For a successful meeting with your members of Congress, make sure you can answer the following questions:
- What issues do you want the Congressmember to know about?
- Is there a specific piece of legislation you want to be introduced or supported?
- Has the bill been introduced yet and by who?
- Does it have bipartisan support?
- How expensive will the program be? What will it cost? (you don’t need to know an exact number here)
- Are there constituents in the Congressmember’s jurisdiction that are impacted by the issue?
- Do you have any research or statistics to back up what you are saying?
- What committee would the bill likely be sent to?
- Are we the same as the other blindness group they’ve spoken with? How are we different? (They conflate ACB with NFB)
- Are there any other issues the Congressmember should be aware of?