Dear SASFAA:
Greetings from your Legislative Relations Committee! Ever wondered where to find a list of the Congressional members in your state? Ever wondered where to find contact information for your Congressional delegation in Washington, DC? We’ve included the information for you in this article! Always remember when contacting your state delegations or Congressional delegations in Washington, DC to communicate via phone, fax, or email. “Snail mail” is no longer effective due to security procedures.
Our committee is currently working on updating the SASFAA Legislative Guide as well. We will be emailing that out to members in the next month or so hopefully. Please let us know if there are any concerns you have and we will be glad to speak with you about them!
Amy Berrier
SASFAA Legislative Relations Chair
2012-2013 SASFAA Legislative
Relations Committee:
Amy Berrier, Chair: alberrie@uncg.edu
Alabama – Kelly D’Eath kdeath@gadsdenstate.edu
Florida – Bill Spiers spiersb@tcc.fl.edu
Georgia – Lisa Mitchem lisa.mitchem@finaid.gatech.edu
Georgia – Nancy Ferguson nferg@uga.edu
Georgia – David McMillion dmcmillion@piedmont.edu
Kentucky – Shelley Park shelley.park@eku.edu
Kentucky – Sandy Neel sneel@bellarmine.edu
Mississippi – Joseph Statuto joseph.r.statuto@wellsfargo.com
North Carolina – Amy Berrier alberrie@uncg.edu
South Carolina – Michelle Upchurch mupchurch@limestone.edu
Tennessee – Ron Gambill rgambill@edsouth.org
Virginia – Brenda Burke blburke@vcu.edu
Jeff Daniels jeff.daniels@pnc.com
The Importance of Legislative
Advocacy
When I became President of the Georgia Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (GASFAA), I was unsure of what awaited me in the realm of legislative advocacy. I’ve always been a little bit of a nerd when it comes to politics but I am pretty shy, I’m definitely not that person that walks up to complete strangers and introduces myself. So how did I find myself doing 11 Hill visits to Georgia Representatives last year? I pushed myself to do it because I know how important the work we do is to the students in our states.
How important you ask? In the 10-11 year, 2,086,973 students received $8,034,013,670* in Federal Pell Grants in the SASFAA region. And that was the purpose of my visits, saving the Pell Grant. As you know Pell has been on the chopping block for a while now. It was important for us to advocate for our students so the legislators know just how important student financial aid is to helping students obtain a college degree. One person can make a difference!
The first step to advocacy is ensuring you have the blessing of your employer. Politics can be a tricky thing and you definitely don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize federal or state funding to your school. I was very lucky in this respect. I did the first round of Hill visits with our Director Bonnie Joerschke who serves as the Chair of the NASFAA Reauthorization Task Force. Not only did our school support us in this endeavor, our legislative affairs office set up the Hill visits. We shared with them the scope of our visit and the handout we planned to leave behind and then wrote a report for the University’s files upon our return.
Decide what kind of advocacy you plan to do. Not everyone has the funding or desire to go to Washington DC. Letter writing and other methods of advocacy can be equally effective. NASFAA offers great tools for this – tips on the best way to contact your representatives, ways to get their contact information, and even letter and email templates. Be sure to check out the Advocacy section on the NASFAA Web page at http://www.nasfaa.org. Also, when your state or regional association is doing advocacy they may request information from the membership – things like student examples or award data. Please help there where you can because that is important in getting our message across.
Actually going to Washington DC and doing Hill visits was an experience of a lifetime. You’ll rarely meet with the actual legislator but instead with one of their aides. You have maybe ten minutes to get your point across so know your stuff and be clear and concise. Do research before you get there; know what is important in higher education to the Representative with which you are meeting. Know about current hot topics in the aid community because, for example, I went to these visits prepared to speak about the Pell Grant but also spent time answering questions about student loan debt and our state scholarship program. I’ve learned that elected officials like data, cold hard numbers. They especially like it when you focus on their district because then you are literally hitting close to home so try to make personalized handouts featuring that data which they can refer to later. Avoid partisan politics. Try to make appointments for when Congress is not in session so the aides are able to spend more time with you and are more apt to listen to what you have to say. Which brings me to my next point – sad as it is, not everyone is going to listen. Most people were really open to what we had to say, however we did have one (representing a wealthier district in our state) that did not think Pell is a priority. We can only try to make him understand that it is.
Do I think I made a difference? You bet I do. But the fight is not over. Pell and other aid programs are still under attack and we are on the front lines. And every time I talk to a student who is so thankful for the student financial aid that is putting them through college, I am reminded how important our advocacy is.
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