Congressional Recess
Best Practices Guide
2016 Edition
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Table of Contents
Federal Lawmaker Meeting Request Letter………….............................................................Page 3
Tips on Meeting with Your Federal Lawmakers
Best Practices for Meeting with Your Federal Lawmakers………………………………………………Page 4-5
Best Practices for Alternative Opportunities to Engage with Your Federal
Lawmakers………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….Page 6-7
Talking Points
The Importance of Federal Funds for Public Broadcasting…………………………………...……...Page 8-11
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Dear Representative/Senator [INSERT NAME]:
I am writing on behalf of [INSERT STATION NAME] to invite you to visit our station when you are home during
the district work period.
My colleagues and I would be honored to show you what we’re doing here in [INSERT CITY, STATE OR
REGION] to promote education, public safety, civic leadership and the preservation of local history and culture
for the benefit of your constituents.
There is so much more to the public media mission than what is on the television screen, and I believe you
would find a brief exploration of our broadcast, online and on-the-ground services enlightening and
encouraging.
All of these services are made possible by the federal investment in public broadcasting which is the
foundation of our successful public-private partnership.
I hope you will come see for yourself the impact federal funding for public broadcasting is having in our
community; I am certain you will like what you see.
In particular, [INSERT PROJECT OR SHOW NAME] is a project that we have been working on here at [INSERT
STATION NAME]. This program concentrates on [INSERT TOPIC OF SHOW OR PROJECT], and we’re especially
proud of it.
I look forward to showing you around our facility, and if you have time, we’d like to interview you while you’re
here for a segment of our [INSERT PUBLIC AFFAIRS PROGRAM NAME] series.
We would be honored to host you at our station on [INSERT DATE & TIME OPTION 1] or on [INSERT DATE &
TIME OPTION 2]. If neither of those times work for you please have your scheduler contact me at [ENTER
CONTACT PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL] to find a good time for a visit.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration, and we look forward to welcoming you to [INSERT
STATION NAME].
Sincerely,
[INSERT NAME]
[INSERT TITLE]
[INSERT STATION]
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Best Practices for Meeting with your Federal Lawmakers during Congressional Recesses
When Congress leaves Washington for district work periods, each Member of Congress spends time in their
home district or state, meeting with constituents and hosting community events. This provides a valuable
opportunity for your station to invite your Representatives and Senators to spend some time with you and
showcase the unparalleled services you provide to your local community. Meetings such as these can have a
significant impact in helping Members of Congress understand the great work you do in your community and
the essential role federal funding plays in the success of your station.
These meetings are particularly important for reiterating the value of your station’s services throughout the
long appropriations process. The process begins in the spring, but final funding decisions are often not made
until the fall or early winter (sometimes even later). As such, continuing to remind Members of Congress about
the critical impact federal funding has in the communities they represent is vital to securing funding each year.
As a reminder, our funding requests are:

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Two-Year Advance: level funding at $445 million for FY
2019

Ready To Learn: level funding at $25.7 million for FY 2017

Interconnection: funding at $50 million for FY 2017
Here are our tips for maximizing your meetings with your federal lawmakers during congressional recesses:
Schedule your Meetings ASAP

It is critical for you to submit your scheduling requests to your Senators’ state offices and your
Representatives’ district office(s) as soon as possible. When you submit your scheduling request,
please email the request to your federal lawmakers’ district or state schedulers. It can also be helpful
to call the local office and ask how they prefer to receive scheduling requests. Most offices prefer
email but some offices require you to submit a scheduling request through their official website.
Please do not send a scheduling request to a Member of Congress’ general email inbox, which receives
thousands of messages a day. Please contact APTS if you have trouble identifying the correct office or
person with whom to be in touch. If you don’t hear from your Congressional offices, please follow-up
with their schedulers. If your lawmaker is unable to meet with you due to scheduling constraints,
please refer to pages six and seven for alternative opportunities to engage with your federal
lawmakers.
Prepare Accordingly

Research your Members of Congress. Prior to meeting, check your Members committee assignments
to see if they sit on key committees for public broadcasting (generally, the Appropriations, Education
Commerce and Homeland Security committees.) Check their past support for public broadcasting by
checking whether they have signed our annual letters supporting public broadcasting funding. You can
always reach out to the APTS Government Relations Team for assistance. Please “like” and “follow”
your Members of Congress on your station’s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Medium
and/or Snapchat). Look at their accounts weekly to monitor and identify the issues your Members are
most interested in so you can highlight your station services that are related to those topics.
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
Leverage your lay leaders in your meetings. It is critical that you include your local community leaders,
lay board members and other local voices in your meeting. Their participation shows your federal
lawmakers how important your station is to your community because these influential people are
spending their time supporting your station. It is especially helpful when you include station
supporters who already have relationships with, or are financial supporters of, the Member of
Congress. The APTS Government Relations Team is more than happy to work with member stations to
identify these people.

Keep the meeting concise and manageable. Invite no more than four or five of your colleagues and lay
leaders to attend. Prior to your meeting, decide which participant will cover each issue or portion of
the station visit or tour. General talking points are provided at the end of this guide for your use in
preparing for and conducting your meeting. Please personalize these with examples of your local work
in the areas of education, public safety and civic leadership.
The Meeting

Say thank you. Thank your federal lawmaker for the opportunity to engage with them during the
district work period and any past support they have given the station.

Relay local impact. Articulate the unparalleled services you provide to your community and their
constituents, particularly the unique services that are only available through your station in the
community. It is also useful to mention services beyond the broadcast that the Member of Congress
might not know about like on-the-ground education activities, partnerships with public safety
agencies and other community outreach. APTS encourages all stations to share with their Members of
Congress any work you do in the areas of education, public safety and civic leadership because our
work in these areas has proven to expand support for our stations across the political spectrum.
Explain what losses your station would sustain without federal support, and be specific. Provide
impact data on how federal dollars help you provide these great services to your community.

Make your ask: Will you or your boss vote to continue full federal funding for public broadcasting?

Don’t let the meeting veer off course. Convey your expertise and try to keep the meeting on track by
returning to the outline you planned in advance.
After the Meeting Follow Up

Send an email to thank your federal lawmaker and staff for their time and provide any relevant
supplemental information.

Send APTS an email with details of your meeting, so that the organization can follow up and serve you
better in the future.
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Alternative Engagement Opportunities
Public affairs tapings at your station. Your federal lawmaker may not have been able to fulfill your official
meeting request; however, you may already have a scheduled time for your federal lawmaker to come to your
station for a public affairs program taping or other event. Prior to, or following the event or taping, take a few
minutes with your federal lawmaker and explain the value of your station to your local community. You could
also have a supporter of the federal lawmaker and the station (lay leader, active station volunteer, community
leader, etc.) greet your federal lawmaker and express the value of the station to the community.
Engage with staff. If your lawmaker is unable to visit the station or meet with you, set up a station visit and
meeting with their staff. Establishing a good relationship with congressional staff in the local office is very
important. If a staffer has a positive experience visiting the station, meeting with you, or talking to your lay
leaders, they are more likely to recommend that the lawmaker meet with you in the future. Having open lines
of communication with staff will help you understand the Member of Congress’ outlook and priorities. In
addition, while congressional staff in the local offices are focused on community engagement and events in the
district or state, they can also weigh in with their counterparts in the D.C. office on legislative issues,
highlighting the impact a bill or funding measure could have on the district.
Attend town hall meetings. Some Members of Congress hold town hall meetings during their district work
periods. These events are public forums for the Member to provide their constituents with an update on their
work and for constituents to ask their Member questions. To obtain a schedule of your Members’ upcoming
town halls, contact your Senators’ state offices and your Representatives’ district offices or check their
website. If they don’t have a schedule the first time you call, remember to call back to check whether the
public schedule has been released yet. Once you have identified a town hall you would like to attend, put
together a group of community allies to join you at the town hall. The more people you have in your group, the
greater chance you will have of being recognized. Also, you should prepare a brief, meaningful statement on
the importance of federal funding to your local public television station. You could also pose a question to your
federal lawmaker on their position on federal funding for public broadcasting. On the day of the town hall,
your group should arrive early and get seats up front. Everyone in your party should be briefed on your
statement, should they be called upon during the event. Following the town hall, send your federal lawmaker
and their staff an email thanking them for hosting the town hall, and reinforce the concerns you presented at
the town hall or would have liked to present (if you were not called upon). Also, be sure to include any
statement of support or commitments that the Member made during the event.
Attend your federal lawmakers’ scheduled office hours. Some Members hold community office hours events
either in their local district offices or at central community locations. At these events constituents may usually
wait in line to speak with the Member for a couple minutes about the issue of their choice. To obtain a
schedule of your Members’ upcoming office hours, contact your Senators’ state offices and your
Representatives’ district offices or check their webpage. For this engagement opportunity, you should prepare
a brief, meaningful statement on the importance of maintaining level federal funding to your local public
television station. You should also invite one or two community allies to accompany you to this event.
Participate in tele-town hall calls hosted by your federal lawmakers. Reach out to your Representatives’
district offices and your Senators’ state offices for a schedule of upcoming tele-town halls hosted by your
federal lawmakers. When the call begins, follow the moderator’s instructions to virtually ‘raise your hand’ to
ask your federal lawmaker about their position on funding for public broadcasting and urge them to support
public broadcasting. If you ‘raise your hand’ immediately, it is likely you will be forwarded to a staffer who will
screen your question. When you present your question to the staffer make sure your question is concise,
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thoughtful and respectful of your federal lawmaker. Further, if the call features a poll question, it’s a good idea
to tie your question into the poll question. Presenting your question in this manner increases your chances of
being selected to pose your question to your federal lawmaker. If your question isn’t selected, wait until the
end of the call to leave a voicemail for your federal lawmaker.
Write an op-ed. Federal lawmakers and their district staff read through the local papers every day. Ask one of
your community allies to write a thoughtful op-ed on the importance of your station to the community. The
talking points at the end of this guide can be used to help draft an op-ed.
Promote the grassroots campaign, Protect My Public Media. District work periods are an ideal opportunity to
grow our grassroots advocacy network, and add new public broadcasting supporters who can weigh in with
their federal lawmakers during critical times. Here’s a few ways you can promote the Protect My Public Media
campaign during recess:
o
Promote Protect My Public Media at your community and station events, including State
Fairs, by distributing campaign pamphlets, bookmarks and raffling off tote bags. *
o
Run the Protect My Public Media spot featuring Amy Brenneman.*
o
Add a Protect My Public Media banner to your website.*
o
Add a Protect My Public Media acknowledgement in your newsletter.*
o
Promote Protect My Public Media on social media.*
o
Promote Protect My Public Media’s upcoming awareness campaigns.
*Protect My Public Media partner stations can access these materials at
http://protectmypublicmedia.org/partnerstations/. The password is “welcome.” Stations who want to raffle
off tote bags should contact Cait Beroza at [email protected].
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Talking Points to Use When Meeting with Members of Congress:
Public Service Media: Pursuing the Missions of Education, Public Safety and Civic Leadership
As the last locally-owned, locally-controlled media in America, reaching more than 99 percent of the American
people, public television stations are uniquely positioned to provide education, public safety and civic
leadership services – not only on television but in the classroom, the emergency response network and the
community.

The federal investment in public television underwrites these public services and ensures that they are
available to everyone, everywhere, every day, for free. The Government Accountability Office has
found that there is no substitute for this federal investment in the commercial world.

Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents support federal funding for public television,
place more trust in us than any other public institution and consider the federal investment in public
television the best use of taxpayer resources after national defense.
In education, public television is America’s largest classroom.

Early childhood educational television programming, the hallmark of public television, has helped 90
million kids get ready to learn in school and succeed in life.

Almost 2 million teachers serving 40 million students (including home schools) use PBS LearningMedia,
which adapts public television programming – plus content from the Library of Congress, National
Archives, NASA and more -- to create 100,000 curriculum-aligned, interactive digital learning objects
for K-12 classrooms.

Public television stations run “virtual high schools” that bring expert instruction in specialized subjects
to the most remote areas of America.

Public television operates the largest nonprofit GED program in the country, helping tens of thousands
of second-chance learners get their high school equivalency diplomas.

Through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate initiative, public television
stations have helped reduce the high school drop-out rate to a historic low of 17.7 percent.

Public television stations are leaders in workforce development. Vegas PBS is the largest job trainer in
Nevada, certifying 100,000 hospitality service workers per year and placing more than 90 percent in
jobs.

Public television enriches the lives of everyone, everywhere, every day, for free, with the best history,
science, cultural and public affairs programming on the air.
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In public safety, public television plays an important role in homeland security and emergency
communications:

Public television stations are the backbone of the Emergency Alert System through which the
President of the United States can alert the American people to national emergencies.

Public television spectrum is critical to the Wireless Emergency Alert system that sends cell subscribers
geo-targeted text messages in the event of a local emergency.

Public television stations enable state and local law enforcement and first responder agencies to
communicate with one another and with the public in times of emergency.

Public television stations’ datacasting technology helps law enforcement deal with challenging
situations ranging from school shootings (providing blueprints of schools in real time to improve
emergency response) to crowd control at major events such as the Fourth of July celebration on the
National Mall.

Public television stations committed 1 Megabit per second of spectrum to support the FirstNet firstresponder network.
In civic leadership, public television treats its viewers as citizens rather than consumers. Local public television
stations:

Serve as the “C-SPAN” of many state governments.

Host thousands of candidate debates in every election cycle.

Produce far more local public affairs programming than anyone else.

Produce hundreds of hours of local history and cultural programming which no one else produces.
FY 2017 Appropriations Requests
FY 2016
CPB Two-Year
$445 million
Advance
Interconnection $40 million
Ready To Learn $25.7 million
FY 2017
President’s
Budget
$445 million
FY 2017
Public Media
Request
$445 million
FY 2017
Senate
Appropriations
$445 million
FY 2017
House
Appropriations
$445 million
$50 million
$25.7 million
$50 million
$25.7 million
$50 million
$25.7 million
$10 million
$25.7 million
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CPB’s Two-Year Advance Funded Appropriation:

This funding is the seed money that makes public television’s local work possible and enables local
stations to serve every household throughout the country — in communities large and small — with
the highest quality of educational media content, every day, for free.

These funds support the unparalleled educational services of local stations in addition to supporting
critical public safety services and programming and outreach that fosters strong civic leadership.

Local stations leverage this seed money six times over and work with respected local partners to meet
the unique needs of the communities they serve.

Public television’s free, universally available children’s educational content has been proven to close
the achievement gap and prepare preschool aged children for school, while public television resources
are used by more than 1.8 million teachers in classrooms nationwide, serving nearly 40 million K-12
students.

Public television is also deeply committed to secondary and adult education through GED prep
courses, virtual high schools and workforce training programs that provide digital learning
opportunities for training, licensing, continuing education credits and more.

Public television provides the critical backbone infrastructure for the nation’s alert and warning system
and stations are partnering with local emergency responders to customize and utilize our
infrastructure to meet local public safety needs.

As virtually the only locally-controlled and operated media remaining in America, public television
provides more community public affairs programming, more local history and culture, more candidate
debates, more specialized news, more community partnerships to deal with issues of concern and
more civic information of all kinds than anyone else in the media universe – this includes serving as the
“C-SPAN” of many state governments.
Interconnection Funding

For more than 20 years, Congress has provided separate funding for public broadcasting’s
interconnection systems – the backbone of public broadcasting.

Public television’s lease on the current interconnection system is coming to an end, and we greatly
appreciate that Congress provided much needed funds in FY 2016 to begin the multi-year process of
renewing and updating our interconnection system.

These funds help ensure continued public television service is available for free to all Americans,
particularly those in the most rural and remote regions.

The public television interconnection system connects local stations to PBS, other national public
television distributors, state and regional public television networks, and individual producers enabling
the distribution of noncommercial, educational television programming and related materials to 98
percent of the American public, serving all 50 states, D.C. and the U.S. territories.
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
Public television’s work supporting national alert and warning communications depends on a wellfunctioning interconnection system that takes advantage of technological innovation.

FY 2017 funding is needed to continue the critical work that is now underway which, in addition to
connecting stations with PBS and other national content distributors, will allow for greater
collaborations among stations — enhancing partnership opportunities around programming,
education and public safety initiatives.
Ready To Learn

Recently reauthorized in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Ready To Learn is a competitive grant
program through which the U.S. Department of Education invests in public television’s research-based
educational content to build the math and reading skills of children between the ages of two and eight,
especially those from low-income families.

Ready To Learn content is free and available to all households, including the 54 percent of 3-4 year
olds that do NOT attend preschool, but thanks to Ready To Learn, have daily access to highly
educational content through their local public television station.

Ready To Learn content is rigorously researched, tested, evaluated and proven effective.

Ready To Learn has supported the production and academic rigor of some of public television’s most
beloved kids programs like, Peg+Cat, SuperWHY!, Martha Speaks and many more. The Ready To Learn
content is available on television, online and on mobile apps, and on-the-ground.

Local stations partner with community and educational organizations in their area to bring the Ready
To Learn content to the kids and families who need it the most through events and outreach to
schools, preschools, home schools, Head Start and other daycare centers, libraries, mobile learning
labs, Boys and Girls clubs, and other community organizations.

Since 2005, more than 100 research and evaluation studies have shown that Ready To Learn literacy
and math content engages children, enhances their early learning skills and allows them to make
significant academic gains — helping bridge the achievement gap.

21.7 million kids ages 2-11 viewed Ready To Learn content last year. Additionally, Ready To Learn has
funded the creation of more than 135 educational online games, 15 apps and over 100 at-home
educational activities.
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