The legislative session may be a sprint, but the interim is a marathon where preparation determines the winners. The most effective government affairs teams use this "off-season" to build a strategic advantage. Is your team covering all its bases?
This is the season for strategy. The choices you make in the interim directly shape your legislative influence, stakeholder engagement, and leadership credibility next session.
7 Things Your Team Should Be Doing Right Now
Here are seven essential tasks your team should be focused on right now to ensure you enter the next session fully prepared.
✔ Conduct a Post-Session Performance Audit
Go beyond a simple list of wins and losses. Analyze the voting records on your priority bills to identify your champions, your opposition, and the crucial swing votes. This data is the foundation of your strategy for the next session.
✔ Map Your Relationship Landscape
Your most valuable asset is your network. Now is the time to document it. Log every meeting and conversation with legislators and their staff. Crucially, map the personal and professional connections your own members and stakeholders have to key officials. Don't let that institutional knowledge live in someone's head or inbox.
✔ Monitor the Horizon for Emerging Issues.
What happened in other states is often a preview of what’s coming to yours. Actively track legislative trends and monitor pre-filed bills in your state and others. Setting up alerts for key terms ensures you’re never caught by surprise.
✔ Organize Your Internal Champions
Your subject matter experts and policy committee members are a powerful resource. Use this time to organize them into dynamic groups, provide them with relevant reports and updates, and get their input on your developing legislative agenda.
✔ Prepare Your Reporting Framework
Don't wait for the session to start to think about reporting. Build your report templates and scorecard shells now. When the time comes, you can populate them with up-to-date information in minutes, not hours, keeping your board and leadership informed without the scramble.
✔ Do a "Data Clean-Up."
The interim is the perfect time for a "spring cleaning" of your data. Have members or stakeholders moved? Have legislative staff changed? Ensuring your contact information and district data are accurate is essential for effective communication.
✔ Review Your Tools and Processes
Are you managing this critical work in a patchwork of spreadsheets, documents, and email folders? The interim is the ideal time to ask: Are our tools helping us or holding us back? A unified platform can connect your legislative data, your relationships, and your reporting in one place, saving time and creating clarity.
Want to see how to unify these tasks in a single platform?
Join us for our upcoming legislation webinar: "Off-Session, On Strategy: Build Relationships & Prepare for What’s Next", a strategy session where we’ll show you how to turn planning into action.
From relationship mapping and bill tracking to reporting automation and influence analysis, we’ll walk through real-world examples of how Engagifii supports strategic success between sessions and not just during them. If your team is ready to work smarter, not harder, this session is your next step forward.
