The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (NCCBH)
The Situation
The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (NCCBH) is a nonprofit trade association serving the education, advocacy, and networking needs of more than 800 community providers of mental health and addiction treatment services. Since 1970, the National Council has grown to become an important voice in the shaping of federal law, policy, and regulations that govern behavioral healthcare services.
Jonathan Westin, Vice President of Government Relations at NCCBH, manages the advocacy and legislative efforts for the association. "The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare represents community mental health clinics across the nation. NCCBH members serve millions of people in all fifty states with diverse interests and diverse funding streams," Westin added, "Mental healthcare is not primarily federally funded, but is funded on a state-by-state basis with federally funded block grants."
The Challenge
The government relations department at NCCBH is quite small with only two staff advocates to voice the needs of its members in all 50 states. "We produce daily legislative updates for our communications and marketing departments, as well as frequent reports for our Senior Vice President of Government Relations," said Westin. With such a limited staff, it was a struggle to find the time to monitor all the information that the government relations team needed to follow.
The Decision
Westin joined NCCBH with a fresh prospective on what tools were needed to achieve a proactive legislative strategy for the association and how to best communicate and collaborate the information. In reviewing providers of legislative information and services, Westin met wilh various suppliers to select the best service on the market for their needs.
"At the time that our contract with our previous legislative tracking service expired, we decided to shop around to look for a better service. We had not been receiving the guidance that we desired, and we had to constantly pull information rather than have the information pushed to us. GalleryWatch provides us with the necessary tools to keep us informed on a much more timely basis than our previous service," said Westin.
"I was thoroughly impressed with GalleryWatch's service and presentation…along with the personal care that was given to us by our account manager before and after the sale."
The Solution
Westin, along with the other government relations staff at NCCBH, uses GalleryWatch to monitor different legislative issues, as well as to provide information that allows the communications staff to more accurately craft responses on behalf of NCCBH. "We utilize the legislative monitoring and congressional committee schedules most often," said Westin.
"The e-mailed press releases really help us receive the information we need in a timely manner. For instance, one press release we received from GalleryWatch relating to the construction of community health clinics, a federally funded program, was information that proved to be vital to our efforts," commented Westin.
The GalleryWatch Difference
"I am impressed with GalleryWatch's proactive method of assigning numbers to draft appropriations legislation early in the process, thus providing us the ability to track draft appropriations bills before they are reported out of committee. GalleryWatch guides us through the budget and appropriations process, which can be laden with many obstacles."
"GalleryWatch is a wonderful product. We are now better able to distribute information to our members as well as disseminate information on our positions to Congressional staff, our own staff, and the Administration. The information GalleryWatch delivers to us every day between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. alone is equivalent to work that we would need two employees to match…it is a very powerful and valuable tool that GalleryWatch provides to us."
About GalleryWatch's Federal Services
Information and services provided by GalleryWatch on the federal level include tracking and searching capabilities on legislation, congressional members and committees, and agencies. Notification capabilities for most services include receiving timely updates via e-mail, text messaging, PDA's, and pagers. Two exclusive services offered by GalleryWatch are Congressional VIP, which enables users to effortlessly track and analyze Member voting history and patterns, and GalleryWatch's USBudget service, the most comprehensive source of information on the $2.1 trillion federal budget which offers in-depth analysis and summaries on all the components and line-item program details of the budget.
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