Advocacy in action

By Dani Sheehan. 

Impactful initiatives and collaboration drive change in the roofing industry. Find out how MRA is creating meaningful progress for Montana roofers. 

The Montana Roofing Association (MRA) has taken significant steps to advocate for its members and the broader Montana roofing community since their start in 1988. The association was established to unite roofing contractors across Montana, providing them with essential education on laws, regulations and industry trends. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Morgan Thiel, the MRA president and project manager coordinator at Thiel Bros. Roofing Inc., and Rachel Hoover, the vice president of MRA and director of marketing for ACE Roofing. They shared their experiences and the impact of the MRA’s latest advocacy efforts, particularly their annual advocacy day at Montana’s Capital. 

Helena Day started two years ago and drew inspiration from the National Roofing Contractors Association’s (NRCA) annual Roofing Day in Washington, D.C. Morgan shared, “We thought we should go out to Helena, our state capital, and do the same thing. Get a group of roofers together and go talk to our local representatives.”  

Advocacy, however, is not just a one-time event; it’s about building and maintaining relationships. “Continuing these relationships, we’ve started even at our conventions the last few years,” Morgan noted. “We’ll invite the Department of Labor to come speak about certain issues or safety issues or what’s going on that roofers in Montana need to know. We touch base with a lot of these people once a year, or more, and we’ve built a really good relationship.” 

Rachel added, “At the heart of the MRA has always been being politically involved, whether that’s education on regulations, on code, on laws affecting roofers in the construction industry or advocacy. We actually have a political committee dedicated to doing that.” 

The power of advocacy for industry progress 

One significant outcome of Helena Day was identifying critical issues and developing actionable projects. Morgan highlighted a key initiative, sharing, “With the Montana State Fund, one of the representatives wanted to know our thoughts on a certain statistic – the percentage of first-day injuries in the roofing industry. We talked about what our business owners thought, and we said, well, something we could do is come up with some sort of a safety program to combat this. They’re developing a safety program to tackle that issue.” 

Another notable project involves the State Auditor’s office. “We’ve talked to them about working on some public service announcements for homeowners on what to do if a storm comes through and your roof gets hailed on,” Morgan said. “They have a podcast on issues affecting insurance problems, and they’ve invited us to do a couple of episodes with them.” 

What’s next for the MRA 

With Morgan and Rachel both taking office this January, they’ve already hit the ground running this year, and their events are just heating up for the summer. Rachel shared, “We’re hoping to have finalized [the safety training] by the end of this year so that we can roll it out at our convention next year and offer that training to contractors. We’re looking at how we can best support contractors, figuring out where the holes in education are and what needs we can help meet.” 

In addition to the advocacy and educational efforts, the MRA is also preparing for its annual fishing trip in July and its golf tournament in early August to fundraise for their Cameron Sauter Memorial Scholarship.