The Top 5 Challenges for Government Affairs Professionals in 2025

As government affairs teams navigate public policy, regulation, and political obstacles for their organizations, they encounter a number of hurdles. In a recent FiscalNote report, professionals in the field identified their biggest challenges, and they run the gamut: Everything from resource constraints to shifting political winds.

Here, we’ll examine the top five challenges facing government affairs teams today and offer expert advice on staying one step ahead in a complex landscape.

Challenge 1: Fear of missing something important related to relevant legislation/regulation

In our 2025 State of Government Affairs report, 53 percent of government affairs professionals say they struggle with this, and 85 percent believe they sometimes miss important information related to their issues.

And it’s getting worse: 83 percent say they have seen a recent increase in the number of issues their team is tasked with following. That has to do in large part with the political logjam in Washington. “If your opposition can’t get something done federally, they’ll try the states, and then they’ll try the localities,” says Joshua Habursky, chief executive officer at the Premium Cigar Association.

That forces you to cast a wide net, with the government affairs team watching legislative and regulatory action across a vast field. In this environment, flexibility is key.

“I came on board as the head of federal government affairs,” Habursky says. In the current environment, “I’m doing state, local, federal, and my counterpart who previously led state is doing some federal and some local as well. We’re shifting resources…becoming more generalists.”

Technology can play a key role here, with tools like FiscalNote solutions helping to ensure visibility into all the relevant activity.

“We use FiscalNote as our tracking software, federally and in the states,” Habursky says. “We’re sifting through all the stuff, and if it doesn’t have an impact, we’re quickly negating it. It allows us to really push the right resources based on the overall impact.”

Challenge 2: Lack of budget

In our survey, 39 percent of respondents say budgets are tight. Experts in the field say organizations may under-resource government affairs because leadership doesn’t see it adding directly to the bottom line.

“This is being flagged as a cost center as opposed to a cost generator,” says Alex Dickinson, managing partner at Beekeeper Group, an agency specializing in communications and advocacy for associations, corporations, and nonprofits.

As government affairs teams strive to achieve results within a tight budgetary environment, they can reframe their efforts, “positioning their objectives and campaigns as ‘communications’ campaigns,” she says.

Government affairs professionals “are trying to go into other departments that may have a more shored-up budget, and making the argument that this is really a broader ‘external relations’ conversation,” she says. By aligning your efforts with an overall communications or marketing program, you can draw from a deeper pool of funding in order to get your message out there.

PolicyNote helps here by streamlining the human effort supporting government affairs, enabling you to do more with less and make the best use of your limited funds. PolicyNote cuts down on the work of reading bills and jumping between news and tracking tools, allowing you to spend more time generating the insights that drive the advancement of your agenda. With automated tracking tools, you can easily demonstrate the impact of your efforts, showing your ROI as you make the case for more robust funding going forward.

Challenge 3: Not being able to show the impact of your team’s work

A full one-third of government affairs professionals we surveyed say they struggle to demonstrate the value of their work. “With government relations work, it’s by nature hard to quantify,” says Amy Lore, senior director of government relations at Project Lead the Way, which partners with education organizations to advocate for STEM programs.

“It’s hard to say we were successful because we moved bills or we didn’t move bills — because there are so many factors totally outside your control,” she says. While bills that go forward may be easy to mark as wins, it’s hard to quantify that value, and it’s even more challenging to measure the worth of having put the brakes on a piece of legislation or regulation.

While senior leaders may not always see the value of government affairs efforts, FiscalNote can help clarify. Lore says she uses reporting features and other tools to “log every direct meeting we have. That allows us to summarize all of our efforts really quickly.”

“We can say: ‘Hey, look at all the meetings you had this year! Here are the outcomes. Here’s the percentage of them that were directly with legislators.’ Our team leader compiles that, and we submit that up the food chain,” she says. “It is really helpful in showing our ongoing importance to the organization.”

Challenge 4: Impacts of the U.S. general election results

One-third of survey respondents say the election outcome is going to make their work harder. With a new administration promising to radically disrupt business-as-usual in Washington, that’s hardly surprising.

“First, there are many new lawmakers in both the House and the Senate that government affairs professionals are going to need to build relationships with,” says Brian Rubenstein, president of Rubenstein Impact Group. Along with the new faces, there are people you may have overlooked in the past who now will hold ranking committee positions.

“The second challenge is that you might have been planning for an offensive year, trying to get legislation passed in 2025. Now you might be playing a lot of defense instead. Health-related organizations, for example, are going to have their policy agenda flipped on its head,” Rubenstein says.

How to remain effective here? Call in the cavalry. “I’m a strong believer in the very cohesive relationship between the lobbying side and the grassroots side. Grassroots can play a very powerful role in helping overcome these challenges,” Rubenstein says.

Volunteers can act as a force multiplier as organizations look to build ties with the newcomers on Capitol Hill. “You will probably drive higher engagement from your volunteers in protecting a program, then you will trying to get a new bill passed,” he says. “Organizations should not be afraid to be very open with their members: We’re playing defense, a bill might be in trouble.”

To do this effectively, organizations can use PolicyNote to monitor legislation, advocate for their issues with VoterVoice, monitor what’s happening on the Hill with CQ, and stay informed with Roll Call newsletters.

Challenge 5: Team size is too small 

Team size is a challenge for 32 percent of survey respondents. In government affairs, “you always feel like you do have not enough hands,” Lore says. When you’re trying to cover all or most of the states as well as the federal arena, “there’s just not enough time to be everywhere you need to be.”

When the team can’t be everywhere all the time, it’s important to target your resources. Habursky, for example, will equip his state-level partners with information when he sees important legislation moving.

“We provide written or electronic testimony if it’s permissible in that state,” he says. “We will do a strategy session with them, prep them for the hearing.” To do that, he relies on FiscalNote to track and notify him of relevant activity. 

PolicyNote can help you cover more ground and give your team the insights needed to ensure they’re putting their efforts in the direction that will have the maximum impact. It speeds up the tasks of tracking, monitoring, and understanding complex policy so you can take action more quickly.

Tackle This Year's Challenges With FiscalNote

The new year promises to bring unexpected changes in the government affairs space, and you’re likely to have your hands full. Whether your budget is lean or fat, your team small or fully fleshed out, you’ll still have to track a vast landscape of legislative and regulatory activity in what may be a fast-changing environment.

Technology can be a key enabler for getting to the work beyond policy tracking, allowing you to do what you do best. In these challenging times, with government affairs under pressure from multiple directions, FiscalNote is your partner for success.