It was January 2025, and the digital team at Food & Water Watch was watching a countdown clock.
The GOP leadership had indicated it planned to use the 60-day window under the Congressional Review Act to repeal the EPA’s lead pipe removal rule.
Food & Water Watch’s Katy Kiefer explained the no-nonsense tactics behind that anti-repeal campaign at ENCC DC 2025.
The campaign: Goal, strategy, and tactics
They needed only two or three House Republicans to vote against the repeal.
Before the first advocacy email launched, the team sent a survey asking supporters which threats worried them most heading into Trump’s second term.
The lead rule was one of the options. That survey seeded the issue before an ask existed and told the team who was paying attention.
When Republican leadership signaled the vote was coming, the team sent the first advocacy email, urging supporters to contact their House member and oppose any vote on the lead rule.
The action rate hit 2.4%, which was strong for a first send on this issue.
A few days later came a kicker — a shorter email — with one key addition: conditional content that split action-takers from non-takers.
People who had taken action got a version acknowledging that and asking for a second message to their representative. Everyone else got the standard resend.
When the CRA resolution was formally introduced in Congress, the team treated it as a rapid-response trigger. They updated the resolution number in the action text and didn’t need to rebuild the campaign from scratch.
Around World Water Day in late March, they layered a fundraising ask onto the campaign, redirecting supporters to a donation page with a match offer after the advocacy action.
It drove a 0.7% after-action donation rate on that send, sitting above the M+R post-action giving benchmark.
On May 8, the CRA window closed without a vote to repeal. The EPA later announced it would defend the rule in court, a win the team hadn’t counted on going in.
What to steal from Food & Water Watch’s playbook
Prime before you launch. Send a survey about an upcoming campaign to supporters in the weeks leading up to its launch.
Resend with conditional content. When you push the same action the second time, split your send by who has and hasn’t taken action.
Prior action takers should receive a version that acknowledges what they’ve already done and what’s changed.
Build in a fundraising ask. Rather than building a standalone fundraising email around an awareness day or a donor match, map it to an existing advocacy campaign.
The ask lands harder when supporters have been engaged on a specific issue for the past few weeks.
The bottom line
I keep going back to the survey.
That is a strategic step I wouldn’t have thought to contribute to the campaign’s success, because it feels so simple.
But that was what put everything else in context, because you can’t go into a fight against a threat without warming up your team first and keeping them engaged along the way.
‘Til next time!
Sara