To Lobby or Not to Lobby? With Tristan Downe-Dewdney
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Are you wondering if your small nonprofit is getting the attention it deserves from key decision-makers? Today's episode of The Small Nonprofit is all about unlocking the potential of government relations to amplify the impact of small organizations.
We're chatting with Tristan Downe-Dewdney, a lobbyist who's an expert at turning influence into real action. Tristan is a seasoned government expert with over 15 years in policy and advocacy. His expertise spans both community-level and systemic advocacy strategies, making him the perfect guide for small nonprofits looking to make a significant impact through government engagement.
Don’t forget to become a supporter of our show!
Key Episode Highlights:
The Art of Legitimacy: Tristan talks about how crucial it is for small nonprofits to demonstrate their legitimacy and wield influence. He shares anecdotes from various campaigns, such as the contrasting approaches between the casino and elephant campaigns, showing how to make your voice heard by important people.
The Strategy of Relationships: Building personal relationships is at the heart of nonprofit’s success. We delve into the tactics for augmenting your advocacy, from press conferences to the more subtle art of engaging through social media. Tristan will show you how to make sure your nonprofit stands out and gets noticed.
First Steps to Making a Difference: So, where do you begin? Tristan advises to start small and focus on policy overlaps. It's all about identifying your goals, learning the ropes, and growing your campaign. And remember, the journey of government relations is not just a duty, but can also be a joy.
Navigating the Political Landscape: For many, the world of lobbying is uncharted territory. Tristan demystifies the process, discussing how to engage with government on multiple levels and how to approach the registration process if necessary. We tackle concerns about partisanship and how to keep your nonprofit’s mission front and center.
The Network Effect: If you're not already reaching out to key office holders and preparing your presentation for a political audience, it's time to start. As Tristan emphasizes, it's essential to maintain these relationships to ensure ongoing support for your nonprofit’s initiatives.
Don’t forget to become a supporter of our show!
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vo8AfWKPU8o?si=Mv6be7pKsau0SQcH
Links and Resources:
Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristan-downe-dewdney-21523b28/
Tristan’s Website: www.downedewdney.com
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Tristan: But I think if you want to take a bit of a step back and think about GR in that kind of larger perspective, as being government and community and society kind of being deeply intertwined, I've seen a lot that have taken the perspective that there's, on one hand, there's the specific explicit asks, but then there's also how not-for-profits, charities, or community groups can extend their reach and kind of empower themselves through government contact.
00:00:33 Maria: Hi friends. Ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:01:10 Maria: Hi, friends. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit Podcast. I'm your host, Maria Rio. And today, I have someone very interesting joining me. So I'm really excited to introduce you to Tristan, who is actually not a nonprofit professional. Gasp. So Tristan is going to share his expertise with us today. I'm really excited to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us today.
00:01:34 Tristan: Great. Thanks for having me, Maria.
00:01:36 Maria: Can you tell our audience who you are, what you do, how you got into what you do?
00:01:41 Tristan: Sure. Yeah, my name is Tristan Dewdny. And for all intents and purposes, I'm a lobbyist. Those of us in the industry, we call ourselves government relations professionals. That's sort of the professional choice of words there. So by way of background, I studied too much political science in university and wound up working in a political office at City Hall here in Toronto a number of years back.
00:02:08 Tristan: So I spent about eight and a half years working in government at the municipal level, political level. And then around 2019, I made the transition from political office to working for one of the larger consultancies. Ultimately, I was the director of municipal affairs for Sussex Strategy Group. And then more recently, I've broken off to start my own business. And these days, I'm doing government relations work at the municipal, provincial and federal level here in Toronto.
00:02:37 Maria: I find your job very interesting and very exciting and kind of a little bit obscure. So I'm glad that we get to have this conversation and bring in the sector. Can you tell us a little bit about what is lobbying and what is it not?
00:02:52 Tristan: Sure. Big question. I mean, on paper, lobbying is essentially defined as pushing for government to make a decision one way or another, whether that's policy or allocation of funding or selecting a vendor. Anytime you are asking a public official, whether elected or not, to do something, even come for a tour of your facility or to come and meet the team, depending on the conditions, that's lobbying.
00:03:29 Maria: So what is it not?
00:03:32 Tristan: What is lobbying not? Well, lobbying is not most of the day to day things anybody does for the work unless you're a lobbyist. But to be fair though, there is a bit of a gray space and this is why I find it interesting as a field of practice. Obviously so much of the world is political and social, there are so many relationships that are consequential in terms of how governments make decisions or in turn how communities make decisions based on government that there is a whole sort of political lens that can be put on almost anything that you do.
00:04:13 Tristan: Most organizations don't think about it. They don't necessarily need to. They just have basic assumptions that the world will continue on the way it has or they have an idea of where the world's going and they don't need any kind of push or pull to change that. So things can be as political or GRE as you want them to be. Every does their own sort of risk opportunity analysis on their own.
00:04:40 Maria: So one of the issues that I have with our sector, one of many and why I'm excited to have you here is because nonprofits usually address issues in a very piecemeal manner, even though the root cause is a systemic issue or policy choice or whatever it is. There's many nonprofits trying to address symptoms of policy choices, but they're not actually either able to advocate or willing to do so. I read a study. I think it was only 3% of nonprofits in the states actually advocate and engage with government officials, while 100% have the legal right to do so.
00:05:16 Maria: And in Canada, we know that there is definitely a chill in, they call it a chill, right? In any kind of advocacy of the government in case people felt that their nonprofit status could be taken away or revoked. How are other sectors applying lobbying successfully? And then I'll dive into how can nonprofits actually build that kind of strategy internally?
00:05:42 Tristan: Sure, I mean, yeah, if you think about traditional lobbying, it is the domain of business and companies. So there's often not a lot of obvious overlap for people to think about how it can apply. But essentially, you can think of a few traditional examples. If you're a housing developer who wants to get a building approved, protracted approvals or a local official who's taking an adversarial stance with you, or the project can result in delays or cancellation, which can cost millions of dollars.
00:06:21 Tristan: On the other hand, speeding things up or negotiating an outcome can make a project more profitable. You could have a manufacturing company that is concerned about, let's say, the re-planning of a local roadway. And they have trucks coming and going for instance, whether or not the effective use of that road for transportation purposes is taken into consideration could result in gridlock, could result in the company having to use more trucks to service their customers.
00:06:55 Tristan: And so there's just a thousand different ways that companies do interact with government. Traditionally, it's very much been focused on direct financial or project-based outcomes. I think what's interesting, at least to me, and this may be sort of interest in the context of this conversation, is there does seem to be a bit of a shift. A lot of companies are thinking about lobbying in the context of their corporate social responsibility. Lobbying is becoming for many a way of extending or empowering their CSR work.
00:07:31 Tristan: So whereas you might have a developer who in the past was just like, listen, all I want to do here is just get this thing approved fast. Now we have folks who are thinking, are there ways I can actually engage government around community improvements? Is there ways we can engage government around improving transit to the area? And then they're taking on the role of organizer and bringing in other groups and then going to government to make very different asks.
00:07:56 Tristan: But it's moving in a kind of a new direction. But in turn, the elevated brand often pays off in terms of their advocacy work on other fronts. So it's a big area. It's evolving and it's quite interesting.
00:08:11 Maria: That is, yeah. So apparently, well, apparently, because I'm not a lobbyist, you can move in a lot of different directions. There's a lot of reasons to engage with government. What do you think are some of the reasons why nonprofits would want to do that? Or what do you think they can achieve or get out of having an advocacy strategy?
00:08:33 Tristan: Sure. I mean, there's a lot of the obvious basic things, right? Government controls money, policy, programs. That's your basic resource perspective. What can government do or empower me to do directly? Having government align with your objectives or understand how you do your work can make things much, much easier. But I think if you want to take a bit of a step back and think about GR in that larger perspective, as being government and community and society being deeply intertwined.
00:09:13 Tristan: I've seen a lot that have taking the perspective that there's on one hand, there's sort of the specific explicit asks, but then there's also kind of how not for profits charities or community groups can kind of extend their reach and empower themselves through government contact. So one way to think about that is politicians are really fantastic and influential networkers having a good relationship with a politician.
00:09:44 Tristan: Especially one who's particularly devoted to their work and believes in a cause in line with you, it could result in them speaking with a company later on that week and saying, hey, I hear that you're trying to do some work that's impactful for sustainable agriculture. Amazing. I was just talking to this community group that's trying to do some sort of startup market in this jurisdiction.
00:10:11 Tristan: And I've certainly seen that in my work in government and outside where suddenly these connectors are saying, I want to solve problems. I want to be in the middle of solving these problems. You go take your money over these guys. They're really cool. So that's one way. The other is, and again, you have to be careful about being partisan. Being partisan is often a no-no in terms of supporting specific campaigns or parties.
00:10:35 Tristan: But if in the course of their regular duties as an elected official that somebody's tweeting out the work your organization is doing or they're featuring you in their newsletter, or let's say they're even doing something like some press, that can be fantastic exposure for an organization. They have large audiences and large networks that you can get exposed to that way.
00:10:09 Tristan: Also, politicians, elected officials, non-elected officials are often very much in the know, so many organizations depend on those relationships to have politicians or others flag, you know, hey, there's this thing coming. Hey, there's this grant coming. I remember you spoke to me last year about how you have a hard time finding money for events in certain communities.
00:11:23 Tristan: There's this whole granting program incoming, like maybe we should put you in touch with the people who are designing it. And then you can get kind of that proactive engagement. And then lastly, they can be, and this is not something I'd recommend you want to start with, but they can be great people for, for floating or testing ideas with.
00:11:40 Tristan: Just saying like, listen, we were thinking about doing this thing here in this policy area or to address this problem. But does that make sense to you? And they can say, of course, we know these people have been advocating here and this is what the officials are thinking about here. How do you fit into that, that context?
00:11:57 Maria: I think I want to ask you like a million questions. Okay. That all sounds really good. But for some nonprofits, they're thinking like where do I even start, right? So when I was trying to do this internally at my last role, I was trying to gather other nonprofits, maybe strengthen numbers, right? Or maybe a petition, maybe that's what I should do. Or I did get the chance to interact with some elected representatives and some federal staff and talk to them about why is this issue not in a mandate letter anywhere that I can find?
00:12:33 Maria: Why is it not part of your portfolio for 70 years? Where did this issue go? By past that, I don't know if nonprofits know how to relate to government and move things forward. And there's also the question of like do I have to be a lobbyist? Do I have to register? What do I have to do to not get punished by the government for trying to push forward a systemic solution?
00:13:03 Tristan: Right. Well, I mean, taking a step back, just in terms of do you need to register and what does that look like? There are a bajillion registries across the country, some municipal, some provincial and federal. The biggest orders of government, federal, provincial, you know, almost universally, I believe have have registries you need to sign up with municipalities.
00:13:27 Tristan: It's not always obvious. You should look it up. If you're curious. Like Toronto certainly does. Hamilton does. Ottawa does. I think York region does, but the city of York doesn't. There's some funny, it's very irregular when it gets to a useful level. But if you're thinking federal, I think the rule there is 20% of one full-time position or 40 hours in a month. That's a threshold at which you do need to register. Again, you should never be doing anything partisan. Any not-for-profit property already aware of that to begin with.
00:14:05 Tristan: In Ontario, it's like I think if you're spending 50 hours in a year on logging activities, you need to register. And in Toronto, if you're not for profit, typically one doesn't need to register, but there are exceptions. One thing I would say is that if you're worried about it, the registrars are your friends. These are people who are managing essentially large databases, occasionally dealing with contraventions, there's nothing they like more than hearing from people who are wanting to register and follow the rules.
00:14:45 Tristan: So proactively reach out to them. They have questions that they're very helpful. And the only thing I'd add there is if you're thinking of doing anything federal, keep in mind that you need to register based on the date you decide you're going to lobby not based on when the outreach starts. So that's just another thing to keep in mind. You don't want to decide, oh, we're going to launch a lobbying campaign for months. You hire the person to do it.
00:15:14 Tristan: But then you're two months late to register because you made your first phone call and you realized, oh, darn, that was a little late. But again, and the registries can be kind of finicky. They're very cumbersome websites, but there's a lot of grace there and the registrars will help you in terms of getting set up, answering questions you have and all that kind of thing. So what was the other component of the question again?
00:15:43 Maria: Yeah, you know, your essay question. What can nonprofits actually do to move forward systemic solutions? So now that I have my petition and my partners, or maybe do I even need that? I don't know. What should nonprofits be focusing on?
00:15:58 Tristan: Right, and this seems like the low bar. But when I was in government, I would be lobbied by large corporations that would come in and they'd run me through these like extensive decks. You know, like here's how this technology is going to change everything. And then we kind of get to the end and be like, thanks for meeting with us. I'm just like, okay, that's great. I know your brand.
00:16:22 Tristan: I know you exist. I don't know what my takeaway is though. And that I think is one of the most important things to think about before meeting with government or any elected officials is what are you hoping to get out of it? There should be an ask made as part of a meeting, or it should be clear if you're, for instance, setting up a tour of your operations, that that is what you're wanting them to do.
00:16:50 Tristan: You're wanting them to come, take a tour, meet folks, understand what's happening, and then they leave saying, great, I've done that thing. Otherwise, you're just having a meeting that should be leaving thinking, "Oh, this group wants me to talk to staff about this funding stream or they're looking for me to keep them aware of budget decisions or policy developments in this area." So the ask is pivotal.
00:17:18 Tristan: You know, for any group, it's really important to think about your reach and your impact. A lot of politicians are very pragmatic about the relationships that they foster. So do think about, you know, in their helping you, does this help a larger network of people that are consequential, that are gonna help move the needle on policies they care about? Does this impact a lot of their constituents?
00:17:44 Tristan: Those things should be communicated. Bigger is better, the better you can articulate your reach and impact. I think the more effective your engagement is gonna be. So you have the ask. You have a description of your reach. You should be looking at what office holders do you overlap with. Who are the ones who are controlling the funding in the area that you're interested in? Who's writing the policy in the areas you're concerned about?
00:18:14 Tristan: Who represents the constituencies that you are active in? It could be where your office is based. It could be where you do your program or in the communities that you touch. Those are the ones who are going to be, you know, you're going to want to connect with most, they're the ones that you can ask most of to represent you at a policy or local political level. So map those out, prioritize them appropriately so you refine that list.
00:18:39 Tristan: Prepare a presentation, get comfortable pitching what you're about and why that's important. A lot of these kinds of things most organizations will already have in some format. You probably have a website, you probably have a deck of these for other purposes. Think about retooling that for a political audience. So again, explain who you are, all that good stuff. End up with the ask and you've got a good document there.
00:19:06 Tristan: And then think about maintaining relationships. You've done a tour, you spoke with everybody. Maybe you're just wanting to build that, you know, your network and make sure the government's aware of who you are. You know, ministers and committee chairs get swapped out routinely, who's the new chair, who's the new committee member, make sure that they're on your list for outreach.
00:19:32 Tristan: Sometime after that change is up, maintain contacts. You can jump to events, make sure they remember who you are. And that will get you a long way to having the relationships that one, you may be going to this with specific asks, but also once you have that network and are maintaining it.
00:19:54 Tristan: You have resources and folks that you can go to on an urgent basis if suddenly the government's considering some sort of profound change to your sector or to a policy area that really matters to you, then it's like, "Oh yeah, okay. I was on tour with them last year. They know their stuff. They're working back, 200 people in my community," and they're saying, "Hold up there." This policy change is going to be really impactful that you're going to get listened to much more quickly. So that's sort of the basics. I thought, sort of, say, that's sort of foundational outreach and contact plan.
00:20:30 Maria: I'm actually surprised how many similarities there are between how we do our work. So you're talking about an ask of fundraisers ask all the time, a pitch, you know. And what a lot of people who don't fundraise, don't understand is that it's all about building really deep, true relationships based on shared values. So I think that's a very applicable strategy here, like what can we work on together?
00:20:57 Maria: And also connecting with the decision makers, like all of this is very aligned to how we're trained to do our work. So that's very, very exciting. I actually wanted to go back to something that you said a little bit earlier, probably like 10 minutes ago, sorry, I wrote it down.
00:21:14 Maria: So what do you mean by partisan? Right? Because a lot of the issues that nonprofits work on can be considered partisan, like supporting people experiencing homelessness. Or maybe that's my misinformation, misconception of what partisan means. So maybe you can, yeah, thank you.
00:21:32 Tristan: Yeah, well, I mean, I think one, the fact you consider that the partisan kind of suggests you're sort of politically savvy to sort of the dynamics of politics, right? I mean, there are issues that are closer to one party or one side of the political spectrum than another. But that itself is not considered partisan. So partisan is party-based support or what we say like an outsized interest in a specific candidate or politician.
00:22:05 Tristan: So if like, if all your work is around, getting pictures with somebody who's in the middle of an election, that could, you know, that would very likely be considered partisan, just as if you, I mean, arguably, you could only meet with elected officials from the government. So that... let's say that's federal, you're only meeting with a Liberal party or NDP members.
00:22:31 Tristan: And that's not considered partisan. Similarly, if you're aware what would this one member over here just went on the news and said some, like, bonkers stuff that makes, like we know categorically, that's not true. Having a meeting with them to educate them about the issues, it's very targeted. But in that context, where there's a clear public position that you're trying to engage with them on, not considered partisan.
00:23:00 Tristan: So just think about it in terms of like, is this about an election or could it be construed as being about boosting the electability of an individual or party? That's partisan.
00:23:11 Maria: Okay, so something I've done in the past. Now I need to get this insight. Something that I've done in the past is provide a guide for our community members who access our services based on the top four public policy priorities that they outline. So it was affordable housing, freer, or hit paid dental care, and a bunch of others like better transit or something.
00:23:38 Maria: What we did is outline what each representative which a candidate was saying about these issues and if they even had a platform on it, would something like that be considered partisan or just like education?
00:23:48 Tristan: No, that's just good background intel. I mean, again, the more sophisticated one gets with your government relations, campaigning and work, the one you're going to start learning about the... I mean, they're all, at the end of the day, we can categorize politicians under the large party umbrellas or put them on somewhere on the right-left, top-down spectrum, but they are fundamentally people.
00:24:17 Tristan: And part of the art of GR is learning all the occasions and exceptions where those categories and buckets don't actually apply, where suddenly a local parking matter becomes way more important than equity or something like that. So those backgrounders are hugely helpful. Knowing where the party stands, knowing where the individual stands, that's just good intel.
00:24:44 Tristan: Typically, one doesn't start a meeting by saying like, "Listen, these are the 12 things you said, and this is the four top policy priorities of your party from the last election. Here's how we hit them or whatever." Typically, one would say like, "Listen, I know from the times I've seen you in the media or campaign literature. These kinds of issues are close to your heart. They're close to us too. And this is what we do. This is what we're trying to affect change in. And here's how we think we could work together, how you could help us do what we do." That's just being well informed. So nothing to be worried about there.
00:25:23 Maria: My other thought is with donors. So let's say you're engaging a major donor or a mid-level or whatever category. This is an important person that you need something out of. We usually take time to build a relationship before jumping into an ask. Like you don't just say like, hi, can I have a million dollars? Thank you. Like you definitely wanna create those value aligned partnerships. Is it the same when engaging government or can you go in and be like, "Please help me with this if you don't have a relationship already?"
00:25:54 Tristan: Yeah, oftentimes, yeah, one does go in with an ask. Again, that often has to do with the organizational capacity. If you're talking to, you know, let's say it's federal and you're trying to contact like 26 politicians. So that's like a meeting every two week. There's background work going into that. There's travel time. There's a lot going on.
00:26:18 Tristan: So you're not going to do 400 hours of meetings and work before you get around to asking for what you want. So the one, you know, just as sort of a quick rule of thumb is your local representative, whoever's in charge of the policy bucket that your work falls under. There should be, you know, ideally a deeper, longer-term relationship that's formed there.
00:26:46 Tristan: Ideally, you have the opportunity to form relationships before an ask is necessary. But as somebody who's in GR, I'm almost like, people like me are typically called things are off the tracks, like there's a vote two weeks from now. Nobody knows what we need and they don't understand our issues. So a lot of GRs is very reactionary that way.
00:27:10 Tristan: But ideally, you're in the community and just part of your regular work is some sort of light engagement with local representatives with those in charge of the policy area. And they get that experience with you, you build that rapport. And then it's when you're kind of doing the pushes around a specific policy area that you're articulating that ask.
00:27:28 Maria: Are there any examples of more like grassroots campaigns or like nonprofit related campaigns that you can think of that maybe can illustrate some of what we're talking about today?
00:27:40 Tristan: Sure, let's see. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, a lot of the stuff we wouldn't see in the news or media. There were a ton of not-for-profits and charitable organizations that came to our office when I was at the city hall. Do the things that we were just talking about. A big priority for then counselor, Kristyn Wong-Tam, who I worked for was indigenous issues. And we had a number of indigenous organizations that came to us looking for space or for ways of more effectively running programs.
00:28:21 Tristan: There's an interest in supporting indigenous businesses in the city. Those kind of collective asks, along with the Councilor Wong-Tam's dedication to supporting Indigenous organizations resulted in them asking a developer, give us the bottom two floors of this building, we're going to create a campus and we're going to set up an Indigenous Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship which is almost almost done and they're just looking for somebody to to to program it.
00:28:55 Tristan: But you know, there is a physical campus location worth millions of dollars based on the goodwill and conversations that a number of organizations had over several years in the last term of council. Then if you're looking at other kinds of campaigns, and this is... I don't know if this is as applicable for not-for-profits, but I think about two campaigns that were huge, one that didn't work and one that really did work. And this is kind of getting to sort of larger magnitude things. But folks may remember there was a vote about having a casino on the waterfront a number of years ago. You know, big file, lots of money being spent there.
00:29:49 Tristan: You know, as somebody who's in city hall, I would have expected that would have been a more, they would have had a lot more going for them based on their spend and their reach. But when it came time for them to back up and demonstrate their reach, what they did was we got a lot of letters supporting the casino idea from addresses that didn't exist and from names that we'd never seen before, all sent through the same postal distribution centers. So that was bizarre. They would have been better off not even, or whoever did that grassroots campaign, probably would have been better off just not doing it.
00:30:37 Tristan: A purely economic case probably would have made more sense. That just engendered mistrust. One of the big campaigns that was super successful was elephants. A number of years ago, they were looking at, do we, I think the debate was, is there a new enclosure for the elephants at the Toronto Zoo, or do we fly them down to Florida to an elephant sort of retirement community?
00:31:01 Tristan: And nothing, nothing has ever reached the magnitude of the public engagement that generated. Like those elephants had friends in high places and across the whole city. Thousands of emails. Like there was not a politician at city hall that did not know how important it was that these elephants get flown to a new home. And so they were. It was a very obvious decision just based on that demonstrated legitimacy and clout of those who were organizing that movement.
00:31:38 Maria: Those are hilarious examples. The casino one with all the fake addresses. Yeah, that's not really going to speak to a politician because they want to know it's real people in their riding so they can push those things forward.
00:31:51 Tristan: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of gets into like an area of GR that we hadn't talked about before, right? Because I was talking about sort of a contact plan and developing personal relationships. But of course, there are a ton of ways that you can augment that work to demonstrate your oomph and reach and to help solicit action. So lots you can do there.
00:32:18 Tristan: It would be helpful to talk about that a little bit, because there's a few tools that are good to know. So there are many ways that you can kind of bolster your advocacy or make it more salient. So things like press conferences, media articles that are highlighting your issues, doing events with politicians. Again, you have to be careful with the partisan piece, but there are occasions when that makes sense.
00:32:47 Tristan: Going and deputing at committees, you know, or whether that's at city hall and speaking about a budget item or going to a standing committee at parliament as an expert on an issue that gets you there, your presence, you're being heard. And then to solve the kind of the passive communications that we might think of as being political, but we'll be reaching political audiences.
00:33:13 Tristan: So if you have a widely distributed newsletter or bulletins or you have a Twitter following that's sizable, articulating the kinds of goals you have and where there's need can help you down the road as politicians are looking up online, like who are these guys that are reaching out, what's going on there, and then they're tweaking to what you're looking for and then just serve you again to reinforce the reach, the knowledge, the depth.
00:33:42 Maria: And that you're a real organization.
00:33:44 Tristan: Exactly, exactly.
00:33:49 Maria: What do you think if an organization has not started this? They have no idea where to start. What is the first two or three things that they should focus on before starting to call their representatives?
00:34:02 Tristan: Yeah, well. I mean, I think start small, you know, start by trying up a list of, you know, what are the policy and geographic overlaps that your organization has. Maybe you are only concerned about one funding stream, and there's not enough money that's being allocated to Southwestern Ontario as part of that. So just framing that in terms of like, okay, that's like there's something to FedDev, who are the local people who might champion this.
00:34:35 Tristan: Just start getting a sense of the interests and the players and start off small. You can always grow a government relations campaign as you go. Often you need to, often you have a meeting with one person, they're like, you know, listen, I'm working on this, but the person you actually need to speak to is a person writing the policy and then they're on the bureaucracy side and I can be in touch with them.
00:34:55 Tristan: So the things do grow and sometimes, you know, very rarely does a GR plan and strategy survive first contact with government. You have to update it and adapt it and grow it. So maybe you can start small and learn as you go. So you don't need to be an expert. Experts can help, but you don't need to be an expert to get started.
00:35:19 Maria: That sounds great. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise so generously. I will link your LinkedIn and your website in our show notes. Is there any other parting thoughts before we go?
00:35:34 Tristan: For me, I think GR can be a lot of fun. It's an interesting area, there's always so much happening in government and in politics. If you can kind of bring a sense of curiosity and again start with bite-sized pieces, you're going to have a better experience of government relations. And again, it is, you can do it, it's very safe, there's lots of people you can talk to in terms of registrars to make sure that you're adhering to all the rules.
00:36:06 Tristan: And you know also, increasingly as it's talking about the evolution of corporations, more GR folks and firms are trying to do CSR. So there may be folks that not-for-profits can reach out to to get a bit of pro bono advice or DP discounted rates to kind of get started on things. So do consider tapping into those resources where you can.
00:36:27 Maria: Thank you so much for joining us today, Tristan, and thank you for sharing your expertise again. And thank you all for tuning in for this episode of The Small Nonprofit. I am Maria Rio and we will chat next time. Bye for now.
00:36:40 Tristan: Take care.
00:36:44 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
