most effective outreach strategy for promoting Lobby Days. However, the findings also suggest that underutilized social media outreach presents a significant opportunity to increase turnouts at future advocacy events. These findings provide my organization with concrete recommendations to strengthen future advocacy efforts while also contributing to a broader understanding of how to increase grassroots engagement. By increasing the visibility of Lobby Days, more constituent voices will be heard by legislators, and these events will become more effective tools for shaping policy outcomes in Washington State and beyond.