ACTION PLAYBOOK
Contact Your State Legislators
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Urge your state legislators to act on a climate solution.
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Find contact info
Send an email
Make a phone call
Tag them on social media
Report back
Ask a friend to do it too
1. Find your state legislators’ contact information
Every American is represented by at least one elected official in their state’s legislative (lawmaking) branch. For this action, you’ll need to find email addresses, phone numbers, and social media handles for your state legislators.
Start by clicking here and entering your home address.
Choose “State Officials” and expand the results. Locate your:
state senator(s) and
state representative (also called state assembly member or delegate—the names differ by state).
You’ll find all the necessary contact information nested under each elected official’s name.
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Want to know more than just contact information? One great way to make a bigger impact in your climate advocacy is to understand how your state legislature works, who exactly represents you, and whether they’re climate champs. We have a resource for that.
2. Send a personalized email to your state legislators
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 state legislators about this week’s featured climate solution (or manually copy and paste the template). The featured campaign is marked with a ⭐️, while additional relevant campaigns are marked “Active.”
You can use the same email copy for multiple legislators, 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
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Do a quick Google search to see what kind of progress your state has already made 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
Using your email from Step 2 as a call script, call the number(s) you found listed on the website. You’re their constituent; it’s their job to listen to you! You’ll want to start by identifying your constituent status (hi, my name is ___, and I’m your constituent in ___), then just be concise, specific, and authentic.
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.
4. Tag your state legislators on social media
Public amplification can grab the attention of policymakers and elicit a response. Turn your personalized message into a social post, being sure to preserve the specific ask. Remember to tag their handles!
Need ideas for your post? Check the blog post or Issue Briefing for this week’s Action Plan.
5. Report back!
If you receive a response from your state legislators, please share it with advocacy@climatechangemakers.org or send a message to a staff member in the Climate Changemakers Slack. You can simply forward email responses or send a screenshot. This enables us to more accurately track our collective impact.
Did your state legislator give a reason it can’t happen in your state? Anything you learn from your legislator’s response is valuable—including barriers to action—so please report back. 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! Consider sharing your response publicly in the Climate Changemakers 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.
6. Multiply your impact
Now that you’ve taken action, increase 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.
📲 Easy option: simply share this LinkedIn post.
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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!
And that’s it, playbook complete! Feel accomplished.
Thank you for taking action.
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