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The newly released House calendar for the 112th Congress presents a fascinating opportunity for grassroots advocates seeking to build relationships and influence legislators. The calendar makes good on part of a promise the House Republicans made that they would operate differently than Democrats, and even previous Republican leaders.

Special to Roll Call

Former Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) once said, “It’s easier to run for office than to run the office.” Running a campaign and creating a Congressional office are vastly different tasks. Setting up a House or Senate office includes all the challenges of starting a small business with all the red tape of a bureaucracy.

Members of Congress and their staffs have gotten used to a world where a constituent writes a postal letter or e-mail or calls the office and the office responds in written form to the citizen's concerns. One of the challenges that social media creates for congressional offices is that they can no longer just wait for constituent communication to come to them. They now need to monitor external sources to capture it all.

The last few years have seen an explosion in interest in advocacy, and that is generally a good thing. A CMF survey of citizens found that 44% of adult Americans had contacted Congress within the last five years. While this increased interest in exercising constitutional rights has value, one must keep in mind there is such a thing as 'bad advocacy.'

Clay Johnson, formerly of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote in his blog last week that "online petitions are a sham." He even used some of our data about congressional mail volumes to help make his point. While I think that he makes some really keen observations and puts his finger on some of the key challenges, not all online advocacy is the same.

Members of Congress and their staff are eager to communicate more effectively with constituents. They come to the Congressional Management Foundation and the Partnership for a More Perfect Union with questions about everything from how to best improve their constituent mail operations, to how to best use social media tools like Twitter or Facebook. Through our new 'Ask Us' series, we will attempt to answer those questions for the benefit of not only the asker (whose identity we will carefully guard) but also for anyone else who might have the same question.

CMF's letter to the editor of the Washington Post:

There was something slightly hypocritical in Ruth Marcus's column on the ethics cases pending before Congress ["House of entitlement," op-ed, Aug. 4]. She acknowledged the public "misperception" that "most lawmakers" are "heedless of ethics rules." Yet The Post and others in the media perpetuate that myth.

My organization has worked closely with members of Congress and staff for more than 30 years and found nearly every lawmaker and staffer we've worked with to be dedicated public servants, striving for the good of their constituents. Of course there are ethical lapses in Congress, just as there are in any field, including journalism.