Email your elected representatives

What is it?

Writing an email to your elected representative at the local, national or European level can be a great way to alert them to your issue or campaign. You can use your email to ask them to vote a certain way or push a certain change through. 

You can make it easier for people to get involved in a mass-email campaign by creating a template people can copy and paste and send to their MP. 

The more emails sent, the more the elected representatives know both about the issue and the number of people it matters to. The more people it matters to, the more likely a politician will be to take action. 

How do you do it?

1. Find out who your elected representative is and their email address. This will be listed on your local, national or European parliament website.
2. Write a short and clear email, explaining who you are, the campaign / issue you care about, why it is important to you, and what you want the elected representative to do about it. Include your full name and postal address so they can see you are a constituent.
3. Encourage all the supporters of your campaign to write to their own representatives. If you have the budget, you can make a template email action with a tool like nationbuilder or More Onion’s Campaignion to share it with your email list.

Why and when should you use it?

If you are wanting to make  a change in policy / law, alerting the lawmakers to your issue is a really important step. It can help identify which elected representatives are supportive to your issue, as well as those who are against you. You can then use this information strategically to map your power and community.

Works best in combination with:

A petition to show depth and breadth of support for your cause. Following up a letter with a lobby meeting can also usefully escalate your campaign.