The Nolan GrouP: OUR Services

Overview
Our bi-partisan team relies on decades of government affairs, lobbying, and public relations experience in Springfield shaping Illinois public policy outcomes and public opinion in order to advance a client’s agenda.

Serve as Government Affairs Representative
The Nolan Group serves as your official government affairs representative in Springfield in order to work with both chambers of the legislature and executive branch agencies to advance your legislative agenda.

Monitor, Track, and Report on Legislation
The Nolan Group reviews all introduced legislation and leverages sophisticated monitoring technology that identifies within minutes new bill introductions that could affect your organization’s interests. We advise clients regarding which positions to take on bills and help to craft an advocacy plan in response.

We help draft bills, amendments, identify bill sponsors, monitor legislative hearings and press conferences, and we help draft background materials, testimony, work with legislative staff and lawmakers of both chambers to persuasively articulate the merits of your positions and proposals.

By maintaining a continual presence in both Springfield and the Chicagoland area, our team is able to attend meetings, monitor hearings, and be accessible to clients as your interests require.

The Nolan Group produces weekly client reports during the legislative session to provide a status update on all legislation being monitored for a client. Those reports also include a news summary of recent events influencing the broader legislative process and shaping the political context in Springfield.

Craft Advocacy Strategy
In addition to monitoring, tracking, and reporting on legislation, The Nolan Group will work with your organization to develop the most critical element of moving your agenda forward: advocacy strategy.

Hoping for a specific outcome is not enough. Hope is not a strategy. Strategy means prioritizing policy interests and identifying resources available to pursue a legislative initiative – if a bill is the solution - and assessing the political, budgetary, and regulatory landscape, the players, the state of public opinion, and timing in order to design a comprehensive advocacy strategy. A strategy weaves together these dynamics into a timetable of activities that advances your objectives.

A successful advocacy strategy at its core identifies an argument that persuades lawmakers – who are vigilant about the interests of their constituents – that your legislative idea, as seen through a legislator’s prism, will help their folks back home and the state’s broader interests. Crafting a successful strategy requires: judgment – the kind of judgment that decades of bi-partisan legislative, electoral, and public relations experience in Springfield that The Nolan Groups brings – in spades.

Shape Public Opinion through Public Relations
The Nolan Group also provides public relations, public opinion consulting, and translations services that can be integrated into your advocacy solution in order to effectively engage the Springfield press corps and local news media, including Hispanic media, as an additional strategic dimension to advance a client’s agenda.

We can design a public relations strategy that develops and communicates a persuasive message that helps win over public opinion to support your legislative agenda. We work with the news media, social media influencers, and opinion makers in order to push your agenda forward. We help manage press conferences, draft press releases, develop talking points, op-eds, photograph advocacy events, and promote advocacy through social media.

Additionally, The Nolan Group, working with Illinois Public Opinion Strategies, can commission affordable and reliable public opinion surveys that capture a basic snapshot of public opinion on Illinois public policy questions. Knowing where public opinion stands on your issue can be critical to winning the support of elected officials for your legislative agenda.

Speakers Bureau
The Nolan Group’s bi-partisan team members are available to address conferences, issue forums, and corporate retreats to provide legislative assessments of the state of play in Springfield, looking at the political, public opinion, and press dynamics of business in the state capitol.

The Nolan Group, Inc.