Before I start bubbling over with enthusiasm, I need to make a full disclosure:   I serve as a paid consultant to Capitol News Connection (CNC).   Reaching out to nonprofit advocacy groups, and urging them to use the Ask Your Lawmaker widget is part of what I'm paid to do.

That said, I need to tell you that I just love this widget!   This is a geeky yet populist approach to strengthening participatory democracy.

Capitol News Connection is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism organization that is based in Washington, DC.   Ask Your Lawmaker (AYL) is one of their cleverest initiatives:   constituents from any district in the U.S. can pose questions to their senators and representatives by posting them to the web site, and then anyone who is interested in legislation and policy can go to the site and vote for the questions that he or she deems most critical.   The CNC reporters are conveniently headquartered on Capitol Hill, and when a question garners enough votes, they go out and ask the legislator in question.   The responses are recorded in broadcast-quality audio, and posted to the web.   They are also made available to local public radio stations, which are often in need of quotes they can use back in the home district when they report on national issues.

Ask Your Lawmaker is now making a laudable move into Web 2.0 territory by offering nonprofit advocacy groups and individual activists a free widget that they can use on their own web sites or Facebook pages.   What a great way to voice your concerns, and to engage your stakeholders in pressing legislators to address an issue!

A nonprofit advocacy group's cost to participate needs to be calculated in terms of the person hours that it will require.   Use of the AYL widget itself is free.

Here's   simple five step process for advocacy groups across the U.S. that want to give it a try:

1)   Create your AYL widget, choosing your organization's signature issues from the checkboxes provided.

2)   Add a single piece of code generated by AYL to your web site or Facebook page, so that the widget appears prominently.

3)   Highlight your concerns by choosing a question and a lawmaker, and use AYL to submit it.

4)   Send the AYL link with your question to your friends, stakeholders, and allies, asking them to help by voting for your question.

5)   Track the results, reflect on them, and refine your strategy.

This widget is only the beginning!   Capitol New Connection is working on many more ideas for making national news coverage more participatory and holding legislators more accountable to their constituents.   In a time when every community activist can also be a citizen journalist, and RSS feeds are making it easy to syndicate news selectively, Ask Your Lawmaker is poised to become a provider of tailor-made news streams for any advocacy group.

This article was originally post to my blog, "Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector," under a Creative Commons license.