Writing

Understanding the Early Campaign Against Beto O’Rourke

Posted on by pcsweeney

I was prompted to write this article because of a few of the articles that are being published around Beto O’Rourke as his candidacy for president in the 2020 election becomes much more likely. The articles that I reference later in this blog post are designed to diminish Beto’s strength as an early contender and build strength through early counter narratives through the process of surfacing. This article is about exploring surfacing and the kinds of tactics that we are seeing deployed against Beto almost two years before election day and at least a year before he announces his candidacy.

Before I get to deep into it, I do feel like I have to start this by saying that I am not a supporter of any of the current potential presidential candidates on either side of the aisle. I have not made up my mind about anyone yet. I’m also not arguing that Beto is a good guy or bad guy. I have no idea. Mostly, I’m writing this post because I find this pre-candidacy process of surfacing candidates and causes so interesting.

About Surfacing

As we move into the 2020 presidential elections we are going to start seeing potential candidates surfacing their campaigns in order to take on Trump. This surfacing may come from both sides of the aisle to attack or support a potential candidate. I want to explain this process because so few people know what surfacing is and so that you understand what is happening when we see the publication of these kinds of articles.

The surfacing process is key to building a viable candidate who is positioned to win the election because it introduces the candidate to voters in a strategic way. It is a crucial step in building a candidacy because before these individuals are officially candidates they are often free from opposition attacks and voters are less skeptical of their messaging. Before they are candidates they are just individuals who are expressing their hopes and dreams for the country and telling their story to voters. They can do this through articles in newspapers, publishing a biography, speaking on news shows, and utilizing various media in order to begin reaching and educating voters before those voters have become familiar with other candidates. By starting early and working in an environment free from these distractions and obstacles then potential voters will already be familiar with the candidate and the candidate will have a network of supporters, volunteers, and donors ready for a campaign once they announce their candidacy.

On the other hand, after they officially announce their campaign and become candidates, voters’ attitudes begin to change. Voters start to question the candidates’ messaging, or their voting history (if they have one), their earlier tweets, the content and context of their bestselling book, previous speeches, or earlier attempts at running for office, etc… The campaign suddenly becomes difficult because they start working in an environment of opposition attacks, party in-fighting, political punditry, and voter skepticism. The longer that a potential candidate can stay out of this environment, the more they can build their resources for a more successful campaign later.

For a more in-depth discussion about surfacing in the context of presidential politics, see this article from the site, Presidential Power.

One of the most important reasons that surfacing is important is because, in politics, whoever says it first and loudest is often most believed. By speaking first you put your political opponent in a position of defense instead of offense. If you are the first and loudest candidate to fill the political messaging space with your views on an issue then you will now control that narrative in the election cycle because your opposition will have to spend their resources addressing your narrative instead of promoting their own. For example, one of the big issues for Hillary in her run for presidency was simply that Trump was first to speak and spoke the loudest which meant that she spent much of her election cycle defending herself from Trump’s claims, being forced to speak about what Trump previously said, and using precious campaign resources trying to maneuver through Trump’s chaotic messaging style. Surfacing gives candidates the opportunity to speak first and loudest on issues in an environment that is generally free from attack from opposition and that helps voters make decisions early in the campaign process.

Early Surfacing Against Beto O’Rourke

However, What I think is most interesting is that surfacing against potential candidates is becoming more common years before potential candidates become more viable and long before they announce their candidacy. For example, we’re seeing surfacing tactics from the opposition being applied to Beto O’Rourke from both the left and the right due to the speculation about his potential presidential candidacy. This is incredible considering election day is still almost two years away.

In fact, the reason that I wrote this blog post was because of an article that came across my feed. In this article against Beto O’Rourke the “Journalist,” posits that “The 2020 Democratic frontrunner is a Republican.” I thought this was a fascinating piece and I explored it more to see if it was part of an opposition campaign against Beto forming their messaging this early. It turns out, it was.

These articles are often hard to spot because, at first glance, they are authentically written articles by a journalist and should be trusted. In this case, it was a little easier because this particular article was written by Mathew Walther and the news platform allowed me to click through to his author history and bio. The first thing that I noticed was that his previous articles were often right leaning and one of his previous articles was titled, “Liberal’s Infantile Beto Fantasy.” When I read his bio it stated that he is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. What is interesting is that this fellowship is made through The Fund for American Studies. TFAS is an organization that promotes conservative ideals in journalism and has ties to major conservative organizations like the State Policy Network and The Charles Koch Institute. Now it becomes clear that this article was most likely written specifically to diminish Beto’s luster with Democratic voters by positioning him as too Conservative for Democrats to support.

The other article that caught my eye was called “Beto O’Rourke is the New Obama and That’s the Last Thing We Need.” It was written by David Sirota who writes for Capital & Main which is a left leaning publication. On first glance, this lends his arguments a little more authority. But, when we look more deeply into David’s history we find that he worked as the press aide and then as the spokesperson for Bernie Sanders. What this means is that if Bernie Sanders is planning on running (it looks like he is) then he needs to start filling the messaging space with counter narratives about Beto in order to weaken his position for the upcoming presidential run. By running articles like this, the Bernie Campaign is taking advantage of this surfacing process to weaken Beto’s position among the Obama era Democrats so that Bernie’s position becomes stronger. In the campaign, Beto will have to address this narrative instead of promoting his own narratives. In fact, this tactic from the Bernie campaign insiders has become so apparent that main stream press has picked up on it such as in this article from NBC News entitled “Inside Bernie World’s War Against Beto O’Rourke.”

Most often these kinds of articles rely on the readers’ ignorance of the surfacing part of a campaign. They are typically very difficult to identify for a common reader. In the case of both of these articles I had to click through to authors and perform Google searches to see if they were legitimate criticisms of Beto O’Rourke or if they were simply part of the electioneering process. If you don’t want to be duped by the surfacing or counter surfacing of candidates by themselves or their opposition, it will simply take a little work.

While these are just two examples, I have written about this surfacing process in campaigns for candidates and causes before. In my most recent book, “Before the Ballot; Building Support for Library Funding,” as well as an upcoming article in the Journal of Library Administration, I dive much more deeply into strategies and tactics of early electioneering specifically for libraries.

Build Support for Library Funding with This eCourse

Posted on by pcsweeney

I’m excited to announce a second session of the eCourse with ALA Editions and SJSU iSchool entitled Winning Support and Influencing Communities for Library Funding. After the success of the previous course session, I’m providing it again with updated data and information from the recent release of the second “From Awareness to Funding” study.  We’ll also dive deeper into local data and recent political innovations that can be applied in communities of all sizes in order to cultivate and build support for local library funding.

It’s no secret that over 90% of library funding comes from the will of the local voters and the local politicians. In fact, on average, only 3-5% of library funding comes state legislative issues, and only another 3-5% of library funding comes from federal legislative issues. That means that libraries and library staff have to learn how to navigate and influence the local political environment to build support for funding for their community library. Whether that support comes from voters or political pressure on local boards and councils, this course will teach the skills you need to get the funding that your library deserves.

Click here to learn more about this course and to register

Whether you are going to the voters in the next year or next 5 years, you can get started today by learning the skills, tools, and political theories used by some of the largest and most successful campaigns in the country. In this course we’ll look at the ways that libraries can start re-building voter support in the years before an election. We’ll learn from some of the most successful presidential and local campaigns and discuss the ways that libraries can adapt their tools and tactics within their own communities.  The earlier that you get started building the political support you need, the easier it will be to make an ask for increased library funding from both the voters and the local legislators.

“As a librarian from a community with no project on the horizon, but dreams of one, I learned a lot about laying the groundwork for a future project. I hope to begin to apply those principles and lessons so that one day I am able to report a successful library campaign!” – Sonja Dean Ferrell. Ottumwa Public Library

OCLC’s recently released second study measuring voter and political support for libraries found that over the last ten years general favorability of libraries has increased but overall voter support has dropped by over ten points. We should be alarmed by these results because more than 90% of library funding comes from the will of the local voters and the will of the local politicians. Without this political support, libraries in the United States are at risk from significant losses of funding and the potential for widespread closures as we’re seeing in many areas of Europe and Canada. That’s why this course is especially designed to focus on learning how we can encourage the voting public to take meaningful action to support library funding and apply pressure to our political leaders to ensure that they continue to fund libraries.

Click here to view the course outline and register

If your library is not dependent on voter engagement for funding, we will also explore the skills that you need to build political power within your community to influence your local legislators. We’ll look to major causes like Fight For Fifteen and Standing Rock as well as national PACs and political organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and Sierra Club and we’ll discuss the ways that libraries can apply those tactics in their day-to-day work to influence their local political ecosystems.

“I finished this class feeling much savvier about advocacy and the nature of campaigns. Advocacy is much more than simply “telling the library’s story” – it’s crafting a succinct, memorable message that resonates with your audience. Patrick’s feedback was incredibly valuable and I highly recommend his class to all who want to up their advocacy game.” – Susan P. Bier, Library Director at McCracken County Public Library

Click here to register for this advanced eCourse

Everything we teach in this course has been tested in the political field through campaigns and political actions. EveryLibrary has worked on over 75 campaigns and over 50 political actions at the local, state, and federal level. Through these campaigns we’ve built and tested a wide range of tools and tactics that have a strong history of success through restoring funding and increasing support for funding and political initiatives. In fact, the tools and tactics that we teach in this course have helped EveryLibrary return $1,600 in stable library funding for every dollar we’ve raised. In this course we will show you how to build and use these tools in your own communities.

“I unequivocally recommend this class, whether you just want to know more about library advocacy or have an actual initiative to plan for. Going into this class I had no idea how much I didn’t know, and came away with a profound appreciation of what it takes to plan a campaign and a detailed blueprint to refer to in the future. Patrick’s expertise shines through the informative lectures, careful selection of readings and videos, and pertinent feedback.” – Morgan Rose Pershing, Community Library Manager at County of Los Angeles Public Library

The Data Is Clear, It’s Time to Move Beyond Storytelling for Library Advocacy

Posted on by pcsweeney

OCLC recently released the latest data about voter support for libraries and the results should scare our entire industry out of political and advocacy complacency and away from the poor advocacy culture of storytelling that permeates our field. The results of the data have validated the fears of those of us at EveryLibrary and they’ve shown that we need to learn from some of the more politically savy and powerful organizations in the United States if we want library to continue to have the funding they need to remain into the future.

This report comes ten years after the previous “Awareness to Funding” study that was released in 2008 and underwritten by OCLC and the Gates Foundation. The original study looked at the awareness, attitudes, and underlying motivations among US voters for supporting library funding. This study was significant because it was the first time that anyone had looked at voter attitudes about library funding. The mere fact that it was a first of a kind study should worry us considering that more than 90% of library funding comes from the will of the local voter and the will of the local politicians. If we are concerned about library funding in the United States, the first place we should look is to the voters and politicians who are responsible for funding us.

Join the eCourse to learn to build political support for library funding.

The results of the original study did a lot to dispel a number of myths about why Americans are willing to vote to tax themselves to support libraries and indicated largely positively voter and political support for libraries. For example, they found that 37% of voters were almost definitely going to vote yes for libraries and another 37% of voters were likely to vote yes for libraries.  That left only 26% of voters who most likely would vote no for a library funding initiative. The study found that library users were not necessarily more likely to vote yes for library funding measures and in fact, non-users were just as likely as non-users to vote for libraries. It also found that political support for libraries was not dependent on political party or affiliation. Instead it found that the most influential variable in voter support for libraries was the relationship and trust in the librarians themselves.

Through this study we learned that we need better data to understand who our most likely supporters might be or to more efficiently run library campaigns by more easily identifying likely voters and likely non-voters. It became apparent that our lack of data meant that we have no way to use enhanced voter files to reduce the number of voter contacts and voter contacts are one of the most resource heavy aspects of a campaign. For example, if we could determine the profile of a library voter, we could use that data against an enhanced voter file to significantly lower the cost of campaigns and drastically increase the success rate of library campaigns allowing us to better fund our libraries. This profile is typically called “model voter data” and the fact that the study did not help us determine model voter profiles was one of the biggest flaws in the study.

The difference between support and voting
One of the most important underlying issues is that there is a remarkable difference between being in favor of libraries and having a willingness to vote in favor of taxation. This distinction was realized in the results of both studies and this distinction needs to be understood if we want to influence elections for libraries. The most disturbing trend that was identified in the 2018 study was that favorability for the services and programs of libraries has increased among our strongest supporters and remained steady for probable supporters but willingness to vote or pay more in taxes to supply those services and programs have declined a significant amount. In fact, the willingness to vote yes for libraries has declined by more than 10 percentage points across the country.


What this means is that many of our current advocacy models are working if our measurement of advocacy is overall opinion of libraries. But, that overall opinion will not lead to more votes or political support and because funding is directly affected by those two factors these results do not bode well for future funding initiatives. That means that without the political will, there is no funding, and therefore, there are no libraries. Most importantly, it shows that our advocacy measurements for success are wildly ineffectual and misguided if we want libraries to exist for future generations.

I would argue that not only are our measurements wrong, but our entire advocacy ecosystem needs to be re-imagined. Our industry largely relies on the idea that if we tell good stories that people will stand up and take action on our behalf. This misguided ideology leaves most of the actual work of true advocacy on the table. In fact, while most of the recommendations from this study are fairly routine and primarily surround issues of voter education, the study points to two recommendations that I believe that we need to take seriously. Those are:

Target public awareness efforts
Awareness of library offerings and value continues to be a challenge—perhaps one that is only growing as people are more distracted and diverted into a fragmented communications environment. The Pew Research Center has consistently found in their household surveys that many Americans, including library users, are still unaware of the breadth of resources offered by the public library. The market segments and their characteristics outlined in the original research and updated here can better enable library professionals to target communications and customize messaging via traditional and social media channels to more effectively reach people. For instance, libraries may connect announcements of new programs or services to larger stories about how the library supports school-age children, workforce readiness, or small business development.

 

Cultivate and Empower Super Supporters
A significant bright spot in the research is that support among library Super Supporters—a small but mighty group—is largely unchanged. This segment’s loyalty should not be taken for granted, but rather nurtured and protected. In addition, library leaders can consider how to engage and leverage this group as library ambassadors to advocate with decision makers and influence other segments of the population that might be more disconnected or skeptical.

For the last 5 years, libraries not sufficiently addressing these two issues has haunted our work at EveryLibrary.

The first, “Target public awareness efforts,” points to the fact that a number of organizations that claim competency in Marketing in our industry are most often confusing marketing and advertising.  Advertising comprises the tactics used to put messages into the community such as radio, tv, billboards, bar coasters, and other tchotchkes and giveaways. ALA’s own Libraries Transform and OCLC’s Geek the Library are both examples of this. Both of these campaigns are simply advertising and promoting libraries in general libraries. But true marketing encompasses a more holistic approach to getting the word out and measuring real results against goals. It includes real data driven and measureable activities. As written in “Investopedia; “The essential strategic components of a marketing effort are commonly called the four Ps: product, placement, promotion and price. Advertising, which is how a company communicates to prospective clients about the product or service, falls under the category of promotion.” And promotion is really the focus of most of the activities that our industry calls marketing.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with advertising our libraries. We should be doing everything we can to promote them. And, again, the advertising is “working” if our measurement of working is that people view libraries more favorably. It’s just failing if our measurement is that people are willing to pay the price for libraries through taxes and under any definition of the word, this more important measurement comes from true marketing.

And, of course, this typically isn’t the fault of the library staff. Libraries often do such a poor job marketing themselves that any kind of advertising or promotional activity is an improvement and will return some kind of result and lead library staff to falsely believe that they are great at marketing, go on and present at conferences, write books and articles, and continue the narrative in our profession that advertising is marketing.

In this course, I teach library staff to cultivate support for library funding.

Addressing this issue would take more time, energy, and space, than I’m willing to delve into in this blog post. However, I highly recommend looking outside of the library industry for guidance on understanding true marketing. Of course, I would also recommend my eCourse with ALA Editions where we dive deep into data driven and measureable results through proper communications and customer relations. But again, this is all taken from outside of the library industry.

The second issue, “Cultivate and Empower Super Supporters,” is exactly how political power is built and used although I would argue that it should read “Identify, Cultivate, and Empower Support Supporters.” This is advocacy beyond storytelling and requires significant time and energy on the part of the organizer and might better be described as activism. Notice also that there is nothing here to indicate a need for users. The word “supporters” in this recommendation is both important and intentional. The data from this report reinforce the argument that we have been making at EveryLibrary and that OCLC is making here, that library use does not at all equal to or correlate with library support. In fact, while we are running library campaigns, we see in poll after poll that library users are not more likely to vote yes or no for a ballot initiative or take action for libraries than non-users. As this study also showed, we have no real meaningful data point to use to identify which community members are likely to support libraries and which aren’t. This leads us to the difficulty of identifying library supporters in the community and if we can’t identify them then we can’t cultivate them, and if we can’t cultivate them then we can’t empower them.

That’s why one of the largest projects of EveryLibrary is identifying the people across the country who support libraries. We do this through a wide range of tactics. The most visible tactic is our use of Facebook and our one million Americans for libraries campaign. While this is only one of many tactics that we use, it is one that most people can quickly and easily understand and see in action. By taking the time to identify library supporters (or rather, allowing them to self-identify by liking our page) we are able to look at the data about who supports libraries through Facebook’s Audience Insights platform and then cultivate their support through targeting ads and messaging that tie libraries to the issues that they care about. This one tactic alone has been so effective that we regularly are able cultivate our followers and empower them to take action to support libraries that far exceed and return our expenses. For example, we were able to raise $6 for every dollar we spent in the few days after Trump announced his cuts to Federal Funding for libraries. We were also able to activate supporters into action for a few pennies per action. We were then able to use these donations for more expensive tactics later in the campaign when engagement significantly dropped and costs per action drastically increased as naturally happens with any social media activism activity. We were also able to capitalize on the thousands of early supporters by empowering them to continue to take actions on behalf of IMLS.

If we can continue this trend with an even larger audience of identified super supporters then we can empower these supporters to take larger actions for libraries and exercise real political power and pressure on our nation’s leaders. If we were able to reach one million self-identified supporters (as likes on Facebook, for example), then we could spend resources cultivating those individuals to become more entrenched super supporters who are more willing and likely to take action. That would mean that anytime there was a threat to libraries, we would be able to reach millions of like-minded Americans each week and encourage hundreds of thousands of them to take action such as signing petitions, contacting representatives, attending rallies, and making donations.

If we’re being honest, this isn’t a new or interesting concept. It is no different than tactics generally used by any large cause, candidate, or political organization. Using the NRA as an example, the reason that we are not able to pass gun laws in the United States is not because the majority of Americans are against gun restrictions but it is because there is a very radicalized minority of identified, cultivated, and empowered supporters who are very vocal and will take action through the drop of a single email or post on Facebook. There is no reason that we can’t do the same for education and libraries in this country and drive the legislative and policy changes we need to support our organizations. But this i

s only done through a very long and methodological process of identification, cultivation, and empowerment beyond storytelling and beyond simply using Facebook or putting up some billboards.

If you want to learn the process of identifying, cultivating, and empowering supporters for library funding, this course is for you.

Again, this blog post is too short to detail this process. But, if you’re interested in learning, I have spent the last five years working with some of the best presidential campaigners, community organizers, and cause related organizations. I’m excited to bring back everything I’ve learned to libraries through my eCourse with ALA Editions. In this course I teach the basic theories and concepts that can be applied at libraries of any budget level or serving any community size. This process will also be detailed in our upcoming book from ALA Editions (title still under consideration) but we touch on it in Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding.

 

Online Course to Build Support for Library Funding

Posted on by pcsweeney

Nearly 90% of library funding is dependent on the will of local voters and local politicians. Understanding these power structures is essential so you can help influence these individuals to ensure continued funding for your institution.

Learn more about this course and enroll today here.

That’s why I developed this twelve-week advanced eCourse, to provide you and your staff with the necessary information to understand these local power structures and get the tools you need to build support for your library. Through my experience at EveryLibrary, the nation’s first and only library advocacy Political Action Committee (PAC),  I will share the secrets of major national PACs, campaign consultants, community organizers, and local and presidential campaigns that can help you build relationships to sustain or increase funding for your library. Whether you are a director in a major city or a librarian in a rural town, the theories and best practices taught in this course are scalable and can be implemented to enhance support and increase funding in your area.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  • Identify and build large networks of library activists
  • Help raise money for your institution
  • Encourage community action to increase widespread support for your library.

Participants who complete this Advanced eCourse will receive a SJSU iSchool/ALA Publishing Advanced Certificate of Completion. This certificate will affirm your status as having completed all the steps of an Advanced eCourse on Winning Support and Influencing Communities for Library Funding and will provide proof of your participation that you can add to your resume.

Advanced eCourses—a format in which faculty from the SJSU iSchool will help you dig deep into cutting-edge topics during 12-week online courses, equipping you with potentially transformative knowledge and skills, and taking you from introductory through high-level content.

If you’re interested in this 12 week course designed for staff at all levels and for members of advocacy groups like associations, Friends, and Foundations, please visit the ALA Store here to register! Or, if you know of people who would benefit from this class, please feel free to forward this to them or share it on Social Media. We’ll be using the hashtag #libraryfunding for this course so you can also join in the conversation there!

Thank you for considering this course and I look forward to seeing you there!

10 tips for your library’s ballot initiative campaign

Posted on by pcsweeney

This post is the sixth post in a series on tools from political campaigns that can be used to arm librarians in the face of growing opposition during the Trump era where anti-tax and anti-government sentiments have a much stronger voice than ever before.

Fundraise Early and Often
Fundraising is the most difficult part of any political campaign. State and Federal politicians never stop fundraising and many of them start their fundraising efforts years before their campaign starts. In fact, it’s reported that politicians spend up to 30% of their time fundraising. That’s why, even if your campaign is years away, you should set up your ballot committee and start fundraising now! The earlier you get a financial commitment from your base of supporters, the sooner you can start spending it to persuade others to vote yes.

Write a Plan
If your campaign has no written plan, you have no campaign. A strong campaign has a strong plan written in clear and concise language that anyone working on the campaign can quickly and easily understand. Not only does this help introduce volunteers and staff to your campaign but it also really helps them understand the importance of their role. Of course, if you don’t write the plan down and the campaign plan only exists in your head and something happens to you or you have to leave a campaign for any number of reasons, the campaign will be left to start over from scratch. Don’t do that to people counting on you.

Get Comfortable with Real Data
I could talk for hours about the national, state, and local, data that libraries need to win campaigns and the terrifying lack of data in the library industry. But, even for our local campaigns, spending money early on getting good data will save your campaign many headaches in the future. A good pollster will help you find out who will vote for your library, if there is enough support to win, and they will help you find out why people will vote for you library. That’s why you need to hire a professional pollster to do the work the right way. If you run your campaign on bad data you’ll overspend or misspend your campaign funds and potentially lose the campaign (Hillary Clinton). A good pollster will help you determine what data you need and they will make sure you get the data you need.

Set a Win Number
If your library needs a simple majority (50% plus one) of the voters to win an election or even if it needs a supermajority then you will need to find out what that number is before you begin. This number is critical because everything else you do depends on it and it will be your target throughout the campaign. Finding your win number is fairly easy and just requires a little research. For example, if your library is in a special election, look at the voter turnout in the previous 3-4 similar special elections, take an average, divide that number by 2 and add one (for a simple majority).

Set a Budget
Your win number and polling data is what is going to help you determine how much your campaign will cost. I often get asked how much it costs to run a campaign and the honest truth is that it depends. It largely depends on how many voters you plan on contacting, how you plan on contacting voters, how much each contact costs, and how many times you plan on contacting them. While these aren’t the only factors (there are many more) you can set a budget based on three levels of fundraising success.

Check it Everyday
Once you have this budget in place, don’t throw it away. It is a living document and needs to be consistently updated and tracked. The two worst ways to lose a campaign are with money left to spend after Election Day or overspend your campaign too early with nothing left for the GOTV efforts.

Identify Voters
Take the time EARLY in the campaign to find out who is willing to vote yes for your initiative. If you can identify enough voters to get to that win number, you can spend highly targeted contacts on just yes voters solidifying their yes and making sure that they show up to vote on Election Day. This will drastically reduce the cost of your campaign and ensure that you are contacting the right people.

Ignore the Haters
This is going to be the hardest thing to do. This isn’t about handling opposition because there will almost always be opposition that you can’t ignore. Instead, this is about ignoring those silent no-voters. One of the worst things your campaign can spend money on is trying to convert no-voters to yes-voters. Conversion is extremely expensive and very risky for even some of the best campaign managers. If you can get to your win number with yes-voters (which you should be able to do according to your polling results), then you should be spending money finding out who they are and then spending money making sure they vote.

Go Digital Strategically
There are so many digital platforms that a campaign can use. My recommendations are to use a good campaign website like NationBuilder and then focus only on Facebook and Email. The market saturation rate and the data that can be used for Twitter, Instagram, etc… just isn’t at the level it needs to be to be useful enough for small local campaigns. True, you can reach some people with Twitter, but is it the right people, enough people, and is it convincing enough? On a national or some state campaigns, this math changes, but for most library campaigns it just doesn’t add up.

But, Don’t Forget Your Ground Game
Digital is great but it won’t win your campaign. Don’t focus on it as the solution. You will still, absolutely, have to conduct a ground game to win a campaign. That means you and your volunteers will have to call your voters, write them letters, or knock on their doors. The face-to-face interactions (especially canvassing and phonebanking) of a political campaign still have the highest ROI so make sure they happen and make sure your volunteers are trained to do it right!

Bonus: GOTV
The final week of a campaign is where you take all of your yes voters and make sure they show up to cast their yes votes. Don’t overlook this last week because all of the work you’ve been doing up until now won’t matter unless they show up to vote. Spend a large portion of your campaign resources contacting your yes voters and making sure they they cast their vote for your library.

If you are interested in having EveryLibrary conduct a training to build political skills for your staff or librarians or speaking at your conference or staff development day you can get more information here. Or for information about my training, workshops and consulting, please view my speaking page.

Encourage Action For Your Library With The “Problem, Agitation, Solution” Model

Posted on by pcsweeney

This post is the fifth post in a series on tools from political campaigns that can be used to arm librarians in the face of growing opposition during the Trump era where anti-tax and anti-government sentiments have a much stronger voice than ever before.

problem-solution-magnifyI am often asked about writing compelling emails and messages to support library issues. Many campaigns are looking for an answer that tells them exactly what they should write to get people to take action for their library. For the most part, I try to refrain from giving specific advice about which message is right because different messages and languages work well in different communities or when delivered to different audiences. In fact, there are dozens of factors and many different data points that are considered when creating an email that includes an ask or that attempts to move people up a ladder of engagement. However, I do have a favorite structure that I use for many of my emails and blog posts that encourage some kind of action or next steps.

The problem, agitation, solution communication structure is often used by marketing companies, activist/advocacy groups, and almost everyone that is interested in getting people to take some kind of action. It relies on the ladder of engagement structure that I talked about in this previous post by making them aware of a problem, getting them interested through agitation, and then giving them an opportunity to engage in a solution. If you are on campaign email lists you can often see this pattern in many of the emails that you receive and some of the best performing Facebook ads, fundraising scripts, presentations, and blog posts that encourage action also follow this structure.

If you are looking to engage an audience in fundraising, taking action, or getting more involved in your library, you can follow this basic outline.

  • Identify THEIR problem

When working to encourage other people to take action for your cause its always most efficient to start where they are. This means identifying how the problem that you are trying to solve affects their lives or is a problem in their life. For example, if we are interested in engaging with an organization, individual, or audience that values economic development and we want them to support libraries, it would be best to first frame libraries in the context of a problem in the economy. You would start this conversation by talking about how important the economy is in the community.

  • Agitate the problem

Once their problem is identified, then its times to agitate that problem. You can talk about how there are some serious economic issues in the community like high unemployment, low entrepreneurship, almost no structure of support for budding business owners, etc… Talk about how bad it is (or could be) to not have that structure in place. Highlight how the community might fail due to this lack of support for businesses and business owners. Take the time to play to strong emotions in this step.

  • Present the solution

Once they are engaged and ready to take action, it becomes an easy step to present your solution as a means for them to take action. In this case, you can talk about how the library offers a network of support to small business owners, or databases that help entrepreneurs gain a competitive edge, or even co-working spaces and high-speed Internet for new startups. More simply, you present the library as the solution to those problems that were presented in first step and then you ask them to take some kind of action.

Do not forget the action!

I can’t stress enough about how important it is to give them the opportunity to take some kind of concrete and tangible action as part of the solution. The entire reason you gave them the solution was to allow them to release the tension you built through action. There’s nothing more dangerous than drawing a hungry crowd. Even if it’s as simple as signing up for the libraries email list, a pledge of support for libraries, or a petition. Depending on their level of interest you might be able to make an ask for more high level actions like making a donation, volunteering, or speaking on the library’s behalf at city council.

If you are interested in having EveryLibrary conduct a training to build political skills for librarians or speaking at your conference or staff development day you can get more information here. Or for information about my training, workshops and consulting, please view my speaking page.

How to Build Audiences to Effectively Engage Your Library Community

Posted on by pcsweeney

This post is the fourth post in a series on tools from political campaigns that can be used to arm librarians in the face of growing opposition during the Trump era where anti-tax and anti-government sentiments have a much stronger voice than ever before.

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Let’s talk about building audiences for library campaigns. Whether you are working with a ladder of engagement or building and testing messages for effectiveness, the key is to start with strong and well defined audience. Professional political operatives, fundraisers, and marketers spend millions of dollars building audiences for their campaigns because starting with an effective audience is the most efficient way to win a campaign. So often I see libraries sending broad messages to entire communities and then being disappointed with the results. If your audience is too large or broad, you will waste money messaging people who don’t care about the issue and your ROI will drop. Remember that you should only spend resources on putting your messages in front of the people who are most likely to care about it. If your audience is too narrow then you’ll miss people who are likely to take action for your campaign. Or, if you are working with a ladder of engagement (which you should be creating for each audience) then you want to make the most of your resources by starting with an audience most likely to be moved from one rung to the next. Starting with the most effective audience is one of the best ways to ensure success and efficiency for your campaign.

Of course, there are many different ways to build audiences for a campaign, but here are three of my favorite audience sources.

Voter File
A voter file is easily one of the most obvious audiences and it is available fairly inexpensively from your board of elections. This is, of course, the best list to use to build political power in your community for your library.  However there are many nuances to a voter file. A standard voter file often includes name, address, party affiliation, voting history, phone number and occasionally email addresses. You can buy enhanced voter files from companies like L2 that have a lot more consumer data or issue data or more accurate phone numbers (phone numbers on voter files are notoriously inaccurate). While a voter file includes everyone in a community who is registered to vote (often referred to as a universe), it isn’t often effective to target an entire voter universe. Instead, you can break down the voter file to target individuals who are registered with a specific party, or you can target the high propensity voters, or voters who live in various areas of the community.  You can target conservatives in your community with messages that resonate with conservative voters or target progressives with messages that resonate with progressive voters. In the long run, targeting these voters with effective messages will help build up the political capital you need when your library goes to the voters so start targeting them years before you ever have to ask them to vote for your library.

*Please remember that it is illegal to use a voter file as a fundraising list.

AtoZ databases
AtoZ Databases and ReferenceUSA are two of my favorite audience building platforms that are freely available at many libraries. This is one of the best list sources for likely donors although there are many different audiences you can build here. At EveryLibrary we often build donor lists and lists of large companies in a community so that we can target them for fundraising for library initiatives. Because the data is fairly robust and decently accurate, you can find out someone’s household income or value or find people who have a history of donating to a political or charitable cause. In Sunnyvale library we were able to download a list of residents by area code and then compare that to our list of users in that same area code from our ILS. By deleting any of the duplicates, we were able to come up with a list of non-library users in Sunnyvale. We could then run a direct mail campaign that targeted non-users to encourage them to come to the library. Of course, we could also upload those lists to Facebook and target them with ads or run a phonebanking campaign. With decent GIS software, we could even map out our areas of the highest number of non-users. The benefit of starting with AtoZ databases or ReferenceUSA is that you have the lists available to you with phone numbers and addresses and these lists are great for fundraising. My next audience builder is far more powerful and accurate, but you are left to find a way to cultivate the contact information for any follow up contacts.

Pro-tip – You can often find the email addresses and phone numbers of the executives of many of the major fortune 1000 companies in these databases to help you make the first contact.

Acxiom
Axciom is easily the most powerful audience building tool for Facebook and many other digital platforms such as Twitter, Yahoo, MSN, eBay, and a few others but I primarily use it to target audiences on Facebook. These lists are best used for engaging community members in taking action on a ladder of engagement that starts with social media. Acxiom is a data company that allows you to request audiences by various behaviors such as buying habits, donations, consumer data, lifestyles, etc… You can request an audience from the Data Guru who then creates that audience in the platform that you are using or you can use their first person audience tool. In either case, this service is completely free because Acxiom makes money from you paying for ads on these platforms. The big drawback is that you don’t get an audience in a format that allows you to view names, addresses, phone numbers, or email. In other words, you can’t see who is specifically in the audience so you have to wait for their interaction with your data collection platform to get that information from them. If someone signs a survey or a petition for example, you then have their contact information for follow-up contacts. The benefit of Acxiom is that you can get a highly targeted audience of people that is extremely accurate. The are people who are most likely to sign a survey or a petition for your specific cause or issue and that can greatly reduce the cost of signatures through ads.

Targeting
Once you have these audiences it’s up to you to decide how best to target them. For some audiences, you can simply upload the CSV with name, address, and phone number into your library’s Facebook account and start targeting them with ads and follow up with more contacts later. For other audiences it might be best to start by running a phonebank campaign and call each of them. In other cases you might have to knock on their door or send them a piece of direct mail. While I made some suggestions here, you’ll have to look at your audiences and make your own decisions or feel free to ask me in the comments below. No matter where you get an audience, try to build ladders of engagement for each one by understanding your goal with each of them.

Sometimes it helps to work backwards from your goal. For example, if you want more people in your community who are likely to vote for your library, then of course, start with a voter file. Or, if you want more donors, you can start with local likely donors from AtoZ databases. And, if you want more volunteers, you can have Acxiom upload a list of non-profit volunteers into your Facebook account and you can target them through Facebook ads with links to your VolunteerMatch page. These highly targeted audiences are the key to bringing you the highest ROI for your initiatives.

Other Audiences
I have only barely scratched the surface of building audiences for library campaigns and initiatives. Major political parties, PACs, and causes, spend billions of dollars on cultivating the most accurate audiences they can and use data sets, voter models, test messaging, focus groups, etc… to win campaigns. One of EveryLibrary’s big initiatives is to build a lot of these datasets and audiences. But these are just three of my favorite ways to build an audience to start a campaign quickly and easily. We’ve worked with many political operatives  who have their own tools and techniques for their own campaigns and initiatives. I know that there are many other sources for audiences and I’d love to hear where you like to get your audiences from or how you like to build data on top of your audiences to make them more effective.

If you are interested in having EveryLibrary conduct a training to build political skills for librarians or speaking at your conference or staff development day you can get more information here. Or for information about my training, workshops and consulting, please view my speaking page.

The Disparate Languages of Libraries and Politics

Posted on by pcsweeney

This is an excerpt from my article in the Political Librarian. You can download the full article here.

20130713_usd000_0It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone when I say that the political landscape in America has drastically changed. We have seen some of the wildest political rhetoric that we could imagine come from political pundits, politicians, our presidential candidates, and various media outlets. There are accusations of fundamental biases rooted in deep belief systems that are based on many of the fears of middle class Americans who have been left behind in the job market, Americans who feel threatened by outsiders, Americans who feel they are losing their familiar identities to anonymous and unknown forces. These fears are being capitalized upon by a multi-billion dollar political industry that is designed to exaggerate threats and use fear to win elections.

The most exaggerated of those fears that affect us, librarians, and our industry is a fear of government overreach and blaming taxation for a wide array of economic and social problems in the country. This fear didn’t spontaneously come about into being by itself. It was coldly cultivated with big data, polling, focus groups, targeted messaging, and the strategic radicalization of highly specific populations within our citizenry. These political groups have used this data to develop new sets of exclusionary languages that allow people of the same beliefs to communicate and understand each other. This has lead to the development of new political cultures within targeted demographics. These differentiating languages are one of the strongest walls against communication between differing political views. The language that is used is something that librarians, as government employees who are paid by taxes, must learn if they are to continue to serve their communities.

Read the full article in the Political Librarian here.

Build Your Library’s Influence in the Community with Power Mapping

Posted on by pcsweeney

This post is the third in a series on tools from political campaigns that can be used to arm librarians in the face of growing opposition during the Trump era where anti-tax and anti-government sentiments have a much stronger voice than ever before.

A power map is a visual tool used by many political campaigns, activists, and community organizers and it helps them understand their relational power structures in their communities and to map the power structures of local influencers and organizations. By working through a power mapping exercise a campaigner can visually see relationships that exist in a community making it easier to understand those relationships. Once these relationships are understood it becomes easier to see who should be targeted in a campaign and where a campaigner can exert pressure to influence the target. Likewise, visualizing these relational lines of influence in a community can help a library understand how to influence the local politics and power structures. It can also use a power map to identify potential coalition partners and donors as well as persuade local individuals of influence to take a favorable stand for the library. Not only can a power map be used to map the power of an outside organization or individual, but it can also map the power of the library in order to better understand the library’s power structure in the community.

Step 1. Identify the Target

An organizer begins power mapping by identifying a specific person or an organization that they are going to engage or influence. The target for the campaign is the person or organization in power that can address the issue that the library is working on. For example, if the library were interested in convincing the mayor to keep from cutting library funding, then the target would be the mayor or if the library was looking to get a big donation from an organization, then the influential members of the organization like the Executive Board or the CEO would be the targets.

Step 2: Plan Their Action

Once an activist knows who their target is, they are going to need to know very specifically what action they are going to ask the target to take. Since the target might have other ideas about how to or why they should help the library achieve its goals its important to make it clear what is being asked of them. It’s also important that the action that take is specific and actionable. This means that a campaigner is going to ask them to go beyond just saying that they like or support the library. Instead, they are going to be asked to vote for your library at the May 2nd Council Meeting or they are going to be asked to write an editorial in support of the library bond measure to be published before the November Election. An activist would think about this as an opportunity to ask only one question of a person of influence in the community. Don’t want to waste it by asking for something that the target doesn’t have to give a solid commitment to or won’t lead to an action.

Step 3. Identify Relationships of the Target

Here the activist would brainstorm as many of the relationships that are associated with the target. It’s important to think as broadly as possible in this step. These relationships can include work, family, religious, neighbors, social groups and society’s, or political organizations. It’s important to not leave anyone off the list. Even if the library is not going to use family members to get to the target, simply listing them helps the brainstorming process and could lead to other potential lines of influence. It’s important to take the time to thoroughly research the target by looking up political or charitable donations and any volunteer activities that they may have participated in. Once you have this list, its important to start thinking about who and what these associations are connected to. Occasionally, in order to reach the target, the starting point may be 2-3 degrees of separation from the target.

Step 4. Draw the Relationships

Once the relationships are identified they need to be mapped to the target. This is a process of drawing the relational lines between each person on the list to the target. Some of these lines will interconnect and show that there are strong connections between the target one or two relational nodes. For example, if the target is a member of a local social club and there are multiple connections between the club and target then the social club is a much stronger influencer on the target. Also, many times there are nodes of power that aren’t directly connected to the target. For example, if the target was not a member of a local social club but many of the people of influence around him are connected to it, then it may still be a strong node of influence on the map.

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Step 5. Target the Relationships

Now it’s time to take a few moments and analyze the connections in the map and decide how to use them. Look at who or what has the most lines of influence between the target and the library or the organizer’s own networks of influence. For example, if there is someone in the library that connected to this example target’s social club, then the best initial step may just be working within that social group to influence the target’s wife, neighbor, and business associate. Or, finding some way to put pressure on the social group to take a pro-library stance may have a positive affect on the target since there are so many connections between the target and the social group even though the target is not directly connected to the social group. Or, it might be most beneficial to put pressure on local big donors to entice the mayor to take action to influence the target. Of course, it may be as simple as taking the time to talk to the wife of the target about how important libraries are to young or new mothers and letting her put pressure on the target to take some kind of pro-library stance or take action on behalf of the library.

Step 6. Make sure it happens

While all of this planning and power mapping is great, someone has to make sure that it happens. A good activist always puts someone in charge of an action and gives a deadline for that action. Instead of saying that “We should do this activity” they would say that a specific person would get an action done by a specific date.

If you are interested in having EveryLibrary conduct a training to build political skills for librarians or speaking at your conference or staff development day you can get more information here. Or for information about my training, workshops and consulting, please view my speaking page.

Cultivating Support for Your Library with a Ladder of Engagement

Posted on by pcsweeney

This post is the second in a series on tools from political campaigns that can be used to arm librarians in the face of growing opposition during the Trump era where anti-tax and anti-government sentiments have a much stronger voice than ever before.

So you need more money and people for your library, political initiative, movement, or cause? Try using a ladder of engagement.

In any political movement there will undoubtedly be times when the organization will have to ask other individuals or organizations for resources. It is a fact of political life that initiatives and movements rely on the generosity of others to continue to grow and expand their influence. However, even those that are familiar with an organization and support it may take some convincing to part with their precious time or their hard-earned cash. After all, supporters are not simply ATM machines. They are people with feelings, desires, and needs to be met. That’s why even staunch supporters are often reluctant to give up time and money to a political cause, preferring to support it with their words over their deeds (often referred to as “Slacktivism”). Of course, this causes problems for many non-profits, organizations, or movements because they rely on a higher level of engagement to survive and to have the resources they need to succeed. It doesn’t matter if the organization needs a donation, a supporter’s time as a volunteer, or other resources, the method for engaging any audience in a way that gives them the opportunity to get involved and sacrifice their own resources to make a difference in the world is the same.

The ladder of engagement is a fundamental tool for any organization or initiative that can be used to gradually build the relationships that are required to convince the public to support a cause and libraries can use it just as well. The ladder represents the way that people move from being unaware of a cause or an organization, to becoming broadly supportive of it, and finally to becoming active within it. For example, if an organization approaches someone for a contribution of $500 dollars to a cause they know nothing about, then their chance of success is slim to none. If the organization first took the time to develop a relationship with a targeted individual and then asked for a donation of $500 when the target was mentally or emotionally prepared to be asked, then there is a much greater chance of success.

A standard ladder of engagement would be visualized like this:

This is one of my favorite examples of a ladder of engagement although there are many others online.  In this example, we start with those that are “aware” of the cause and move to those that are “interested” and “interacted.” These initial three steps usually happens through marketing and advertising. This is how we get people to take notice of a cause, buy a product, or walk through the doors of a library. “Interacted” is also where people begin to take small actions such as liking a Facebook Post or Page. But this is where building supporters and activists is different than marketing. We want people to move beyond just supporting a cause with slacktivist actions and become fully “engaged” and “evangelized.” We want people to take real meaningful action.

In order to move people up this ladder, a campaigner needs to spend time and resources making people aware of the campaign. Next, they need to give them small opportunities to get involved or show that they care (changing their profile picture, sharing a post, etc…). After that, they should be given a place to be engaged or take more meaningful action like signing a petition or asking their friends and family to get involved. And finally, asking them to take that final action such as making a donation or volunteering for the cause.

One of the best examples of this tool in action was from the Obama Campaign in 2012.

The Obama Facebook ladder of engagement looked like this:

  • First, people were made aware of Obama’s campaign by seeing boosted posts on Facebook.
  • Then they were encouraged to take an easy next action by ‘liking’ the Barack Obama Facebook page itself.
  • Then the campaign asked people to “sign a birthday card” to Obama on Facebook in the lead up to his birthday. When people took this step they were asked to fill in their name and email address and the campaign had a valuable piece of information in their database: an email address.
  • After that, the campaign sent an email to supporters asking them to fill out a survey, or share a personal story. This step encourages people to become more committed to the campaign and builds a profile for the supporter so the campaign can better target them in the future. (Notice at this point that the Obama campaign has made only easy asks of people. They haven’t asked anyone to give up any money or time. But they have built a relationship with people and gathered some useful data, like an email address and location.)
  • Finally, people who participated in all of the previous steps get a fundraising email. But instead of a direct request for money they are asked to contribute to the campaign in return for a bumper sticker or t-shirt. Never under-estimate the power of swag!
  • Those that gave to the campaign are then asked to volunteer for the campaign or join at a deeper level in some other way such as organizing a house party, canvassing, or phonebanking for the campaign.

The people that a movement engages with undoubtedly start off having almost no knowledge of what it is about. The ladder of engagement allows a campaigner to walk with people as they get to know the movement and what it stands for. The more time a community organizer spends with someone then the better they get to know each other and the more likely they are to give.

Luckily for libraries, most people know that libraries exist and many American’s use their library so librarians typically won’t be starting from the “Unaware” rung of the ladder.

Creating a ladder of engagement for an audience online is fairly easy with Social Media. Facebook’s data is extremely accurate and allows a user to simply upload a CSV of an audience using just name and address and Facebook will connect that list of people to their Facebook Profiles (we won’t think too much about how scary that is). This means that if a library can generate of a target audience from any of wide range of possible sources, upload it into Facebook, and then target that group with ads then they can move them up the ladder of engagement. For example, a library can download a list of known charitable individual donors in the community from AtoZ databases (or ReferenceUSA) that includes name and address and upload that list to Facebook. Then the library can target that audience with ads about the importance of the library. After that, they can ask that group to sign up on an email list or other creative form that gathers more data. Then they can ask the public to change add a badge to their social media or take some small action. Once that is accomplished the library can then begin targeting them with more customized emails that encourage donations or other supportive actions.

It is easy to create ladders of engagement for people offline as well as it is online. Many times it simply starts with some research for a target audience or individual. A library can easily use a donor list, AtoZ databases (free with a library card), or Facebook to build their initial lists. Then plan their target’s engagement from there. For example, if the library has a goal of getting donations from some of the largest companies in their community, the library would download a list of the largest companies from AtoZ Databases (or ReferenceUSA) where the email addresses or phone numbers of many of the executives can often be found. From there, a librarian would reach out with an email or phone call to introduce the library and its needs using a strong script (we’ll talk about developing scripts later), and then if the executive is receptive to the library the librarian can offer to meet the executive for coffee to talk more about the library. Next, the librarian might find some way to get the company to involved in the library in some small way. At  many of the libraries I have worked in, we have been able to get volunteers from companies, sign their employees up for library cards, or have them sponsor or run a program. When this relationship is built, the library will have a much easier time asking for a donation for a capital campaign or an initiative.

To have an effective ladder in an organization it needs to set the ladder up in advance and understand what is needed from the process. It’s important to take the time before beginning to think about the goal of the ladder or where it is that people need to end up. Is the organization looking for money, or volunteers, or letters to editor, or people to show up at a city council meeting, etc…? In any of those cases, thinking about where people are in the community that need to be reached and helps understand how best to reach them. It’s always best to meet people where they are already. It might make sense to reach them online, or in person, or a hybrid of the two. Then plan about small actions that people can take to get more and more engaged in the library until finally, librarians can reach out to them when they are most primed to give.

If you are interested in having EveryLibrary conduct a training to build political skills for librarians or speaking at your conference or staff development day you can get more information here. Or for information about my training, workshops and consulting, please view my speaking page.