CSEE Advocacy Toolkit

Training of the Trainers

Advocacy Roadmap

• Choose an Issue:

– Support for the expansion of quality Early Education

Develop an Action Plan

• CSEE Strategic Plan

• Develop Specific Plans to Support Voter Education and Voter Registration in areas where PAC has endorsed candidate

Form or Join a Coalition

• LWV• CDPI• CAEYC & Affiliates• CCDAA• Advancement Project?• Local Planning Councils

Host the Initial Meeting

• Announce Coalition Goals

– Between PAC & Board

– Between Board & Related Statewide Agencies

Discuss Roles

• Team Coordinator

• Volunteer Coordinator

• Data Coordinator

• PR Coordinator

Implementation of Plan

• Disseminate Coordinators in accordance with Plan

• Provide Direction & Support

• Check in on Progress

Advocacy Communications

Develop Meaningful Messages:

The key to motivating people is:• sending the right message,• in the right way, • at the right time.

Tell Your Story

• Help people understand why they should care;

• Get them to feel connected to your issue;

• Encourage them to support your mission;

• Motivate them to become involved.

Create Smart Delivery Strategies

• Encourage your target audience to act!

• Framing the Issue for Public Consideration

• Provide the right lens so your audience can focus!

Leading Communities

• Influencing Public Thinking• Raising Issues in my Community• Moving the body of Politics• Convincing people to Endorse Realistic

Solutions

To Lead

• You have to be able to explain, because Leaders bring others along.

Human Reasoning is frame-based, not fact-based…and if the facts don’t quite fit the frame, it is the frame that triumphs over the facts.

Framing Intentionally

“If you have not considered what is in people’s heads to begin with, you will rarely achieve the goal of moving the public conversation in the direction you had hoped.”

Framing Elements

You can lose entire constituencies on policies they would have otherwise endorse by the way you orchestrate these basic frame elements:

• who speaks, • how they explain the problem, and • what values they invoke.

By Susan Nall Bates

• Chamber Executive Summer 2008