Communicating with Opinion Leaders, the General Public and Our Members and Activists
It isn’t easy being heard—and listened to—when you have the budget for a megaphone, and your opponent has a budget for a stadium-filling sound system.
Nevertheless, Sierra Club California is heard and recognized as one of the boldest, most constant voices for the environment in the State Capitol.
That’s saying a lot, given how much money polluting industries spend to influence legislators and regulators to act against the environmental policies we support. In 2015 alone, the oil industry spent more than $21.5 million on influencing legislators. That’s nearly $1.8 million dollars per month!
We have to win our battles by alerting opinion leaders, the general public and our members and activists when California's environment is under threat or, on those good days, when there is an opportunity to advance environmental protection. That's why we spend a growing amount of our time on media and communication.
Ways We Stay in Touch with Supporters
We produce two emailed documents each month just to keep our members and supporters informed.
One is our monthly e-newsletter,
Capitol Voice. In that we report about top issues we're working on, upcoming events, and ways to make the most of your Sierra Club California membership. We email this out every first Sunday of the month.
Another is our
Letter from Sacramento, written by Sierra Club California Director Brandon Dawson. The letter typically provides a personal focus on a single issue, from water policy to voting rights to a first meeting with a new agency head, depending on what's topical. We email this out every third Sunday of the month, except in December, when we take a break.
If you haven't been receiving either of these electronic publications, but would like to,
click here.
Sometimes an issue breaks and we want our active members to know about it right away. Waiting to report in a monthly letter or newsletter doesn't work. We post the breaking news on our California Activists Listserv. To subscribe to that listserv, click here.
Media
Sometimes, an issue deserves a press release. To find the latest we've produced, go to our
press releases page. And sometimes, with or without a release, we get in the news. To see the latest reports about us or that include quotes from Sierra Club California staff and members, go to our
news reports page.
We also publish occasional reports. Every year in the fall, we publish a legislative report card, that grades state legislators' environmental voting record. You can
find our report cards here.