After Phil Clapp's memorial service I wanted to write something about the impact he had on me and the environmental community. When you learn of someone's passing and they have had a serious impact on your life, it is natural to take inventory of exactly what that impact was. I have been doing this on and off ever since I learned he had passed away. I had a little bit of trouble filtering all of them so I had to make a choice. Turns out, the choice was pretty easy - Phil taught me a lot about speed.

Before coming to the National Environmental Trust I had moved pretty fast at certain times in my career but nothing had prepared me for having my organization's CEO come to my office to dictate a statement that A) did not get too wonky ("Keep it conversational"), B) had an interesting twist to it I had never heard of before and C) needed to get out NOW.

According to Joel Finkelstein, Vice President at Fenton Communications and NET employee under Phil for five years, "Phil insisted on responding to breaking news within the news cycle. Add to that a brilliant political mind that can give context to complex decisions, rulings, votes, etc and you have a great messenger for environmental issues."

I worked at the National Environmental Trust for a very short time but I still learned a lot about the impact Phil and NET had on the communications operations of the non-profit environmental community. I took some of what he said, pieced it together with my own experiences and other accounts of where our community was years earlier and came to understand that NET helped make the communications operations of environmental groups around DC faster and better. Unless you want to let NET get quotes you have to be as fast if not faster. Before NET, I don't think it was standard operating procedure to responded within the news cycle, let alone getting ahead of it. After a few years of Phil being quoted regularly in prominent news sources, other enviro ngos realized they had to adapt or be shut out.

Phil taught me, and I bet everyone who worked for him that if you don't want the administration's rollbacks of clean air and water protections to go unnoticed, speed is the key. If you want to maximize the media splash of the latest IPCC report then get out ahead of it. Start talking to reporters well ahead of its actual release.

I saw it firsthand. Phil and NET were very fast and effective. It can be tough to adjust to. But once you do adjust, you realize that speed is essential to effective advocacy communications. Many enviro NGOs have fast and effective press operations these days. Part of that can be attributed to the need to keep up with Phil Clapp.