Government Relations
UW Colleges & UW-Extension
Advocacy—Let Your Voice Be Heard
Welcome to the Advocacy – Start Now section of the Government Relations website. Our role is to provide you with key tools such as talking points and budget updates in order to facilitate your efforts to contact your elected officials. Because we are university employees, let me clear up any potential misunderstanding about your work and contacting elected officials.
If you are a university employee and you wish to educate and inform a state legislator about a particular issue related to your job and you are coordinating your efforts with your government relations team, you are able to provide this information (meet, email, phone call, fax or mail) during your work hours. This can include educating legislators about the impacts of a specific budget cut. The key words here are to make sure your efforts are coordinated with us so that we aware of your legislative contacts and our messages are consistent with each other. This can easily be done by regularly checking the government relations website. Please also communicate with me about your legislative visits.
However, if you attempt to persuade a legislator or their staff to vote a specific way, those actions are considered lobbying. And you are unable to do this activity on state time using state resources, including phones, fax machines and computers.
I hope this answers any questions you may have. Please call me if you have additional questions. Also, please let me know if you have additional ideas and suggestions for this section of the website and tools you may need to effectively advocate for the UW Colleges/UW-Extension. I appreciate your feedback. Thank you.