Thank you for volunteering to become a 2013 MGMbill.org temporary state office. The next MGM Bill submission to Congress and various state legislatures is scheduled for Monday, January 14, 2013 (or Saturday, January 12th & Sunday, January 13th, if you want to start a day or two earlier). The whole process may take several hours or even up to a full day or more to complete depending on how many legislators are in your state.

Here are detailed instructions on how to submit the 2013 MGM Bill proposal and cover letter:

Step 1: Find your state legislators

Visit the NCSL state legislatures links website, select your state from the first column and "Legislators" from the second column, and click the "Get Legislature Links" button to pull up links to your state representatives and senators. For reference, a general list of how many seats are in each state legislature is available here.

Note: Apple Safari users may experience problems with the NCSL site.

(try using Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox instead).

Step 2: Send emails (to legislators who have email addresses or unrestricted webmail forms)

Go to the contact page of the first member in your state legislature and click on their email link to pull up a blank email message or webmail form (if more than one email address is listed, use the one for their capitol office). If applicable, add a subject line (ie: "Please Protect Boys from Forced Circumcision). Then copy and paste the text of our state email cover letter into your message, followed by your state's 2013 bill text. Be sure to fill in the red text areas on your cover letter (and then change the red text to black) before pasting it. Repeat this step for each legislator in your state's House and Senate, and for your Governor.

Note: If your message exceeds the character limit of your elected official's webmail form, include a link to the bill instead. For example, if you live in New York you can close your letter by saying "To read the full text of the New York MGM Bill proposal, please go to http://www.mgmbill.org/newyorkmgmbill2013.pdf."

Step 3: Send faxes or mail letters (to legislators who don't have email addresses or unrestricted webmail forms)

If some or all of your state legislators use only ZIP code restricted webmail forms, you'll need to fax or mail your cover letter and MGM Bill to those members and add the date to the top of your letter (if you have a lot of faxes to send, you may want to use jBlast). If you don't need to send any faxes or letters, skip to Step 4.

     jBlast Tips

     a) Sign up for jBlast fax broadcasting, buy fax credits at http://jblast.j2.com, and read the Web Fax Merge User Guide.

     b) Download our MS Word state mail merge cover letter and our blank comma delimited MS Excel fax list.

     c) Enter the fax number and other data for each legislator in the fax data list (as listed on each member's contact page) and save the file in .csv format (remove all dashes, spaces, and parentheses from each fax number; see our California fax list as an example).

     d) Open the mail merge cover letter and copy and paste your 2013 state bill text on the second page where indicated.

     e) Fill in the red text areas, change the text color to black, and save the file.

     f) Log in to your jBlast account, upload your fax list and letter, set the merge points, and begin faxing.

     g) Check your confirmation report and refax to any numbers that were unreachable. If you can't get through to every fax machine after multiple attempts, send a hard copy of your letter and bill via regular U.S. mail to those particular members.

c) Fill in legislator data (leave row headings)		e) Fill in the red text areas

Step 4: Email the federal MGM Bill to the President and your U.S. Representative & Senators

The federal MGM Bill is different than your state MGM Bill because it's a Congressional bill that applies to the entire USA. In this step you only need to write the President and the three members of Congress who represent your particular district and state. Just fill in, copy, and paste the text from this letter and federal bill into an email or webform message to your local U.S. House Representative, your two U.S. Senators, and President Obama.

Step 5: Notify MGMbill.org

As soon as you have finished all emailing/faxing/mailing, send an email to Matthew Hess at mhess@mgmbill.org to report that the job is done, along with any issues or problems that you may have encountered. Once everyone reports back, a press release will be issued to the news media. Also, if you receive replies from your legislators, please forward copies of their letters so they can be considered for posting to the Government Responses page.

That's all there is to it!

If you have any questions regarding the above submission process, please contact Matthew Hess at mhess@mgmbill.org.