HEP Takes The Hill: A Case Study in 21st-Century Advocacy

Every spring for the last 40 years, a group representing the U.S. high-energy physics community travels to Washington, D.C. to sit down with legislators and staffers to advocate to continued federal support for HEP research. Conducting publicly-funded research is a privilege, so outreach is a vital component of our work. That includes reaching out to legislators who appropriate the funds that drive that work and sharing the success, impact, and future plans of our field. In practice, 50 physicists meeting with 535 congressional offices is a non-trivial logistical challenge. Enter WHIPS: the Washington-HEP Integrated Planning System. WHIPS is an all-in-one feature-rich toolkit for planning, executing, and analyzing these advocacy trips. Built with Python, WHIPS is a modern web app, accessible by browser on any laptop, phone, or tablet. Since its development in 2018, WHIPS has significantly improved our ability to build relationships with congressional offices. In this talk, I will explain how WHIPS works and why it is such a powerful tool for this type of advocacy. I will also share some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way and tips you can use to take your advocacy to the next level.