How to Create Your 2027 Grassroots Advocacy Plan (+ Template)

It’s fourth quarter, which means someone (maybe you) has been asked to “put together the advocacy plan for next year.”

Most advocacy plans end up one of two ways. Either they’re a 40-page document that gets approved in December and never opened again, or they live entirely in one staffer’s head. Neither holds up well once session starts and three bills drop in the same week.

This guide walks you through how to build a grassroots advocacy plan for 2027 that your team will actually use. It’s written for state-focused nonprofits, associations, and chambers, especially small teams where “the advocacy department” is one or two people doing this alongside everything else. By the end, you’ll have a step-by-step process, a month-by-month calendar, and a one-page template you can fill in this week.

What is a grassroots advocacy plan?

A grassroots advocacy plan is your written roadmap for the year. It spells out the issues you’re prioritizing, the lawmakers you need to move, the advocates who can move them, when you’ll ask those advocates to act, and how you’ll know it’s working.

It’s not the same as a campaign plan. A campaign plan covers one push on one bill. Your advocacy plan is the bigger picture that all of those campaigns fit into.

It’s also lighter than a full government relations strategic plan. You don’t need a mission statement rewrite or a SWOT analysis. You need clear priorities, a calendar, and a list of people ready to act.

If you’re newer to this work, Grassroots Advocacy 101 covers the fundamentals.

Why does 2027 need its own plan?

Because 2027 is not a normal year for state advocates. Three things make it different.

Every legislature is in session. Most states meet every year, but Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas only hold regular sessions in odd-numbered years. In 2027, all 50 legislatures are in. Texas alone can run up to 140 days. If you work in multiple states, your calendar is about to get crowded.

You’ll be talking to new faces. The 2026 midterms will bring freshman legislators into nearly every statehouse, along with new committee chairs and new staff. The relationships you built over the last two years don’t automatically carry forward. Some of your champions won’t be back.

Your bills may not carry over. In 23 states, legislation can carry over from one year to the next. In the other 27, every bill starts fresh. If your bill died in 2026 and you’re in a fresh-start state, you’re back at introduction.

(If your organization also works at the federal level, the 120th Congress starts in January 2027, and any federal bill that didn’t pass will need to be reintroduced with a new number.)

When should you start planning for 2027?

Now.

Many states open bill pre-filing in the fall, and some hold organizational sessions right after the election. The work you do between now and January sets up everything that follows.

How do you create a grassroots advocacy plan?

Here’s the process, step by step. You don’t have to do all ten in one sitting. Two or three working sessions are a realistic pace.

Step 1: What did 2026 teach you?

Before planning forward, spend an hour looking back. Pull up last year’s campaigns and ask:

• Which bills moved, and which stalled? And be honest about why.
• Which alerts got action? Look at open and action rates by campaign, not just totals.
• Who actually showed up? Make a short list of the advocates who took action more than once, came to an event, or told their story.
• How healthy is your list? How many advocates have bad addresses, no district match, or haven’t opened anything in a year?

This step is easy to skip, and skipping it is how teams repeat the same campaign that didn’t work last year. If you only have one or two people, you can’t afford that.

Step 2: How do you choose priorities and set goals?

Pick one to three issues. That’s it.

We know that’s hard. Your board has a list, your members have a list, and everything on it matters. But trying to advocate for everything tends to produce influence over nothing. Choose the issues where you have real expertise and a realistic shot at moving the outcome. (We wrote more about choosing priorities in our legislative advocacy guide.)

Then write goals you can actually measure:

• Vague: “Protect funding for home health programs.”
• Measurable: “Secure a line item of at least $X for home health in the state budget, and get our bill heard in the House Health committee by March 1.”

And count progress short of a win. A bill that gets further than it did last session, a committee hearing, or a budget amendment all move you forward. Many policy changes take more than one session, as these advocacy examples show. Your plan should say what good progress looks like, not just what a win looks like.

Step 3: What do you need to know about your state’s 2027 session?

Before you can build a calendar, you need the basic facts about your session. For each state you work in, write down:

• Session start and end dates. These vary a lot. Some states meet for about a month, while others, like Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, meet nearly year-round. Here in Virginia, the odd-year session is the short one.
• Pre-filing window. When can bills be filed before session starts?
• Key deadlines. Bill introduction cutoffs, committee deadlines, and crossover (when bills must pass their chamber of origin).
• Carryover rules. Does your 2026 bill survive into 2027, or does it start over?
• Budget timing. When does the governor release a budget, and when do budget amendments get decided?

Your state legislature’s website will have most of this. MultiState and Ballotpedia both keep session calendars across all 50 states. For more on getting ready, see 10 ways to prepare for the state legislative session.

Step 4: Who are your targets, and what about new legislators?

Your targets are the specific people who can give you what you want, or keep you from getting it. For most state issues, that list includes:

• The chair of each committee your bill will go through
• The members of those committees
• Legislative leadership, if your issue is a priority fight
• Key staff, especially committee staff and the legislative aides who handle your issue area

Don’t overlook staff. Legislators rely on them to filter and summarize what they hear from constituents. Often the staffer is the person who actually reads your materials.

Plan a freshman sprint. Between the November election and the start of session, new legislators are setting up offices, hiring staff, and learning the issues. They’re also more open to introductions than they’ll be once session is underway. Use those weeks to:

• Send a short welcome note with a one-page overview of your issue
• Request a brief in-district meeting with a constituent who’s affected by your issue
• Invite them to an event or site visit

You’ll get more out of one coffee in December than ten emails in February.

Step 5: How do you grow and organize your advocates before session?

Every plan in this guide assumes you have advocates to ask. So before anything else, grow your list.

Make every touchpoint a sign-up opportunity. Put a sign-up form on your website, at your events, in your member onboarding emails, and in your newsletter. Every campaign is also a recruitment tool. When the Atlas Free team embedded action forms directly on their website, each person who took action became a new supporter they could invite back.

Grow in Q4, not in February. Once session starts, you’ll be too busy running campaigns to recruit. The weeks before session are when list growth pays off most.

Then segment. A member who’s opened one email and a member who testified last session shouldn’t get the same ask. At minimum, sort your list by:

• Legislative district, so the right constituents reach the right lawmakers
• Engagement level, from one-time signers to repeat action-takers
• Willingness to share a story, because personal stories carry weight with legislators
• Relationships, meaning who personally knows a legislator

That last group is your grasstops. Grassroots advocacy mobilizes lots of people to show broad support. Grasstops advocacy relies on a smaller group of people who already have a relationship with a lawmaker, like a local business owner or a hospital administrator who coached the senator’s kid in Little League. Strong plans use both. Over time, your most engaged grassroots advocates become grasstops.

An advocacy CRM like Muster handles both halves of this. Sign-up forms feed new advocates straight into your list, and segmentation by district, engagement, and custom fields like profession or member type means you can pull the right group together in a few clicks.

Step 6: What will you ask advocates to do?

Match the action to the goal. More isn’t always better.

Sometimes you need volume. If a bill is on the floor and leadership is counting, thousands of constituent messages show broad support. Other times, a handful of stories from constituents in the committee chair’s own district will do more than a flood of form emails from across the state.

For each priority, decide in advance:

• What action fits? An email, a phone call, an in-person meeting, testimony, or a story submission
• Who should take it? Everyone, a specific district, or your grasstops
• What’s the message? Pre-written talking points advocates can personalize

Build your talking points, fact sheets, and advocacy toolkit now, before you need them.

Step 7: What does a month-by-month 2027 calendar look like?

Here’s a sample calendar for a typical January-start state. Adjust it for your state’s session dates.

Two notes on making this calendar work.

Your state’s dates change the shape. If you’re in Texas, session runs into late spring. If you’re in a state with a short session, your whole legislative push might happen in six weeks. Build the calendar around your session, not someone else’s.

Pair your grassroots pushes with your in-person work. During the 2026 Virginia session, the James River Association met with 79 legislative offices and advocated on 27 bills, while their advocates sent 3,700 emails to lawmakers. Half of the bills they engaged on passed. Constituent messages land harder when they reinforce a meeting that just happened.

If you’re planning an advocacy day, most organizations start eight to twelve weeks out, and our guide to planning an advocacy day walks through it. The July-to-September stretch is where most teams lose momentum, so it’s worth reading up on how to make state advocacy a year-round activity before you get there.

Step 8: How often should you contact advocates, and what’s your rapid-response plan?

Think about the last time an organization emailed you for the first time in a year, and it was to ask for something. That’s how your advocates feel about a February alert after a quiet fall.

A steady rhythm keeps them warm:

Monthly: a short update on your issues, what’s happening at the Capitol, and what’s coming up.

Before session: a heads-up that action alerts are coming, what the issues are, and why they matter.

During session: action alerts, saved for moments when constituent pressure can actually change something.

After every campaign: a thank-you and an update on what happened.

What does good engagement look like? One of Muster’s association customers, NUCA, has reported 10 to 20 percent open and action rates on its advocacy emails. That’s a reasonable benchmark to aim for.

Then plan for the bad-bill day. At some point in 2027, a bill you didn’t see coming will get scheduled for a hearing with 48 hours’ notice. Your plan should already answer:

• Who drafts the alert?
• Who approves it, and how fast? (If approval takes three days, write that problem down now.)
• Which advocate segment gets it first?
• What’s your target turnaround, from “we just heard” to “alert is live”?

That turnaround is where your software either helps or gets in the way. With Muster’s advocacy campaigns, you can build a campaign in under 10 minutes. Select the legislators you’re targeting, build your campaign page, and write the message you want advocates to send. When the alert goes out, your advocates can take action with a single click. On a 48-hour hearing notice, that’s the difference between a campaign that goes live today and one that’s still in draft when the committee votes.

Step 9: What resources, budget, and compliance should your plan cover?

A plan without resources behind it is a wish list. Write down:

• Staff time. Who owns advocacy, and how many hours a week do they really have for it during session?
• Budget. Software, advocacy day costs, travel, printing, and any outside help.
• Board buy-in. Your board should approve your priorities, not just hear about them. Boards that understand the plan are more likely to fund it and show up for it.

Then there’s compliance.

“But I don’t want to put our 501(c)(3) status at risk.”

Don’t worry. You don’t have to. 501(c)(3) organizations can lobby, within limits. The key is knowing what your limits are and tracking against them. Build a simple way to log lobbying time and spending into your plan. Include your grassroots campaigns in that log, since asking supporters to contact lawmakers about a specific bill counts as lobbying too.

If you’re a 501(c)(6), like a trade association or chamber, lobbying limits work differently, but you generally need to tell members what portion of their dues goes to lobbying.

Some states also have their own lobbying registration and reporting rules. When in doubt, check with your counsel.

Step 10: How will you measure success?

Message counts are easy to report and easy to misread. A thousand emails to legislators who were already with you tells you less than fifty to the three who weren’t. A stronger set of measures:

• Policy progress: wins, partial wins, and bills that got further than last session
• Advocate growth: how many new advocates joined your list
• Repeat participation: how many advocates took action more than once
• Moving up the ladder: how many advocates went from sending an email to attending a meeting or telling their story
• Targets reached: how many of your priority legislators heard from constituents
• Relationships: meetings held, and whether legislators’ offices started calling you

Close the loop with your advocates. Many supporters don’t act because they don’t believe it makes a difference. The fix is simple: tell them what happened. When a bill passes, thank them. When it doesn’t, tell them what moved and what’s next. Advocates who see results come back.

Your one-page 2027 grassroots advocacy plan template

Copy this into a doc and fill it in. If it doesn’t fit on one page, you probably have too many priorities.

What mistakes should you avoid?

Planning for everything. Ten priorities means none of them get real attention. Pick one to three.

Only showing up during session. Legislators remember who was around before they needed something. Plan at least one touchpoint per quarter with your priority lawmakers.

Asking without following up. Every campaign should end with a thank-you and an update on what happened.

Writing a plan nobody opens. Put your plan where your team works, and review it monthly. If it’s stuck in a shared drive folder, it’s not a plan.

Grassroots advocacy plan FAQ

What’s the difference between grassroots and grasstops advocacy?

Grassroots advocacy mobilizes a large number of everyday supporters to contact lawmakers and show broad support. Grasstops advocacy relies on a smaller group of influential people who already have relationships with lawmakers. Most effective plans use both.

What happens to bills that didn’t pass in 2026?

It depends on your state. In 23 states, bills can carry over from one year to the next. In the other 27, they have to be reintroduced in a new session. Check your state’s rules before you plan your 2027 campaigns.

How long should an advocacy plan be?

Shorter than you think. One page is enough for most small teams. The goal is a plan you’ll actually use, not a document that impresses people once.

What metrics should advocacy teams track?

Track policy progress, advocate growth, repeat participation, and whether advocates move from easy actions to bigger ones. Also track how many of your target legislators heard from constituents, and whether your relationships with their offices grew over the year.

Do small organizations really need a written plan?

Yes, maybe even more than large ones. When one person runs advocacy, a written plan keeps priorities clear when session gets busy. It also protects your organization if that person is out sick, on vacation, or moves on.

Get your 2027 plan in motion

2027 will reward the teams who show up prepared. The ones who use November and December to grow their list and meet new legislators will walk into session with momentum instead of chasing it.

You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a clear one, on one page, that your team actually uses.

When you’re ready to put your plan into action, Muster makes it easier to grow your advocate list, launch campaigns in minutes, and see what’s working. Request a live, personalized demo of Muster to see how it fits your 2027 plan.