Targeting Endorsers
How to identify potential organizations and businesses for endorsement outreach and build a diverse base of endorsers.
Ideas for Potential Major Endorsers
Organizations | Businesses | Trusted Individuals |
Environmental orgs | Sustainability brands | Veterinary orgs |
Civic or political orgs | Plant-based chains | Medical orgs |
Human rights orgs | Alt-protein companies | Academic institutions |
Health orgs | Hospitals & health groups | Elected officials |
Fellow animal rights orgs | Health companies | Celebrities & influencers |
Faith groups | Pet food & supply brands | Other experts, authors, scholars |
Building an Outreach List
Start with the easy ones. Begin building a list of the groups and individuals that we have a solid relationship with or know to be aligned with our cause.
Leverage active personal relationships to begin building a list.
See if these people have any recommendations of who else to reach out to.
Find existing support. Look into the individuals and organizations who endorsed related animal rights measures in the past, or supported animal rights causes.
Identify other animal rights groups at the local, regional, and national levels.
Look into who has made pro-animal statements in the past, ideally in support of your specific cause.
Ballotpedia is a good resource for researching support and opposition to past legislation.
Target effective messengers. Think about any local leaders or influential messengers who care about this issue and are willing to help with outreach to their community.
Research local politicians, community leaders, and other messengers. Talk to locals to get a feel for who has the trust of their communities and can best influence public opinion.
Identify people with a significant following, such as influencers, authors, celebrities, or public figures.
Consider optics. Think about who will look best to persuadable voters as a third-party validator, and who will bring a valued voice to elevate your message.
Start with individuals or groups that you understand to be pretty universally liked.
Consider the results of our profiling project, and what messengers persuadable voters are most influenced by.
Prioritize endorsements from experts who can provide credible support for the campaign (e.g. vets, farmers, animal behaviorists, etc).
Avoid leaning too heavily on explicitly vegan businesses and organizations so as not to indicate that this is strictly a “vegan” agenda.
Don’t neglect unlikely allies. Reaching out to potential partners who don’t fit our typical mold presents the opportunity to broaden the tent and tap into communities that we may struggle to otherwise relate to.
Leverage these people to convey our message to their communities. People prefer to hear from someone they trust in order to know how they will be impacted.
Find Republican voices that oppose factory farming, find out why, and see if they are willing to support. Make sure their messaging won’t jeopardize ours.
Building partnerships with right-leaning groups (hunters, farmers, etc) could be useful in ensuring this is considered a bipartisan issue.
Build a diverse list. Make sure your outreach list includes varied messengers from all different arenas that can bring in a wide range of people.
Balance outreach to low-hanging fruit with securing diversity in early endorsements. Reach out to the “most likely” endorsers from each sector.
Ensure outreach attempts are inclusive of all different groups to broaden our appeal and increase our credibility.
Ideas for potential endorsers can be found below, as well as in our endorsements tracker.
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