Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Programs Communications Phone Interview

Sample Emails for Interview Assistance and Invitation to Participate

Email to Industry Associations – heads up this is happening and request for assistance

[From Paul Rauch to Steve Sanetti, President, NSSF]

In response to requests from industry, state agencies, and other stakeholders and partners, WSFR is developing a Strategic Communications Plan to guide us in distributing more and better information about the WSFR partnership to key audiences. As a part of this effort, we are gathering feedback from our partners to inform the communications plan—to ensure we deliver the right information in the most useful ways. To that end, we hope to engage representatives from some of your member companies, to get their impressions of WSFR, the excise tax, grants/programs, and how we can improve our communications efforts with them.

Over the next few months, we hope to conduct interviews, focus groups, and surveys of industry representatives to find out what they already know about WSFR, what they’d like to know more about, and how we can make our communications more effective. We have partnered with DJ Case & Associates for this research effort and plan to begin reaching out to selected individuals from these key audiences to set up one-on-one interviews in the next few weeks. Our efforts to communicate directly with your members would benefit greatly from an introduction from you or someone from NSSF. Would you be willing to help us identify and contact appropriate members to participate?

We are looking for 12-14 NSSF members to interview including CEOs, presidents or owners, and staff from marketing, operations and finance. It’s important that we get a cross-section of companies. That is, we don’t want only companies that are familiar with and/or supportive of the WSFR partnership. It would be great to talk to some who are unfamiliar or opposed as well. We’d also like to get some variety in company size. If you are willing to assist, I will ask Matt Harlow from DJ Case (cc’d here) to contact you with more details.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at any time. The WSFR Program looks forward to improving our communications efforts with industry and our other partners—to build upon the tremendous conservation legacy of the Industry-State-Federal WSFR enterprise.

Sincerely,

Paul Rauch

Email from Industry Association leaders to industry association members – request for assistance

As you may be aware, our industry has a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program (WSFR) and state fish and wildlife agencies to fund and implement conservation programs throughout the country. Knowledge and understanding within our industry of how this partnership works and is used for conservation varies widely, and the WSFR Program is currently developing a Strategic Communications Plan to help them do a better job communicating this information to us.

As part of the planning process, WSFR is conducting interviews with some of our members—to learn about their knowledge and impressions of WSFR and how WSFR can improve its communications efforts with us.

I’m hoping you can be available to participate. Would you be willing to help?

The interview would be conducted by phone at a time of your choosing. It will last around 30 minutes, and will be conducted by DJ Case & Associates, a professional communications firm that has been contracted by the WSFR Program for this purpose.

If you are willing to assist, please reply to all in this email. Matt Harlow from DJ Case (cc’d here) will contact you to set up a time that works with your schedule.

I believe this is an opportunity for our industry to have a greater voice in the communications aspects of the WSFR partnership, and I hope you will be able to make this work in your busy schedule.

Sincerely,

[name of industry leader]

WSFR Chief’s request for assistance with interviews from state agencies

[From regional WSFR Chiefs to selected state agency reps]

In an effort to improve our federal-state partnership, the USFWS WSFR Program is developing a Strategic Communications Plan to guide us in distributing more and better information about the WSFR partnership to key audiences. As a part of this effort we are contacting selected representatives from state fish and wildlife agencies as well as the firearm, archery, fishing tackle and marine industries to learn how we can improve our communications efforts.

You are a key state agency stakeholder, and we’d like to interview you regarding the WSFR partnership. Our partner for this research, DJ Case & Associates, hopes to begin these interviews in the next few weeks. The interview would be around 30 minutes in length. Would you be willing to assist?

If you are willing, please reply to all in this email. Matt Harlow from DJ Case (cc’d here) will contact you with more details.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at any time. The WSFR Program looks forward to improving our communications efforts with state agencies and our other partners—to build upon the tremendous conservation legacy of the Industry-State-Federal WSFR enterprise.

Thank you for your help and support on this communication effort.

Sincerely,

[Name of regional WSFR Chief]

Reminder email from Matt Harlow to individual potential interviewees.
It will be a reply all to the above invitation emails.

[Interviewee name],

Can you spare 30 minutes in the next week or two to have the WSFR conversation [name] asked you to participate in?

If you can, please send me two or three times that would work for you in the next week or two. I’m sure I can make one of them work with my schedule.

Thank you again for your help!

Matt Harlow

Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: We are collecting this information subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501) to help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to design messages for key audiences (i.e. industry and state partners) to achieve greater awareness and understanding of WSFR, including the accomplishments that are achieved by the state, federal, and industry partnership. Your response is completely voluntary. According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, an agency may not conduct or sponsor and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. OMB has reviewed and approved this survey and assigned OMB Control Number 1090-0001, which expires 08/31/2018.

Estimated Burden Statement: We estimate it will take you 35 minutes to complete the survey, including time to read instructions, gather information, and complete and submit the survey. You may submit comments on any aspect of this information collection to the Information Collection Clearance Officer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 5275 Leesburg Pike, MS: BPHC, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. Please do not send your survey to this address.