Tip 1: Measuring and Communicating the Value of Government Relations
By Anna Platt, Senior Manager of Government Relations

Understanding how to talk about the value your government relations function brings to your organization has always been important, but when you couple it with political turbulence, it becomes essential. If internal stakeholders lack a clear sense of your function’s importance, it puts you at risk when changes are being weighed.

Measuring the value of your government relations team provides data to demonstrate your impact. It can help justify your team’s budget, counter assumptions that the function isn’t essential and give leadership a clearer understanding — and appreciation — of your contributions. But measuring value can be difficult for several reasons:

• Government relations is a long game. “Small” things like securing a member of Congress as a bill co-sponsor take time, and big things like getting a bill passed or cultivating a congressional champion take a lot of time. Data showing quantitative success or failure simply may not exist yet.
• Prevention is hard to measure. In government relations, many goals are to prevent something from happening, making data collection tricky.
• Goals achieved with others can complicate measurement. Working with coalitions or trade associations to achieve your government relations goals can make it hard to demonstrate specifically how your team contributed in a meaningful, clear way.
• Government relations work is just hard to quantify. Many strategies and actions are difficult to assess and calculate. For instance, you can’t build a relationship with a lawmaker’s office overnight and have it simply check a box.

Measurement metrics should help you track and demonstrate progress. To be effective, metrics must speak your audience’s language. Start by understanding how your leadership prefers to receive information and tailor your communication accordingly. Use both quantitative and qualitative metrics. For example, instead of just noting that your CEO met with a member of Congress, explain the outcome or impact of that meeting.

When demonstrating your function’s value, focus on three things:

• A specific policy or political issue you addressed or blocked.
• Its importance to the organization.
• The actions you took and why.

Be transparent about your goals, the challenges involved and the progress made. Avoid overpromising — government relations work takes time, and you don’t want to set unrealistic expectations.

For more insights, explore the report on Measuring and Communicating the Value of Public Affairs.

Tip 2: Add These Two Internal Controls for Your PAC Records
By: Victoria Ellington, Senior Manager of Political Engagement

Compliance and recordkeeping are at the foundation of political action committee management. By law, PACS are required to track and report contributions received and disbursements made to candidate committees. Correcting even the slightest discrepancy is a significant administrative burden, making it crucial to establish a system of internal controls to eliminate mistakes, improve efficiency and provide peace of mind for PAC managers. Two options to add to your compliance routine are bank reconciliation and Positive Pay.

• Bank reconciliation: Bank reconciliation is the process of comparing your internal PAC financial records for the previous month with the PAC’s bank records. Deposits, withdrawals and all other transactions should perfectly match your PAC records that will be used for reporting purposes. If there are any discrepancies, such as outstanding checks, this allows you to follow up or reconcile a mistake. This process is an integrated feature offered by most PAC software providers, so be sure to take advantage.
• Positive Pay: Unfortunately, multiple PACs have been victims of fraudulent bank activities over the past few years. Positive Pay, a feature increasingly offered by banks, particularly those dedicated to managing political funds, is a fraud prevention system that allows only checks that have been formally approved by a PAC to be presented for payment in an ACH format. The PAC manager would provide all check details to the bank, and only those with matching information will be processed. This prevents a small mistake from becoming a larger problem and also catches fraud early.

PAC compliance is simplified by a management system with strong internal controls in place. Small errors are inevitable, so processes that check and double-check money flowing in and out of the PAC are important. Implementing these and other systems will help meet your goals of transparency and compliance.

For more information, attend one of our upcoming compliance events.  Council members can contact us to submit general compliance questions to election law attorney, Ken Gross.