Description: 

With flood-level flows of information vying for our current and potential supporters’ attention, we consistently face the challenge of crafting and disseminating written messages that garner attention. This free, 90-minute highly interactive online workshop (via Zoom) under the auspices of the California Library Association Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project, focuses on how to craft written messages combined with strong imagery in a variety of settings (e.g., emails, social-media posts, reports, and on websites) to entice and engage our supporters in positive action.

By exploring a variety of approaches to writing and through hands-on exercises crafting first-draft advocacy messages, we will learn from the approaches taken by our best newswriters and storytellers; review samples of written library-advocacy pitches (including those produced by participants in this workshop); and explore how to customize our written messages on various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn) so you can immediately begin fine-tuning the writing you are doing to reach and engage your partners in advocacy.

Goal:

Participants will identify and apply, to their own work, writing techniques designed to make their advocacy pitches further build inclusive, productive coalitions of advocates producing positive change in the communities they serve.

Objectives:

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Identify at least three key elements to writing a successful invitation to engagement in library advocacy
• Describe at least three examples of writing that successfully engages supporters in library advocacy efforts so you can emulate what you are describing
• Cite at least three resources you can use to further hone your ability to write and disseminate successful invitations that engage supporters in library advocacy efforts

Presenters/Facilitator:  

Paul Signorelli, a San Francisco-based writer/trainer-facilitator/presenter/consultant, serves as Library Advocacy Training Project Manager for the California Library Association and is Director of Social Media on the ATD (Association for Talent Development) South Florida Chapter’s board of directors. As author of "Change the World Using Social Media" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), he captured the stories of advocates working in libraries and a variety of other settings, and he continues to work with individuals and organizations to help them hone their collaboration skills to create productive coalitions to produce positive results. He recently led a one-hour “Advocacy Basics” session at the American Library Association’s LibLearnX conference in Baltimore; co-facilitated a day-long preconference workshop on Library advocacy at the 2024 American Library Association Annual Conference (in San Diego); and is scheduled, over the next few months, to facilitate a variety of other similar workshops on advocacy, community, and collaboration for onsite and online conferences and organizations.

About the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series

This program is part of an ongoing series of monthly online sessions organized offered through the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series; sessions are generally held online on the second Wednesday of each month, beginning at 10 am PT. The series honors the memory of Ursula Meyer, 1977-78 CLA President, California Library Hall of Fame inductee, longtime director of the Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library, and fierce advocate for library services and intellectual freedom. The Ursula Meyer Fund was established to provide for the training of librarians in all stages of their careers, and library supporters, in political advocacy and political action, in honor of Ursula’s belief that librarians need effective political skills to advocate for library support at all levels of government. Archived recordings of previous sessions are available on the California Library Association YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@californialibraryassociati2705/videos.

To support the series though a donation, please visit the CLA website at https://www.cla-net.org/donations/fund.asp?id=23440.