Issue Advocacy

As part of its mission to protect family businesses, our team worked with a major family business organization to develop the infrastructure necessary to identify, educate and mobilize constituents from across the country to raise awareness about the looming expiration of the Death Tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001. Congress was poised to consider whether to continue the phase out of the Death Tax or to lock it in permanently.

Part fundraising, part media development and part grasstops advocacy, our team developed a strategy with the objective of developing significant state based support for eliminating the Death Tax. The campaign was launched in Washington D.C. with the release of a series of economic studies that documented the negative impact on jobs and capital development that the Death Tax imposes. The launch event was covered by both traditional and new media. Following the D.C. launch, our team helped craft a local earned media strategy to supplement the national media attention. We supplemented the roll out of economic studies with fresh national poll numbers that demonstrated just how unpopular the Death Tax was. Using the economic and survey data, our team was able to mobilize the local voices most negatively impacted by the Death Tax.

While the debate rages on, the campaign succeeded in creating enough political and policy impetus to blunt a permanent increase in the Death Tax by Congress at the end of 2009.