Getting to Yes: Advocating for Your Library

1. Getting to Yes:Advocating for Your Library Laura K. Lee Dellinger Jennifer Gilstrap Hearn Nikki Schardin

2. Understand what advocacy is and why it is important and who can advocate • Understand when to employ advocacy strategies instead of public relations or marketing approaches • Understand basics of framingtheory and how it influences decision making • Howto ask the right questions in preparation for your advocacy efforts • How to identify audiences and pathways to influence them • Understand basic forms of persuasive proof/support • Apply the learnings above to specific problems Learning Objectives

3. Overview of the Workshop Morning: Lecture • Advocacy as Inquiry and Argument Afternoon: Breakout Sessions • Identifying the Answers and Framing Arguments

4. Definition: Communication • Practical and necessary art • Four elements: speaker, listener, message and occasion. • Definite and specialized attempt to persuade • Ultimate purpose of all communication is audience response.

5. Definitions: Communication Practices • Public Relations: building mutually beneficial relationships over the long term • Marketing: causing transactions to occur that satisfy human needs/wants in exchange for something of value. • Advocacy: advancing a cause or proposal using argument to do so

6. What is advocacy? • Supporting a cause or proposal • Using argument to do so

7. Focus of Library Advocacy • Turn passive support of libraries and librarians into educated action by stakeholders. • Text originates from ALA Advocacy, A Framework for Planning for Future Activities. Prepared by Nancy Kranich.

8. Who can be an advocate? • YOU • Your staff • Your board • Your community partners • Friends

9. Why should you be an advocate? • Ambassador for the library (both locally and globally) • Reinforcing other communication efforts • Reinforcing community/customer experiences • If the people closest to the cause don’t do it, why should anyone else? • Knowledgeable about the library and its needs and benefits • Influential community stewards

10. How to • Ask the right questions • Build a strong argument • Reach out to the audience

11. Advocacy as Inquiry: Asking the right questions • What is the problem and WHY is it a problem? • What is our solution? • What do we want? • Who can give us what we want? • Why should they do so? (Benefit to them, alignment w/ values, etc.) • What do THEY need to know in order to take the action we want? • Who is the best person to tell them our story? • How can we get them to listen to that person(s)?

12. Problem/Solution • What is the problem? • What is the cause? • How do we want to solve it? • How is our solution going to address the broader needs (community values = constituency values)?

13. What do we want? • Community action or involvement • Funding • Public policy change • Build political and public will • Create new library advocates

14. Who can give us what we want? • Who needs to be engaged and take action to achieve goals? • Identify their needs, interests, values and level of engagement • Identify their channels of communication, trusted advisors, and willingness to act

15. Who can give us what we want? • Administrators • Legislators • City or County elected officials • Voters • Community leadership • Customers • Others?

16. Why should they take action? • Benefit to them/their constituents • Alignment with their values • Alignment with constituency values (remember: customers = constituents)

17. Who is the best person to tell our story? • Chosen based on the needs of the audience • Most direct pathways • Most impacted parties • Aligned with their values

18. What do they need to know to take the action we want? Go back to the “why”? Then explain how our plan: • Benefits them/their constituents • Aligns with their values • Aligns with constituency values (remember: customers = constituents)

19. Framing Theory • The manner in which we process new information is related to our deeply held worldviews and assumptions • “…the way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do.” (Walter Lippmann, PublicOpinion, 1921)

20. Framing Theory • How we process information • People are not blank slates • We use mental shortcuts to make sense of the world • Incoming information provides cues that connect to the picture/stories in our heads • Once these pictures/stories are evoked, we stop processing

21. Framing Theory So, why ARE all TV nannies British?

22. Framing Theory • How we process information • Pictures connect with certain enduring, deeply held cultural values • Freedom, privacy, opportunity, etc. • Images, stories and values constitute the “frames” we associate with specific issues

23. What do they need to know to take the action we want? Speak in the language of the listener. Connect to existing frames. • What? (problem) • So what? (why and how solution remedies/pros + cons) • Now what? (take the action) Round 2: • If not, THEN what? (reinforceharm of inaction + benefit of action)

24. Make a strong argument • Having one vs. making one • Systematic establishment of chain of reasoning in support of one’s position. • Burden of Proof is yours: can’t assume people will make the linkage between what you have to offer and what they care about, you have to make that link for them. • Must have blended proof: reason + emotion, evidence of satisfaction of the audience’s needs

25. The 4 P’s • Passion • Purpose • People • Persuasion

26. Passion • Personal credibility and commitment • Ethos: character, competence and goodwill • Advancing the cause for the purpose of benefiting others, not just the self

27. Purpose • Establish a new situation or change an existing state of being • Fact (that something is real/true) • Value (that something is of utility and deserving of support) • Policy (that a choice should be made in support of a proposal)

28. People • Primary Audience: who can make the choice for which we are advocating • Secondary Audience: who influences the primary audience and who can help us advance our case

29. Qualitative Evidence Examples Definitions Descriptions Quotes Analogies/comparisons Testimony Expert Customer/Constituent Opinion Leader Quantitative evidence Surveys Statistics PersuasionWhat type of support can you offer?

30. Getting your argument heard or How can we get them to listen? • Direct Connections/Outreach • Meetings & one-on-one • Roundtables/Forums/Town Halls • Hearings • Letters /e-mail • Fact Sheets & Frequently Asked Questions • Media (as Channel and Influencer) • Letters to the Editor/Opinion Editorials • Editorial Board Visits • News and Features • Library as media

31. Break for Lunch

32. What’s required for effective advocacy? • Passion • Purpose • Persuasion • People

33. Break-Out Sessions • Define the problem and your solution (Frame the issue) :30 minutes • Refine your audience :30 minutes • Identify their needs, interests, values and level of engagement • Identify their channels of communication, trusted advisors, and willingness to act • Create Your Message (Your argument) :30 minutes • What, Now what, So what . . . Then what? • Build your message using balanced forms of proof/support • Identify the best messengers :20 minutes • Determine your approach : 15 minutes • Report Out

34. Break-Out Sessions

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