With the start of the new year, state legislatures across the country are coming back into session. Unlike Congress, the states are out of session more than they are in. It's easier for our Capwiz skills to get rusty.

While the scale of work done in the states is smaller, the impact of state legislatures is often felt much more profoundly in our daily lives. This means the stakes can be higher and we should take great care in working with state lawmakers.

The one thing all legislators, indeed all elected officials, share is the desire to be elected and re-elected. No amount of money, raised or spent, can shield an elected official from the will of the people.

Knowing that re-election is the goal helps us to focus on one of the key strategies of effective grassroots advocacy. Connect the elected official to their constituents and demonstrate that your group can motivate those them to get involved and vote.

Here are six things to keep in mind when creating action alerts and messages to state legislators:

• Have your advocates only contact their own legislators. Legislators aren't elected statewide.
• Tailor messages to fit the legislator. One size rarely fits all.
• Present your advocates as voters. Make it clear that their voices matter.
• Encourage advocates to personalize their messages. Legislators know people who take time to write messages are more likely to vote.
• Follow up. Even the most effective messages can be forgotten over the course of a long legislative session.
• Never stop recruiting. Be sure you have advocates represented by the legislators who matter most to your cause.

Remember, your Capwiz Account Manager is an expert on grassroots advocacy. Take advantage of this experience to improve your advocacy efforts. For help implementing these ideas, click here to email {CA_AM}, your dedicated Account Manager.

How do you use Knowlegis?

This week we unveiled our redesign of Knowlegis. The interface is cleaner and easier to navigate than ever before. As part of our launch, we hosted two sessions in our offices. Several of your colleagues had a chance not only to see the new Knowlegis but also to talk about the ways they use the service.

Our community of users is part of what makes Knowlegis, and CQ Roll Call, so effective. To help keep the discussion going, we'd like to hear about how you use Knowlegis, especially your success stories with it.

Click here to email your story. We'll collect them over the next month and report what we learn in the next issue of Cache.

Scheduled Maintenance for Capwiz and Knowlegis

As part of our commitment to provide the best service, we will be conducting routine maintenance of our servers from 11:30 PM ET on Jan 22 through 4:30 AM ET on Jan 23.

We're staying up late so you don't have to.