In January, Communiqué began working with the Washington Poison Center (WAPC) to help the organization raise awareness of the budget cuts proposed by Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire.

Specifically, our goal was to inform key audiences – state residents, members of the legislature and the media – about the potential impact these budget cuts would have on the WAPC and state residents.

To educate citizens and legislature representatives on the WAPC’s funding situation and encourage the community to speak out on behalf of the WAPC, we recommended the following grassroots strategies:

Launch Letter Writing Campaign – The purpose of the lettering writing campaign for the WAPC was to motivate its network of partners and constituents to write letters or place calls to local lawmakers asking the state to re-instate funding for the WAPC. The letter provided supporters with data points they could communicate with lawmakers from both the WAPC and the Washington State Department of Health about the organization’s invaluable services and how the budget cut would impact state residents.

As a result of our efforts, we helped the WAPC develop valuable letter writing campaign materials that were used to garner support from the WAPC’s network.

Meet with Editorial Boards – We reached out to more than six editorial boards on behalf of WAPC. These groups typically carry tremendous power to advance issues and motivate the community to take action on an issue. The outreach we conducted led to several op-ed opportunities.

Develop and Place an Op-Ed – We partnered with the WAPC to write an op-ed piece for the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to drive awareness of the WAPC’s funding situation and convince key audiences to take action with the state’s legislature. Working closely with the WAPC, the team placed the following two op-ed pieces.

– Seattle Times | Save Mr. Yuk from Washington’s budget cuts

– Seattle Post-Intelligencer | State Budget Cuts

It has been a pleasure to support the WAPC. If you are interested in learning more about how you can support the WAPC as it works to re-instate funding, please contact us at (206) 282-4923 or visit: http://www.wapc.org/ActNow.htm