There is a photograph from the early life of Van Scoyoc Associates that does not exist, but should. Three people are standing in a Washington office in 1990 beside eight client files and a mobile phone weighing five pounds. The phone is the comic prop. The files are the plot. H. Stewart "Stu" Van Scoyoc had left a career that began in chemical engineering at DuPont and opened a government-relations firm built around a precise skill: translating what an organization wanted into language Congress could use.
The firm found its groove in appropriations. A university wanted a research program funded. A town needed a project recognized. A company needed a provision understood by people who could move it. VSA knew the committee, the calendar, the phrasing and the person. When earmarks expanded in the 1990s, so did the firm. By 2010, it had 83 local employees and sat among Washington's highest-grossing lobbying shops.
Then the machine stopped taking that particular coin.
The shortcut disappears
The congressional earmark ban took effect in 2011. At roughly the same time, the regular appropriations process became less regular. The annual vehicle that once gave lobbyists a predictable place to attach a client's request was no longer dependable. VSA's reported lobbying revenue fell more than 25 percent from 2010 to $21 million in 2013. Staff fell from 73 to 66.
The business after the shortcut
Reported federal lobbying revenue, not total company revenue. 2010 is shown as a minimum implied by the reported decline.
The first thing to fail was not persuasion. It was routing. VSA had built a reliable path through legislation, and the path had narrowed. A 2014 account of the firm's adjustment describes what changed its mind: not a grand theory, but the stubborn fact that clients still wanted outcomes. Transportation money still existed. Defense agencies still bought products. Universities still competed for research grants. Federal rules still helped or hurt. The money and authority had not vanished. They had scattered.
“They’re trying to open a series of doors ... because you could write something right into a bill.” - Jim Dyer
The product is sequence
VSA began spending more time with the agencies that actually spend federal money. Its people prepared clients for grant competitions, introduced small defense companies to the Pentagon, raised the profile of university institutes, monitored rulemaking and built coalitions. The firm later added strategic communications and paired policy advice with cyber-threat expertise through a collaboration with Conrad, Inc.
This is what VSA sells today. Not access as a mysterious substance, and not a software dashboard. It sells sequence. First, decide what can move. Then identify the venue. Make the request intelligible in that venue's language. Assemble validators. Put the right messenger in the room. Stay long enough for the result.
The post-earmark route
A local-government case makes the sequence unusually visible. Rio Rancho had spent years seeking reimbursement from the Army Corps of Engineers for an arsenic-treatment facility. The agreement existed; the payment did not. VSA connected city officials with Corps leadership, the congressional delegation and committee staff. It helped develop appropriations report language that told the Corps to prioritize reimbursements of this kind. The city received $2.6 million and continued pursuing the balance.
The same method appears at a different scale in VSA's work with the EPSCoR/IDeA Coalition. The problem was a lopsided map of federal research funding: more than 90 percent went to half the states. VSA helped organize institutions in the other half, arrange Washington visits, prepare advocacy materials and make the case to authorizers, appropriators and agencies. The firm's case study says programs represented by the coalition grew from $8 million at one agency to more than $600 million across five agencies by fiscal 2018.
Who buys the map
The client list is the interesting part. Fortune 500 companies and defense contractors are expected. Water districts, hospitals, small towns, community foundations and university research centers are more revealing. These organizations can be sophisticated at home and still arrive in Washington without an operating manual. Their common problem is distance from the federal process.
VSA competes with large public-policy practices and independent firms such as Cassidy & Associates, Cornerstone, Thorn Run and Forbes Tate. Its chosen distinction is structural. It says it does not hire former members of Congress. Instead, it recruits senior staffers, executive-branch officials and policy specialists from both parties. Named principals remain accountable for each client, while the full firm's contacts and expertise stay available behind them. The internal slogan is refreshingly agricultural: “work horses not show horses.”
That model has a practical advantage. A famous former senator may get a call returned. A former committee staff director may know why the call should be made, which subparagraph matters and what objection will arrive on Thursday.
What it costs, and what can be copied
There is no public menu. Lobbying disclosures report income by client and quarter, not a universal rate. In 2025 examples, disclosed quarterly fees ran from about $10,000 to $120,000. One public Elk Grove municipal schedule set VSA's 2025-26 retainer at $5,000 per month plus $1,000 in annual travel, or $61,000 for the year. Those numbers describe particular scopes, not a promise of what another engagement costs.
What can a reader copy without hiring a Washington firm? Start by replacing the wish with a decision tree. Who possesses the authority? Which calendar governs it? What language does that institution reward? Which local partners make the request credible? What evidence can be handed to a skeptical staffer in two minutes? VSA's most portable insight is that advocacy begins before the meeting. The meeting is merely where preparation becomes visible.
The limits are practical. This approach cannot create legal authority, guarantee an appropriation or rescue a proposal that contradicts an agency's published priorities. It also weakens when the client cannot sustain a long campaign, lacks local validators, faces an unfixable conflict, or expects one relationship to replace a coalition and a credible case.
VSA itself has acknowledged that some clients eventually hear the honest answer: success is unlikely. In a trade built around possibility, knowing when the route is closed may be part of the service.
Washington, redrawn
The irony of Van Scoyoc Associates is that the shock that damaged its model also made the model more interesting. Appropriations expertise remains. But around it now sits a larger system: agency intelligence, competitive funding, regulatory work, coalitions, communications, crisis preparation and sector specialists. The firm had to replace one reliable door with many smaller ones.
In 2025, public filing data placed VSA at $19.5 million in federal lobbying revenue across 171 clients. The figure is below its late-earmark peak, but scale is not the most instructive result. The useful result is survival by re-mapping. Washington changed the route. VSA kept the destination.