Cicero, Azavea’s legislative district matching and elected official web API, enables members of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance community to discover their elected officials and advocate for the arts.
Client: Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (GPCA)
Challenge: The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is a membership-based service organization that assists arts and cultural organizations in the Philadelphia area. Through their advocacy, marketing, grants, and other services, the GPCA helps make Philadelphia a center for creativity and the arts. As part of their advocacy efforts, GPCA encourages its members and the general public to contact their legislators or participate in call-to-action campaigns. To increase the efficiency of the campaigns, GPCA wanted to make public participation as simple as possible by providing a quick and easy system for individuals to locate their representatives. Visitors to the website needed to be able to discover the names and contact information for their representatives simply by entering their address or zip code.
Solution: Azavea developed Cicero as a web service designed to identify elected officials based upon the geographic areas they served. Cicero provides users with legislative information at the federal, state, and local level when available. GPCA uses Cicero in two separate applications to support its advocacy efforts. First, they implemented the Cicero API on the GPCA website. Individuals can locate their federal and state representatives by entering their zip code and can find their local officials by creating an Online Action Center account. Second, GPCA integrated the Cicero API into their GetActive advocacy software. After members create an account and log into the GPCA website, they can view call-to-action e-mail campaigns that have been populated with the appropriate contact information for their City Council members or other elected officials. Should they choose to participate in the campaign, GPCA members can contact their legislators by just sending the e-mail, rather than having to research the contact information for each representative.
Outcomes: By utilizing the Cicero API, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance provides its members with an efficient, easy to use system for contacting their elected officials. Simply by entering an address and creating an account, individuals can find their representatives and participate in campaigns to encourage them to support the arts.