Congress needs helpers, and the helpers are ready to serve

Daulby is CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation.

As Mr. Rogers famously said, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

A few months ago, I became the new CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation with a renewed mission to lead the helpers back to the Capitol. After a career on Capitol Hill that started as a paid intern and ended after being the staff director for the House Administration Committee on Jan. 6, 2021, I have been called back to serve the institution. I agreed to do so because we are in desperate need of the helpers, and having been a doer for the last two decades, it is now time for me to be a helper.

In addition to the presidential election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives were on the ballot Tuesday along with roughly a third of the Senate. Our institution is rapidly turning over and we will see hundreds of new staff come to Washington in January. I have watched with much joy and enthusiasm the progress that has been made on Capitol Hill, and particularly in the House. Staff have access to a team of bipartisan coaches and online resources from which to learn and grow in their current positions, thanks to the office of the Chief Administrative Officer. Staff retreats are now commonplace and offered by three entities in the House. While I was on the Hill, my team established the Congressional Excellence program that continues to provide individual leadership development and coaching to members of Congress.

We are making progress.

However, for outside organizations like the Congressional Management Foundation to move the needle on making Congress work more and squabble less, we need more helpers. With the growing popularity of the “fix Congress” movement and acceptance that we need infrastructure like the House Administration Committee’s modernization subcommittee, we started a trend … which has become a habit of telling Congress what it can do better. Most members and staff know that Congress needs improvement, but they need a helping hand.

Well-meaning organizations have sent letters, published op-eds and spoken on panels in a silo. So much of this important work never gets communicated effectively to the Hill and so few resources have been committed to directly sharing our work and executing programing that help the members of Congress achieve what we are publicly telling them to do. That is why CMF will continue to support leadership and professional development opportunities, building a community that strengthens bipartisan relationships and facilitating educational opportunities that leverage private-sector expertise.

CMF’s Revitalizing Congress program is just one example of the work we do to help Congress function more efficiently. This program works with members of Congress to:

• Improve staff work life.
• Transform constituent and public engagement.
• Provide professional development services to members.
• Encourage innovation.
• And much, much more.

So many American feel Congress is broken. These beliefs have become so embedded in our society that it seems most Americans have lost hope in an institution that seems ineffective, unresponsive and unable to address the challenges America faces. Most Americans see only examples of ineptitude, petty partisan politics and the occasional scandal on Capitol Hill.

But what if Americans got a glimpse of a different Congress? Americans' views might change if they saw examples of members of Congress employing innovative practices to engage with citizens, or congressional offices employing private-sector business practices to improve their operations. And what would other lawmakers do if they also saw how their colleagues enhanced their operations and citizen engagement?

In this spirit, CMF created a distinctive honors program — the Democracy Awards — to recognize non-legislative achievement and performance in congressional offices and by members of Congress.

And we do so much more.

In the coming weeks our congressional management guide, “Setting Course,” will be published and distributed to all new members of Congress and their staff. We will follow that publication with a series of workshops for new staff in 2025 that will help them onboard to these new positions. We will offer staff academies on pressing topics and cohort dinners with staff from both sides of the aisle with private-sector leaders. Staff are desperate for hard skills and professional development tools. We will continue to conduct retreats, offer webinars on office skills and run management classes.

The work of the helpers never ends. I hope you will follow us on our journey.