How AUVSI Manages Its Policy and Communications Strategy Using FiscalNote

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the unmanned systems and robotics industry. With 7,000 members from 60 countries spanning across the private and public sectors, AUVSI’s government affairs shop is constantly looking to increase efficiencies and practice innovative advocacy. The team needed an effective way to expand its presence on Capitol Hill and at the state and local levels of government, which brought them to FiscalNote.

For Jacqueline Beckwith, manager of advocacy and government relations for AUVSI and a previous FiscalNote user at two other trade associations, FiscalNote was the obvious choice to help grow her team’s public policy footprint and create a unified communication and public policy strategy all in one place. 

“We are a small but mighty team, and one thing that we appreciate so much about FiscalNote is that they are a ‘resource amplifier.’ We have to operate small given a modest budget, but FiscalNote allows us to juggle all our different legislative priorities and activities with incredible ease,” says Beckwith. “I’m always looking for efficiencies in everything that we do, and we’ve found a lot of success leveraging the FiscalNote suite to make sure that we’re not missing anything and really delivering for our members.”

A Complete View of the Legislative Landscape all in one Place

AUVSI uses FiscalNote’s advocacy solution, state and federal bill tracking functions, and workflow tools for a 360-degree view of the entire policy landscape. With FiscalNote, AUVSI can monitor every piece of legislative and regulatory information from all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico as well as plan their communications response with likely outcomes for every bill. Following the entire cradle-to-grave life cycle of a piece of policy and activating their grassroots and grasstops network all from one provider has been instrumental in the association’s growth. 

“I can’t speak highly enough about how accessible the FiscalNote platform is. The ability to track engagement where you can add and share organizational notes and your colleagues can see the work that you’ve done is critical for a small team like ours where we run the risk of not sharing information efficiently and effectively. Being able to know who we’ve spoken with, when, and collaborate within the system is my favorite component of the FiscalNote platform,” says Beckwith.

With FiscalNote’s product suite, AUVSI has also been able to create a robust grassroots advocacy and bill monitoring strategy that has shifted how their communications and public policy work can be done. Before FiscalNote, there were disparate technology tools to do different functions: track bills, launch grassroots advocacy campaigns, and manage internal knowledge and external communications. With FiscalNote, AUVSI can automate and bring these separate functions all under one product suite.

“We’re also going to look into bringing on FiscalNote’s PACbuilder software because we want to keep everything under one house and the ability for the different platforms to communicate and work with each other seamlessly will make our jobs easier without having to move from provider to provider,” Beckwith adds.

Showing Value and Proving ROI

To prove their ROI and justify membership dues, AUVSI also uses FiscalNote as an internal and external communications tool to provide updates and resources to members that need to stay informed on the top public policy trends affecting the industry. The team uses FiscalNote as a “center of excellence” where information on what’s happening at the state, local, and federal level can be shared internally between AUVSI team members, and then curated and tailored reports and legislative trends and highlights can be presented on a public policy map for external validation and member awareness. 

Beckwith’s team has been able to drive long-term productivity saving meeting notes directly within the platform and impress membership by showcasing exactly how all of their activity leads to desired outcomes and ROI.

Cultivating Relations and Managing Stakeholders

“For us, FiscalNote is revolutionary,” says Beckwith. “Our industry is constantly in flux with member companies that are startups in Silicon Valley that come and go or get bought up, so we’re a very agile and ever-changing organization. AUVSI has been able to cultivate relationships with legislators at the state, local, and federal levels of government because of FiscalNote.”

FiscalNote enables AUVSI to be better advocates in their industry by creating long-term relationships in legislator offices. “Logging every single interaction and email with a legislative assistant, organizing a letter on behalf of our grassroots advocates to be sent to an office, sending news articles to important stakeholders highlighting our work, has allowed us to create a single system of record that we can reference when we have an urgent need,” Beckwith adds. “With literally every single point of outreach to a legislator’s office, I tell my team they need to log it in FiscalNote so we can be aware of what is happening at all times.”

Building a Strong Advocacy Strategy with FiscalNote

FiscalNote has saved AUVSI time by not having to duplicate work and made the organization more collaborative and efficient by automatically seeing colleagues’ work and actions that drive the legislative and regulatory agenda. 

“FiscalNote is the industry leader. Even when I’ve heard pitches from organizations, they all mention FiscalNote as something to measure themselves against. Without FiscalNote, I could not be an effective advocate for our industry,” adds Beckwith.