The Formation of the Animal Protection Lobbying Union (APLU)

By Peter Muller

LOHV [League of Humane Voters] is encouraging a consortium of animal protective organizations, let’s call it the, “Animal Protection Lobbying Union (APLU)” managed by a trusted fiduciary agent.

The trusted fiduciary agent receives requests for action from APLU member organizations for a message of approval/opposition to be directed to a specified legislator who is currently the key decision maker on a pending bill of interest.

The trusted fiduciary agent then circulates the request among the other APLU members who respond by indicating to him or her whether they wish to be “in or out” on this particular request. If they are in, they grant the fiduciary agent control of that segment of their database that contains their members who are constituents of the key decision maker. The fiduciary agent sends the appeal for support/opposition to all members in the key decision maker’s district in the combined databases on the Union members that agreed to be included in this particular lobbying effort at the appropriate time.

Depending on the number of organizations willing to participate, the number of constituents responding to the key decision maker should be much larger and consequently much more effective than requests originating from single organization’s database.

Opinions of bills presented, or further insights into the particular legislature, can be discussed in APLU member conferences prior to any action taken by the trusted fiduciary agent.

The benefit to the APLU members would be that “their” bills would also receive the support of the much larger APLU lobbying effort than they could muster with their own database. And, they would, of course, receive public acknowledgement for having successfully participated in the enactment/defeat of the bill.

ELIMINATING CONCERNS ABOUT DATABASE BREACHES

Understandably, organizations require secure control over the use and distribution of any part of their database. For that reason, it’s important that the “fiduciary agent” cannot be related to any animal rights organization. Several bonded mail-houses would meet this criterion. Other possibilities would be an IT professional or organization that can be bonded to not misuse the databases over which they will have temporary control.

The League of Humane Voters believes that by uniting and applying a business-like approach to lobbying efforts, the enactment of animal protection laws will be benefitted. Bills that now fail will have a far better chance; the strength of the animal protective vote will be seen and felt as greater numbers of voters now are heard from.

Of course, there are many more details to be discussed and considered before we can “hit the ground running.” We recommend a meeting of interested organizations to discuss this idea further.

LOHV will be reaching out to organizations to solicit feedback at this conference and afterwards. We greatly look forward to your feedback as well.

To discuss or join in the founding of the ANIMAL PROTECTION LOBBYING UNION, please contact Peter Muller at Peter@LOHV.org or (914) 388-5224.