# Targeting 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

1. **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.
2. **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](https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page) is a good resource for researching support and opposition to past legislation. 
3. **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.
4. **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](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF0dL69L0I/JLfnfwqt68TqGc8zVMdkbg/edit), 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.
5. **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. 
6. **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](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11yEQAcRiWkdGA7oKNr9leno9nazxTHX_JZBEXMjqeoU/edit#gid=0).