When I started advocacy with the school district, I had no idea what I was doing. Looking back, I made a lot of errors! However, I did manage to fumble my way up to some decent success despite my lack of knowledge on how to advocate.
I did try later to see if I could learn from some of the people who were there before me. I even setup a panel discussion of some of the most active advocates in the district in hopes that I could distill down the essence of successful advocacy.
It wasn’t until last school year that my partner at the PTA had the opportunity to bring in Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian to speak to our PTA about how to advocate successfully. County Supervisor Simitian had done this talk many times in the past and called it his “13 Tips for Successful Advocacy.” With his kind permission, I list them here:
- Develop a relationship with the person (1 hour, 1 year, lifetime, etc.)
- Understand what motivates your audience (e.g., member of his or her staff, friend;) and tell them why they care —
- Understand what is possible and what is not possible
- Find a floor manager (a person who will stay on this issue no matter what)
- Joe Jackson Principle. “Tell them what you want.”
- Bring them solutions, not problems (interest group agreement)
- Describe the elements of a solution
- Do not chastise, insult or threaten the Member or his/her staff
- Sometimes less is more
- Layer your campaign via different sources – not additive, expoential promotion
- Woody Allen Corollary (persistence pays off).
- Make it easy to say “yes”
- The value of a “thank you.” – The Power of a Thank You Note
After I heard these, I wished I had these when I started several years back! It would have saved me a lot of trouble. It also strained some relationships where I felt that I could not make headway any more and needed to rely on others to carry the torch.
Most of these are fairly clear.
Maybe the one that requires a bit explanation is who a floor manager is. This is a person, typically an elected official, who will be willing to take your idea and continue the advocacy on your behalf. This may be someone who is already working on your idea, and you meeting with them will lend them support that more in the public are on their side.
The one that I see all too often is 8. In today’s world, there is way too much frustration, fear, and anger. People resort to bullying our district personnel to get their way, and it doesn’t work very well. It puts people at odds with each other, and nobody gets anything done except for getting more and more keyed up emotionally. In the age of social media, it unfortunately results in a lot of angry public postings and even threats online. It’s really a shame that our world has gotten to this point.
Still, by following the rules above, I’ve found a lot more success than less. I’ve also had to take the long view, be extremely patient, and move my timeline to years. County Supervisor Simitian recounted a story of one bill that took him 6 years to get passed, coming back again and again with proposals to try again year after year. In the end, he did get it done. But it took a while and persistence won. It’s something I remind myself of every day – to be patient and persistent. So yeah, it’s super slow, but the advocacy is all moving in a pretty good direction so I feel pretty damn good about the progress.