Behind every step of successful advocacy is a story—the story of our libraries; the story of our fundraising; the story of how we foster positive, inclusive, productive collaborations; and the overall story of how we work with others to make a positive difference in our communities. It begins with the stories we tell to create communities of support where individual advocates support each other through their shared commitment to the positive goals they seek. It continues with an ability to tell the stories that describe tasks to be completed and matching those tasks with available resources--including other dedicated advocates. And it continues with the stories that resonate with our current and prospective partners. 

This highly-interactive two-hour online session (via Zoom) under the auspices of the California Library Association Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project explores these themes and concludes with an exercise designed to help you develop a first-draft story-based action plan you can use in your current advocacy efforts; content has been edited a bit from the three-hour workshop presented onsite in Riverside at the 2025 CLA conference on October 23, 2025.

Goals and Objectives:

By participating in this session, you will review the basics of successful library advocacy within the context of using storytelling as a primary tool in your advocacy efforts to produce positive changes within the communities you serve.

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

Identify at least three ways successful advocates incorporate storytelling into the advocacy work they do on behalf of libraries and the communities you serve

Describe at least three ways you can use storytelling to create, nurture, and sustain communities of advocacy

Cite at least three ways that storytelling, fundraising, and advocacy combine to produce successes within the communities you serve

Continue developing an advocacy plan of action you began developing/honing during this workshop

Presenters:

Hillary Theyer, Director of the Monterey County Free Library, has extensive experience as an advocate on behalf of libraries and the communities they serve. She is on the CLA Board as Secretary and has served on  the Finance Committee, Leadership Development Committee, Interest Group Committee, Advocacy and Legislation Committee, Bylaws and Governance Committee, and is a lifetime member of CLA. She is Chair of the Ursula Meyer Endowment Committee (2025) and was involved in the project at its inception, when she was one of the first two committee members working with the CLA executive director and Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project manager to organize the initial four-session pilot program and oversee the program’s growth during its first two years. 

Chris Noll, a founding partner of Noll & Tam Architects, loves libraries and working with librarians. He is actively involved with the California Library Association (CLA)—including the Advocacy and Legislation Committee and the Ursula Meyer Endowment Committee—and the American Library Association (ALA). He feels that libraries carry the weight of history and represent the best ideals of democracy, freedom, and independent thinking.

Paul Signorelli, a San Francisco-based writer/trainer-facilitator/presenter/consultant, is project manager for the CLA Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project; frequently facilitates workshops onsite and online and presents at conferences; and recently served as co-host of the San Jose State University iSchool podcast “Information Gone Wild”; his publications include “Change the World Using Social Media” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). 

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