My name's Jennifer Peterson.
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We will go ahead and get our recording started and can I would love to introduce to you our presenters for today.
John, I feel horrible.
I need you to tell me how to pronounce your last name.
It's like Nebraska, Alaska.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  That's very helpful.
He comes to us from EB, where he's the executive director with 
Carrie Andrew.
I'm so excited for John to kick this off.
Thank you so much, John.
>> John Chrastka:  Thanks to WebJunction.
We're going to be talking today about political literacy, it is a skillset that some of us have already.
We can always get better at it.
You can't teach literacy skills though, necessarily, without being skillful yourself.
So if you are already sharp with your political literacy skills, that's awesome.
Stay with me.
If there are things around your community in terms of political action, the funding future of your library, well, we've got some things to bring you from EveryLibrary and my friend and associate, Carrie.
I want to tell you where EveryLibrary is coming from.
EveryLibrary is built as the first national superpack for libraries.
The superpack word, if you have watched fox news, if you listen to npr, you'll hear about superpacks and how they can raise and expends limited money.
You are a nefarious one.
We do political work with the money we raise and expends.
That comes from donors, individuals like yourself, individuals who are in friends and trustee roles.
Folks who are just American citizens, who are interested in seeing the library supported at election day and for negotiations from funding support.
We've done 61 of these election days and over 40 wins and helped secure over $220 million in stable tax funding for libraries.
That means that we've taken a bond to the voters in a small town, an operating expenditure or a leverage or a warrant article, there's a lot of different names for how we choose to tax ourselves to fund the library and all of them have a hazard for a librarian.
364 days of the year, you're looked at as the librarian.
You help them find what they need and have big moments of transformation.
On election day, on budget day, I don't want to see you shift away from being their beloved librarian and turn into the tax man.
What we do is all pro bono because we've got our donor support and we bring that experience, then, to the library, our competency to the library community without a dog in the fight or a horse in the race about our money.
We're donor-supported, independent on how the library runs in the race.
We bring best-practices to bear.
We are a little bit odd in the ecosystem.
We work on election day.
We work on budget day and we do it with a political action perspective in mind.
I'm going to invite my colleague, Carrie, to introduce herself, too.
>> Carrie Andrew:  I thank John and Jennifer for the opportunity to participate in this webinar.
I come from Norwood, Colorado.
It's a really, really small area, agriculturlriculturally-based and tourist-based on the economy.
We have 2,000 persons and two full-time employees and five part-time employees.
The photo you see below is a photo of myself in the middle and to my right, you see our board member, monet and shantall and you see herb Walter and ken Charles, who's our field officer.
They were instrumental in awarding us a $1.5 million grant for our new building.
It was key to our success with the ballot, in addition to all the political literacy actions and advocacy that we had done.
>> John Chrastka:  It was great to work with Carrie and her team.
Every library came in as a support organization.
The rest of the discussion, we're going to talk about the political theory that every library brought to the Lone Cone Library District, New Orleans where we helped them pass a measure.
Carrie's going to be talking through more of the in-practice while I talk more about in-theory.
A lot of it comes from OCLC.
And the "From Awareness to Funding" study that OCLC did back in 2007-2008.
They asked a lot of questions of a particular group of people that really matter when you're taking a measure to an election.
or, when you want to talk to constituents of politicians.
They asked voters.
It wasn't about users.
It wasn't about non-users.
It wasn't about parents.
The first question was, are you a registered voter.
If yes, you can keep going.
If no, we don't care because we're talking about taxes.
What they learned is a few key things.
One of the big things that they learned -- this has been confirmed in survey after survey and poll after poll, red states, blue states, you name it.
A voters willingness is not driven by or limited by the use of their library itself.
The user status doesn't matter.
It's a really significant data point for a couple of key reasons.
One, if we continue to only talk about using the library or loving the library or having some infinity for in library, we're asking people who are willing to support increased taxes for their library, increased funding for their library.
We're asking people to change their behavior about using the library instead of talking to them about, well, what's the important thing we're trying to discuss?
Increased orsustained funding.
The user status doesn't matter on this "From Awareness to Funding," which I sincerely hope we can repeat.
If we are only talking to users, we're missing a whole very interested group of humans, who are not coming into the building, who want to hear about what increased library funding will do for their community.
It's not what increased library funding would do for them, personally, they don't use the place and that's okay.
On funding day, on election day, on the budget day, that's perfectly okay with me.
I want them to hear from you about what goes on there.
The bar's really high.
The bar is set really high when we say you have to use the library or come into the library to understand it.
In these elections, these budget days, that actual -- we have to go find them.
We don't have to have them come into us.
>> Carrie Andrew:  The library is often viewed as -- the library is not perceived as a provider, most supporters hold a belief that it is be transformational.
It affects change in your community and that's something that we definitely saw in Norwood, by being involved and be out and being active, we can help people to see that we make that difference in the library -- in the community.
We -- we get involved in economic development.
We get involved in job force and education and through all those different avenues, we have shown that we are a necessary and vital part of the community and that helps advocate for you, as much as anything else that you can do because it lays the groundwork for the next part, for the advocacy piece.
>> John Chrastka:  Carrie's very modest.
People have a belief about her in Norwood, Colorado.
People have a belief about her because they haven't necessarily been into the library.
They're not users.
They believe Carrie are doing something that's high-impact and that belief is not based on their own use of the Lone Cone Library District.
Their belief is that Carrie and her colleagues and you folks on this webinar are seen in the community as doing the work that you're doing.
That belief is reinforcement, the nostalgia has to be updated for those people who do not come into the library very frequently.
The factors that determine a residence  -- resident's mind, on election day or on the day your budget has to be talked about by a town board, a county commission, a  a city council, it's the only key.
The places you work are the key determinants.
It's a drive-by and the parking lot is full, they think everything is fine if they're not a user.
If you haven't been able to connect with them, to bring updiscussions about the library, geek the library, library, library, library and that's okay because 364 days of the year, that's what we're here for.
We need to talk about the libraries -- librarians.
if they don't have an up-to-date idea of what librarians are -- 
I'm not putting librarians verses anybody here.
The voter, the citizen that comes up to you at the grocery store or church doesn't necessarily know about your -- 
the librarian is a brand is really key because of the next slide.
>> Carrie Andrew:  The perception of librarian, I had the honor of filling in as the second-paid library in Norwood's history and the past librarian had been there for 30 years and it was big shoes to step into.
She had taken it from a volunteer organization and then it had a levy.
But, I had found that it wasn't really being used, the current library wasn't being used when I came in.
My passion was that all of these taxpayers are paying for a library and they're not using it.
So I began looking out within the community and finding easy partners to begin to work with, to raise the community's awareness of our library.
And I'm really extremly passionate about that and being a servant to the community.
You had to get out and get involved and work with those partners and help them with their project and show the resources we provide by supporting these other groups as they go along.
And we had a lot of success in working with different partners, I'll talk about later.
When people want to work in Norwood and they're from another surrounding community, they call me to find out how to get involved.
This is how you created this reputation, not only in your community, but being in the know and connecting people with opportunities and resources and we really felt that paid off in Norwood because -- we really felt it pay off.
>> John Chrastka:  The political theory here, going back to the data.
Looking at it deeply to say that the user status of your voter, the user status of your politicians, constituents, doesn't matter.
They look at the data and see there are key factors and the idea that the passionate librarian is a key element means, well, we've got examples here on the political side of what activates voters.
This is not from the OCLC sample.
We'll come back to that in a minute.
From the political sciences side, there are a couple of big things that make it possible for somebody to vote.
One of them is, do they have access to the polls?
Are they registered?
Have they been given a reason to vote?
Is there a difference between one candidate or another?
Is there motivation within the issue they're being asked to vote?
Most people vote because they have a habit or a culture or a tradition of voting.
They're the kind of people who are going to go vote.
They bring their kids.
Maybe they go for ice cream afterwards.
I brought my kids, my 8-year-old and my 12-year-old old.
We brought our kids to the polling place.
We wanted them to have that part of their culture.
There's stuff on the ballot I couldn't explain to them if I hadn't had a cheat sheet -- 
there are certain candidates in Illinois, we voted for all the judges, I need a cheat sheet from an organization I trust.
When you're going out to talk to people about the library's funding future on an election, one of the -- Carrie's vote yes team did it in Norwood -- you talk about what's on the ballot.
Voter engagement is a key element.
Contact with the candidate, though, folks, contact with the candidate or the issue, literally, the knock on the door, the knock on the door that says, hi, I'm John, I'm running for mayor, he's what I believe.
You don't say, I'm John, I'm with the hillary campaign, I'm with the trump campaign.
This is what my candidate believes, this is what I believe, will you join me in voting for my candidate.
That is still the single biggest driver in election.
we want to share with you a little bit of data about how the voters shake out.
So that you can see, though, where it tips people, who aren't necessarily totally aware who have a cultural tradition of voting and where people who are believers want to actually meet their candidate.
>> Carrie Andrew:  So, we'll take a minute and talk about voter attitude and this is some data that John gave us when we were starting our campaign that we really utilized strongly.
37% of your voters will vote yes for the library.
They just believe in it.
They're maybe users, maybe they aren't.
But they believe in libraries and the opportunity of free information for all, equal access.
37% will probably vote for the library and 26% will probably or definitely vote no.
We use this in Norwood.
We had about 1,000 voters -- 
registered voters.
And we figured out how many voters we needed to passed, based on this and we went with -- we were just trying to get the 37% that we knew were definite yes's.
We wanted to identify our definite no's.
There's some people you're never going to convince.
They're against taxes, they're never going to vote yes.
If you can sway one or two, you've made great strides.
But you really want to focus your time on the 37% that's going to be probable yes's and the ones that might say yes.
You want to work on those and identify those.
And we actually spent the time, we took the lists, in a small community, you have the ability, the advantage of knowing most of those people on the list or knowing a large number of them and we had gone through and identified how many possible yes's we had and we had to come up with 420 and on election day, we had 424 votes, positive.
So, it really does work.
>> John Chrastka:  That's an amazing story.
To hear that you looked at it and said, who do we know, who all ways votes?
You made a contact, in person, with those folks.
That was you and your team doing it, that was a fair number of people who were part of that team.
We're going to get to who is on that team in a minute.
But you guys put it to work in the right way.
That 37% who believe, that 37% who probably will and that 26% who will definitely not is a common theme even for -- if you're not going out to vote and you need to get something through city council, this is still relevant for you.
If you want to put the thermometer out on the lawn and do a fundraiser, this same psychology, this same political theory lines up very nicely if you're talking about advocacy.
If you don't have access to the polls and you're not registered to vote, it's really hard to be a voter.
If we make it difficult for people to advocate, they ain't going to.
Has anyone identified an issue for in library or save the whales?
Anybody ever identified why we need to save the whales to the people who want to be advocates?
The number four, have they had prior successes in advocate?
Have you, have i, any issue or organization helped them succeed in a small way first?
So they can succeed with you in big ways later.
They may or may not have won the issue, but have they been good at advocateing?
Number three, the experience of the issue.
It has to be transmitted to them.
It doesn't necessarily have to be personal.
The folks who want to cut a check to help save the whales do not have to get in to a dinghy themselves and go save the whales themselves.
They can hear about it.
I'm not being absurd about this, you can tell them what it's like to do 21st century library work.
You can talk about the lives you have changed.
They would like to hear from you, with a first-person singular, I did this.
What an advocate and what a voter wants.
If you can't say, i, say, we did this.
If you can't -- if you do have somebody else who's going out on your behalf, that's cool.
Have them start the sentence with, let me tell you about my librarian and the work that they do.
Things line up very nicely with this, between what politics looks like and advocacy looks like.
We can make a straight line about a voter to punch a chad and to stand up in front of a county commission with you or a donor to cut a check.
Okay.
I want to get into some more political theory here for a moment.
Our thesis here, at every library, is that if we have to show folks what we're doing as if we were the candidate and if the experience of the candidate, the experience of the candidate's representatives, the experience of the issue is a key driver, then the metaphor we use at every library is essentially is that the librarian is the candidate is any funding discussion.
It might be a funding discussion that's happening in front of the electorate or in front of county commissioners or city council.
Your candidacy, whether you want it or not, is what folks look at because you're trying to answer the second part of their perception and attitude.
Do they have a perception and attitude about the librarian?
They have one uninformed, mall informed or misinformed because they've met you, seen you, heard about you from somebody they like ortrust.
Your candidacy is going to be thrust upon you every time you ask for an additional nickel.
Our political theory with library campaigns, funding measures,even quite honestly, the idea of doing fundraising is that the library is the incumbent in the race.
An incumbent -- you either run as the incumbent or you run against the incumbent.
Running as the in umbent says, vote for me.
The library in a certain respect needs to be bold and brave about its in cumbency.
Your candidacy is something you have to embrace whether you want it or not.
The library has to make an early decision about how it wants to run, in front of voters, city council or county commission or with a donor moment.
New money extends our success.
New money extends our success, is the incumbent record being put before the voters or donors or new money fixes problem.
You have to run against yourselves.
You have to run against yourself -- if the roof is leaking, you have to run against yourself.
If you don't have the funding to do youth services or pre-k readiness or job skills, you have to be honest about it.
The voters in the 37% in the middle, that cared before, the 37% that are probable supporters want to hear the truth about where the money's going to go and they want to hear it from the person that's spending their money.
If we talk about how the candidate surfaces, well the idea of surfacing -- we've been through this with a presidential election.
Everyone who was a declared president, they all started the process, including president trump, of moving their candidacy forward in a very traditional way.
A lot of them started by writing the book.
They put the book out in front of the public and said, here's my vision for the community.
Here's my hope for the community.
Here's the theme of my campaign.
We had make America great again.
We had, it takes a village.
We had, dreams from my father.
Those type of statements are very powerful because they contain the person's vision as a candidate for America, the person's hope for America.
They might take it on the road and go to do a speech about it.
Take it on the road and go to a favorable political convention and take it on meet the press and talk about how they're an expert in domestic policy, foreign policy.
They can take that book out and shop it around, if it sells well, sometimes you think you got yourself a candidacy.
If it sells poorly, maybe it's not the best time for you to be running.
Everytime -- you see the book coming out, you know they're running.
Hillary wrote a book, you know she's running.
Donald wrote a book, you know he's running.
The metaphor of you being the candidate is worth you exploring.
You have an in cumbency they want to talk about or a challenge to the status quo, you've got a book.
It's your strategic plan.
I was the board president outside of Chicago for library.
Board president for six years.
We ran two strategic processes and hired two directors.
If we had named our strategic plan, dreams from my hometown library, if we had named our strategic plan, it takes a village with the public library at the center of it, if we have named our strategic plan, let's make it great again, it would have been appropriate because that's what was in our plans.
We put a lot of time, a lot of focus groups, a lot of attention and a lot of hope into it.
If we had titled it that, it would have actually transmitted it to the folks who live in -- 
if you don't have a strategic plan that's up to that task, that's fine.
What's your management plan?
What's your budget?
What is your fundraising goals?
What are your financials right now?
All the hope you have for the community, the fundable hope you have for the community is embedded in what you're already doing it.
We need to look at it not as political theory, but political practice of sharing that out there.
>> Carrie Andrew:  So, in Norwood, here's how we put it in practice.
When I started in 2010, we did a bunch of internal organization that had to happen first.
In 2013, we rewrote our mission statement.
We had purchased our land at the end of 2012.
We wanted a mission.
What's our purpose?
What are we going to do, you know, in the meantime, until we have a new building and what are we going to do once we're in that new building?
Our mission revolved around connecting people with people, people with books and people with opportunity.
And, that really was very vague, but it focused on the idea of partnering with XHOONT organizations, of connecting our patrons and our users and our communities to all these different aspects of life, education, to job opportunities, to entertainment.
And to other people who had similar interests.
And we felt like that's really the role of libraries that's emerging in our field right now is we're not just about books anymore or one special collection or one special program.
We're about reaching out to the whole community.
In the summer of 14, we did a feasibility study of 70 different stakeholders in our community.
Asking them questions, what are the needs of the library?
At the time, we were going to partner I the rec district so what are the recreational needs of the community?
We also asked them, what are the general needs of the community.
In the end, I did 50 of those 70 stakeholder interviews.
The librarian candidate has talked to 50 people, who I don't need them to vote in 2014, but we started using the knowledge we had gathered and laying the groundwork of who we are, what we do and how we can help.
We found a lot of organizations working in isolation that had no idea that somebody else was trying to do the exact same thing and we were able to start connecting them to each other.
We encouraged partnerships within the community.
The librarian, all I did was introduce the people to one another but I didn't necessarily have to do all the work that were doing.
We just started connecting and I joined a number of boards, my library staff and board were both really supportive of this because it fit our mission.
This is what we were going to do, we were there to connect, to move the community goals forward.
We had to help the community determine their goals.
We were hit very hard by the recession and this was a key time in changing our community and improving the momentum and out of that, the library became an integral and respected community leader.
They go there for resources, even if it is connecting two different groups, they needed to library to help connect.
Exactly what we had set out to do.
I'll put out the poster really fast there.
This is one that we put together.
Before we had declared that we were going on the ballot, I could still help with some of the campaigning so a lot of these photos are ones that I helped gather before we went for the grant interview, the $1.5 million.
And we went -- this really fits into librarian as a candidate in a way I hadn't thought about until John was talking earlier.
We went to dola.
We hadn't raised any money at all.
We knew we were going to go to the vote in November for $2 million.
I asked for $1.5 million and I asked them to trust me if they gave me the grant, I would pass the levy.
We had about 100 of these posters, of all the different community members saying why they would vote yes for the library and I handed that stack to the grants award board.
I said, these are the people that stand behind me and are willing to put their name on a piece of paper and have their picture taken so that people didn't know I wasn't making it up and changing my handwriting for every poster and we took those in and said, trust us.
If you will give us this money, we will pass the levy and they trusted us and that is where librarian as candidate was proven.
>> John Chrastka:  Well, one of the things that we know from political theory is that folks look at, you know, the librarian as candidate and they also look to the library as cause.
The trust me, trust us, that's the first part of the sentence.
The second part is to do X, to realize y, to attempt z.
The library's cause gets started by activating people's, well, their hearts, their heads and their guts.
It gets started by people who have questions find the answers.
Where is my money going?
Who's spending my money?
When we talked before about how library user status doesn't matter, I want to be clear about something.
There are two tribes within every community.
There's the tribe of users and the tribe of non-users.
When you go out as the accidental candidate in 2014 with a 2016 November election coming up, and Carrie can speak to the evolving nature of her understanding -- we caught up with Carrie six months into it and she said, I know what you're saying already John.
When you talk to a library user, you begin your conversation with the words, as you know.
Because they would like to be recognized as part of that tribe of users.
At 3:00 in the afternoon, with the high school around the corner, this place fills up, the WiFi goes down, everybody body over the age of 30 flees and we can support X, do y or support z.
Without the funding that will come from this levy, this city council, county commission, town board action, without the funding from this donation, we can't.
As you know, is really powerful.
It activates people who are part of the tribe.
But the thing that Carrie does and other good directors do is they talk to non-users in a different way.
They begin their sentence with, as you can imagine.
Because those folks she's talking to ask imagine that.
They're capable of imagining.
As you imagine, when the high school gets out, this place fills out and we do X for those kids or y for their parents or z for the entire family.
Without the resources that would come from the town board, the county board, the city council, without the resources that will come from this election day or the resources from this donation, we can't.
There's something very powerful when you're talking about a cause, to activate the person's imagination.
With the as you know statement, you're doing that.
Unless someone's a power user or on the board or foundation committee, they don't know.
You're activating their imagination.
You have to appeal to their reason.
Well, their reason about why is the tax, why is the need legitimate?
Is a key question to help activate people for your library issue.
Your process for getting to your budget, I can guarantee, if we've never met before, my apologies, there's been an open and transparent process.
Boards, trustees, commissioners, you guys set your budget in a way that no other unit of government does.
There's nothing hidden and yet folks who will be activated for your budget as constituents or voters or donors, need to know something that you don't always tell them.
It's not the as you know or as you can imagine.
Is there a difference between Plan A and Plan B?
Is there a difference between what happens if it passes and what happens if it fails?
What happens if we get the funding and what happens if we don't?
It's the difference.
Plan A excites that 37% of people that believe.
They think Plan B is a bad idea.
The questioning voter, the suspicious voter, the person in the middle 37% wants to know the difference between Plan A and Plan B and they want to know it's been arrived at in an open and transparative process and is there something different between you getting this funding and not?
Tell me, please.
Tell me what that difference is.
Tell me whose lives are going to be impacted and how your transformational work is going to be affected.
Tell me about Plan B as much as you tell me about Plan A.
I want to hear about it and know who's spending my money.
There's another aspect to all of this.
The team.
If you -- Carrie said that she went out and did 50 of the 70 conversations.
In darby, Montana, we worked with the library team, they had 82 conversations in their little town.
New Orleans, they did many.
It takes the same kind of resources and the same kind of resources come from people who've got it in their heart about the future of the library, this cause that either that they know or can imagine will change lives.
There's some key questions here for you to help identify within your own town, who can be on your team and Carrie's going to talk about her team in a second.
Jennifer's put together the resource kit.
I want to talk about question number 3 right now, who does the library serve?
When you ask somebody across the table, over a cup of coffee at a function, if they say everybody.
That's nice.
If they start drilling down and say, there are families who have trouble with literacy skills because English isn't their first language or the people looking for work or people who don't have internet access at home.
If you have somebody that can drill down into who else the library serves, I'd like you to put them to work.
>> Carrie Andrew:  So I'd like to talk a little bit about this slide.
First I want to address a couple of things that John has said.
One is, this Plan A and this Plan B.
We really used this because we couldn't have prepared the right materials and the right message without John.
There are some things you know to do innately and there's some things you need guidance.
And John had lots of different samples and we really had a story because the way our tax --
our property taxes were going, we found out in August before we went to the vote in November that we were going to lose 24% of our existing revenues.
Our message -- our Plan B became a lot more dire and it became Plan A, vote for the library, we're going to build a new library, we're adding in operating costs so we can continue to what we've already been doing.
We have increased our programs by 369% and we have had 38% more visitors through the door and what we've already been doing is seen over 2,000 percent in crease in people using WiFi, paying bills, checking in with family and working from home.
This is what we're doing for the economy and the community.
That was our evidence of what we did and that helped advocate and I wouldn't have known how to line that out without some of this theory that John talks about.
You have to look at your community and say, who is going to help me tell this message?
It didn't end up being the people that are the most avid users of the library, they have their specific use patterns and they continue in those patterns.
And who else we serve besides them.
Then you have people in the community that just believe in the candidate, the librarian or they believe in the cause of libraries.
And so, we found -- we had a small team of four to five or were officially on the yes committee.
I want to clarify something that was said earlier.
Jennifer mentioned you might appreciate more information on when you can campaign.
As a member of the staff of the library, as the director, especially being salaried, there's rules about when and when you can't talk.
But that doesn't apply until you have actually declared the question.
So, up until you to that, you, as a librarian, can campaign.
Now, I found that it was always best to be matter of fact and to provide and be persuasive and informative.
People want to know pros and cons, you're going to raise my taxes.
We began those conversations long before we actually had the question written.
And so I wanted to address that a little bit.
So -- but these are the people that were on the yes committee, the official people who could campaign.
When the ballot was declared.
And, we had four people.
One -- actually, two of them were library users.
They ran an internet business and they came in and they were working in the back of the library, using their computers, using our WiFi on a regular basis.
They happened to be in the library on a day we were featuring a job fair for a local hotel.
And they both managed to get -- 
they were both offered jobs out of that job fair and -- so they believed in the library for its transformative reasons, it changed their lives.
They were new to the the community and didn't know anybody.
We had another lady on the board -- or on the committee, who believed in this theory, had grown up with lots of books, avid reader.
Whether she used the library very much or not, she believed in the right of the community to have one and equal access to all patrons.
We had someone who was working for the county and working on another ballot issue that wasn't affecting our district, but affecting a neighboring district so she brought her experience of putting together messaging in her area and also here experience with having worked with government entities.
So -- and then we brought on another girl who new tons of people.
The majority of our committee didn't know many people in the community, which was a pro and a con.
But they put the time in and they found me or they happened to show an interest and I latched on to it and said, hey, you know what, I really could help you here.
If you had asked me six months before, I wouldn't have named a single one of them.
You have to be aware of what emerges.
>> John Chrastka:  Exactly.
The interesting part of this is the -- the campaigning.
Well, if you're not comfortable with campaigning as the candidate, that's cool.
You can drink coffee.
You know?
Most of these conversation that Carrie's talking about are not involving a knock on the door.
They're involving having a human to human interaction about the funding future of the library and how it supports the whole life of the child, a success and prosperous community.
There's a whole list of folks we would go through with you on, in order to say, who should you go have coffee with some talk with these people about what the library does.
We talk about education in libraries and how libraries support pre-k to life-long learning, that's great.
If you talk to a civic club or a business partner, you don't have to lead with education.
Talk about the social impacts you make.
Why don't we actually talk about the livable community you helped develop or how you help people find jobs or how your hours matter on main street?
If you're going to go out and campaign, you're going to get some doors slammed in your face.
If you go out and drink coffee, you'll have a couple different kinds of responses potentially.
I want to keep this less high stakes for you.
If this is the long game for you, you're going to hear, John, I like what you're doing at the library.
Keep me informed.
You're going to need to figure out a way to people informed.
Give them an opt-in.
It makes it easy for you to not worry about patron confidentiality, as well.
John, I support what you're doing.
How can I help?
Before you go out and have that first cup of coffee, you have to figure out how you're going to answer that question.
How can I help?
Might be to be a part of a committee, might be to share the word, might be to network with you, might be to introduce you to somebody you don't know.
If they say to you, John, I love what you're doing, I want to be identified with what you're doing and intimately part of it, that's the one you got to be able to say yes to right away.
If your cup of coffee is that delicious that you can bring somebody in to be part of your steering committee, to be part of the door-knocking or the leadership team, that's a fantastic cup of coffee you just had.
Now, Carrie, you touched on this a lot already.
>> Carrie Andrew:  If you're already out there and involved in the community, you just need to keep them informed because by being informed, they can go and inform others so they're talking to their constituents or their friends or circles that influence.
So, if you've laid the groundwork, they -- others will end up doing the work for you as long as you keep them informed.
>> John Chrastka:  So, we're on the [Audio not understandable] 
of the presentation.
we're coming to a close with it in just a moment.
I invite you, all, to add questions to the chat.
If they're in the queue already, it goes faster.
The pro tip for you, if you have nothing on the ballot coming up and no thermometer on the front lawn and nothing to change, that's cool.
That's great.
You're going to in the future.
If you're sitting at a nickel in funding and you need to get 8 cents or a dime and you're at $5 and need to get $10, if you need to get new donors going, here's the fastest way for you to start this process, to move from theory into practice.
All issues are won by coalitions.
Extending your influence by joining a coalition or starting a coalition for the library is the fastest way that this can move from theory into practice if you have nothing on the agenda for tomore or OE two months or two years.
The coalition, all issues are run by coalition, the 37% who believe, plus the 37% who have had their questions answered or their suspicions allayed.
The 37 plus 37 is 74%.
I can't guarantee you 74% at election day but I can guarantee you that seven out of 10, 8 out of 10 people are going to want to hear from you.
They're going to want their nostalgia updated and their suspicions separated.
They were suspicious about the county, they're not suspicious about the library anymore.
Right now, in your town, in your region, in your state, I want you to encourage to look at these.
This might be a topic, Jennifer, for another conversation.
Pre-k to workforce to education to immigrant to migrant to farm.
There are so many coalitions right now that could benefit from you at the table as the candidate and a representative of your cause.
We encourage you to take a look at what those coalitions are in your local area and bring your particular vision because right now, you're representing a constituency of about 37% of your population.
That would be a very exciting thing to bring to your -- to your coalition picture.
To be not just the host, the facilitator, like Jennifer's suggesting, bring your political capital and political power to those conversations.
In Norwood, I saw it from the outside.
Carrie helped move a new picture forward of the library, towards -- out to the rest of the community and a conversation that was very difficult about taxes and it happened in a very positive way.
Carrie, what are your final here's?
>> Carrie Andrew:  My final thoughts are, don't be afraid of the tough questions, be prepared.
When someone comes with a tough question, find the answer and add it to your message, add it to your faq's.
Use it and learn from it.
And use your partnerships and those other community assets, the community organizations to help advocate for you, as well.
>> John Chrastka:  My final thought is always about the dread Pirate Roberts, the princess bride.
Wesley's been dead and they bring him up and bring him the pill, he comes back to life and says, what are our liabilities?
There's one castle gate, guarded by 50 men.
They ask, what are the assets?
Your brains, his strength and my steel and Wesley despairs a bit and says, we'll never get it done.
Then he says, if I only had a wheelbarrow and a Holocaust cloak, they storm the castle, they rescue the princess.
Folks, you have the assets already.
You are the candidate whether you want to be or not.
That's a liability, if you don't want to be.
Folks want to hear from you about the work you do.
Not to be served by you, they want to hear from you.
You have amazing aspects.
Your hopes to be a manager.
You've got these assets and I hope that you can move them forward.
If you want to keep in touch with us, there's two ways.
One is our action.EveryLibrary.org site.
You can sign up for our newsletter and opt in, we welcome that.
You can get in contact with us via the action.EveryLibrary.org site.
We want to provide pro bono support.
If you want to hear more on the ground from Carrie, this is the ur for the Lone Cone Library District, Norwood, Colorado website.
She would offer any kind of good personal advice.
>> Carrie Andrew:  Definitely.
>> John Chrastka:  This is us.
Jennifer, what are we looking at for questions in the chat?
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Fantastic.
Thank you so much, both of you.
It was really great to have -- I mean, what a wonderful pairing of the theoretical with the practical.
I haven't seen a lot of questions.
I actually didn't see any questions come through, so this is -- they're wrapped with attention.
A question about academic library applications.
John, have you had any -- I know you've done work with school libraries, how about academic libraries?
>> John Chrastka:  I'm presenting with Scott Walter in May at the Aladdin conference to talk about how to move a school -- a student senate alection, a student funding election in a similar way.
They have to see what you're doing, as the librarians that are on campus.
They need to hear about where the money's going, the students do.
There are applications, as well.
If you're going to talk to a chancellor or a provost.
Some of the image of the librarian, the library's cause are very, very similar so we can talk, though, Michelle, reach out.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
I do want to point out, too, on action.EveryLibrary.org, they've collected a number of training guides which are everything from -- archives from presentations and other resources so be sure to check that out and John is going to be presenting a pre-conference at arsl, so definitely take a look at that, as well, if you're planning on going to the conference and again, thank you to arsl for co-sponsoring today and one final thank you to John and Carrie for all your great work, and Carrie, your community's very lucky to have there and we're so happy you continue your excellent work.
>> Carrie Andrew:  Thank you very much, Jennifer.
>> John Chrastka:  Cheers, Jennifer.
Thank you to the community.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Everyone, have an excellent day and I will follow-up with you once the recording is available and please take a moment, as you leave, to complete the survey we'll send you to.
It's an excellent way to give feedback to our presenters and for ongoing presentations.
And, thanks to our captioner.
Everyone, have a great day.