Did you know that the most critical time for building community support for your school, public, or academic libraries are the years before and between campaigns or threats of closures? During this time you can build community support, educate the public about the importance and role of your library, and establish the messaging narrative that you want during your campaign.
In a national campaign for a cause or a candidate, this phase of a campaign is called “surfacing” and it’s the most effective time to persuade your community to support your library.
This is critical because 90% of library funding relies on the political will of voters and politicians and libraries have lost 20% of voter support in the last 10 years. If you want to ask your community to support you in the future, you must start today!
So, what can or should you start doing today to ensure future success? In this session, we will discuss how librarians can work within their communities to raise awareness, tell their story, build supporters, and establish the library as the institutional expert for community improvement and a wise investment for community members years before they have to ask the community to vote to support them. We’ll explore how to use messaging to build a narrative around your library that you can work from when it comes time to make an ask of support from your community.