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Tips of the Trade
This Week: How to Build a Successful FPC Team
Every FPC experience is
unique—levels of advocacy experience, knowledge of the public affairs world, and personal connections to lawmakers all vary to a large degree. As a result, it is important to
develop an FPC Team to support you in executing your significant grassroots
activities and duties to the best of your abilities.The following
guidelines will help you build a new team or help if you are struggling with your current
support structure.
Step 1: Identify Your Needs
Take stalk of your needs as an FPC
and build your team accordingly. When choosing members of your FPC team, keep in mind that ideal NAR
advocates hold the following attributes:
- An understanding of
the key issues affecting REALTORS®;
- An interest in
politics;
- A willingness to play
an active role in specified NAR grassroots initiatives;
- Existing relationships
with legislators, community and business leaders.
Many REALTOR® advocates may have more specialized experience. Areas of advanced familiarity might
include:
- Relevant issue
expertise and/or a history of advocacy;
- Campaign experience;
- Leadership experience
within NAR.
Step 2: Ensure Strong Team Qualities
Your goal in building an FPC team
is to help you better carry out your duties and increase responses to Calls for
Action. As a result, ideally your team should include:
- A minimum of one FPC
Team Member for each Senator and Representative serving under each FPC.
- Representatives of
various major boards in the district and perhaps even the affiliates (Women’s
Council of REALTORS®, Commercial members, etc.)
- Representatives of the minority population in your
district if it is significant (ie: National Association of Hispanic
Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), Asian Real Estate Association of
America (AREAA),or National Association of Real Estate Brokers
(Realtists))
- REALTOR® members on your board that you
know will also respond to Calls For Action;.
- Those who serve on Government Affairs Committees and
RPAC.
- Also, consider asking members with different real
estate specialties (ie: Commercial, Land, Broker etc.)
Step 3: Seek Advice
There are significant resources
available to every FPC to help them recruit and build a high potential FPC
Team. Consulting with the following groups will help you identify and recruit
individuals who are interested and capable advocates on behalf of NAR. They
include:
- State and Local
Associations;
- Government Affairs Staff;
- State and Local Association
Executives;
- NAR Political Field
Representatives;
- Leaders within NAR (i.e:
committee chairs and committee members).
Step 4: Hold an Organizational Meeting
Once chosen, it is important that you meet with
your team and learn their interests, advocacy history and
strengths. This will help you seamlessly work together to maximize the team
resources in order to play a fundamental role in NAR’s grassroots public
affairs agenda. The organizational meeting may be in person, by conference
call, or tied to an already scheduled meeting to take advantage of team members
being in one place.
During this meeting, FPCs should
gather information to establish regular contact patterns with team members,
which can also be activated when hot issues emerge or when specific CFAs are
made. Below are some examples of information that you may want to gather:
- Phone number;
- Primary email address;
- Home/work address;
- Fax number.
Step 5: Get on the Same Page
Your team members should all be equally
familiar with their Members of Congress. Since legislators have different
committee expertise or issue areas that are of interest to them, communications
directed at legislators should reflect the REALTOR® advocate’s familiarity with an issue and
his/her understanding of its importance to the particular Member of Congress.
Provide
your team with a biography of your lawmaker and other materials which can be
provided by your NAR Political Field Representative.
Step 6: Ensure Participation
Some FPC Team Members will be more
involved than others depending on the time they can dedicate. To help ensure
maximum participation, we suggest the following:
- Ask your team members
about their level of time commitment.
-
This will help
identify which members are willing to do what activities.
- Giving Team Members
greater responsibility for certain projects often generates a feeling of
ownership over the goals of grassroots, and eventually your team’s overall
success.
Step 7: Provide Recognition and Positive Feedback
Team members who go above the call
of duty or who have made great strides in furthering the team’s goals should be
acknowledged and appreciated in newsletters, email updates or in
other forums. If the team has been successful (i.e., getting your Member of
Congress to be a co-sponsor or getting a vote), the team should celebrate its
victory. Please notify NAR staff if you have a particularly victorious win.
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