EDUadvocates is a resource for the growing number of professionals and advocates who build support for public higher education. Over the last few years, higher education institutions have been hit hard with budget cuts while also facing pressure to keep tuition affordable. This is happening at a time when the need for higher education has never been more important because of economic competition facing America abroad and changing demographic conditions in this country.

To address these challenges, many higher education institutions have developed grassroots advocacy programs as a way to better educate elected officials and the public about the value of higher education to our economy, health care system, and overall quality of life.

The EDUadvocate’s web site will share tips and best practices of how to create a passionate group of grassroots advocates to support your institution. The site includes a few tools to help you:

1. Creating the Tipping Point Blog – discusses the latest news and research about grassroots advocacy and higher education policy. CLICK HERE
2. Toolbox – a wiki, or editable webpage, that shares some of the best practices in grassroots advocacy. Any member of the community can edit these pages and contribute their own best practices. The goal of the toolbox is to use the collective intelligence of many grassroots professionals to create a comprehensive how-to manual for higher education grassroots advocacy. CLICK HERE
3. Ask the experts – send your questions about tactics, strategies or issues that you have run into with your grassroots advocacy program. CLICK HERE
   

A key strategy to many grassroots advocacy programs is e-mail campaigns to elected officials. Some of these campaigns provide pre-written form letters that advocates can edit, while other campaigns provide talking points and require participants to draft the letter themselves. There is a debate in the advocacy community about which tactic is best.

But it depends on the situation and the goal you are trying to accomplish – recruiting new people versus pressuring elected officials. If your goal is to recruit new people to get involved in your advocacy effort, the ask should be as easy as possible. If it isn’t, a large percentage of people won’t send the letter or get involved. So, go ahead and use the form letter.

On the flip side, form letters are not considered an effective way to influence legislators, unless you can send a mass number of letters. That number depends on your target – elected officials at the federal level would need many more letters that those at the state level. In addition, legislators in smaller states would have a lower expectation that those in larger states. Personalized letters from constituents are considered to be the most effective. I think most people can agree on that.

Because the tactic you choose depends what you are trying to accomplish, doing form letters at the beginning of the legislative session and at the end of session is ideal. At those periods the goal is to get noticed and reach the radar screen of elected officials. Then, during the in-between periods it is ideal to send personalized letters to elected officials.

Personalized letters won’t get the quantity of letters that you might get with a form letter, but the quality will be much better. Personal stories from advocates can be a powerful way to motivate elected officials. It is also important to move offline with some of the requests to advocates. Asking them to call or do a personal visit with legislators can also be a powerful way to influence elected officials.

By sitting down and identifying the goals of your advocacy effort you can develop the strategy that meets those goals.