Recent Highlights

Getting your issues in the media helps you educate the public, call on decision-makers to take action, and build visibility for your student government. You can get your issues covered in student-run media outlets on your campus, and in off-campus media outlets.

Here are the steps to getting media coverage:

1. Build a list of media contacts for your area. Look up campus, local, and statewide outlets. Include newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations. At minimum, find a phone number and email address for the News Desk. If possible, also look up the News Editor, Assignment Editor, or even individual reporters that have covered your issue in the past.
2. Write a Press Advisory, and send it to your media list a week before your event. A Press Advisory is like a party invitation - it's the quick Who, What, When, and Where. Here's an example from our Student Government Action Kit.
3. Call through your media contacts to invite them to cover your event. Tip: start by writing a script for what you plan to say. Convey the newsworthiness of your issue, AND the best photo/camera opportunities at your event.
4. Call through your media contacts again the day before and the morning of the event. Confirm they can come, and remind them what a great and newsworthy event it will be!
5. Get ready to talk to reporters at the event. Decide on your main "talking points", write them down, memorize them, and stick to them! Tip: designate one person at the event to be the Media Spokesperson, and have all the reporters talk to that person.
6. Write a Press Release, give it to reporters at the event, and send it to your media list after the event. A Press Release is basically the story how you'd like it to be written. Here's an example from our Student Government Action Kit.
7. Follow up. Call and thank the media outlets that attended. Call the ones that didn't attend, and pitch them on still writing a story.

Often the most important step is figuring out the message you want to convey and sticking to it, so don't skip that part! You can also check out our how-to on Organizing a Press Conference.

We've been talking to a lot of student governments who are gearing up for campus elections, and working to recruit more students to run for SGA.

Class announcements are one of the most effective recruitment tactics you can use. Here are some tips on how to do them.

What you need:

• A class announcement "script"
• Student government "interest cards"
• Professors to let you make the announcements
• You and other SGA members to actually make the announcements

# # # # #

HOW TO WRITE YOUR CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT "SCRIPT":

Outline:

• Introduce yourself and your organization
• Describe one issue that student government is working on (tip: details!)
• Describe what SGA is doing about it (tip: details!)
• Ask everyone to get involved by signing an interest card
• Tell them why you got involved in SGA

For example...

• INTRO: My name is Sarah and I'm from the Student Government Association, the official voice of the students here at State University!
• ISSUE: This semester we're working to get the whole campus registered to vote. Politicians are debating a ton of issues that affect students, so we need to make sure they listen to students! That's why we're making sure every student is ready to go out and vote.
• WHAT SGA IS DOING: Here at State University, our goal is to get 1,000 students registered to vote this spring! We'll hold a lot of fun events, like a Vote-a-Palooza Concert.
• ASK: We'll need a lot of volunteers to make this happen, so fill out the interest card I passed out if you want to get involved!
• WHY I GOT INVOLVED: I got involved in SGA because I wanted to make a difference in my community. I got the chance to work on important issues, learn new skills, and make a lot of friends. That's why I encourage you to get involved too!

Here's an example of an interest card you can pass out and collect during class announcements:

# # # # #

HOW TO SCHEDULE CLASS ANNOUNCEMENTS:

It's easy - here are some ways you could schedule class announcements:

• Email professors
• Call professors
• Swing by professors' offices
• Just show up before their class starts and ask them!

Hot tip: think about other places where you could make announcements too, like student organization meetings or Residence Hall meetings.

With November around the corner, some places have local and state elections coming up. This is a great opportunity for SGA to encourage students to vote, and show our decision-makers that they need to pay attention to young voters!

Here are a few tried and true tactics for effectively Getting Out the Vote.

The most important thing is contacting students individually to remind them to vote. Here's what I mean...

1. "Pledge to Vote". Here's a good example of a pledge that students can sign:
   
   There are a ton of ways you can collect Pledges to Vote, for example:
   - Tabling events out on campus. (Tip: "Tabling" shouldn't mean sitting behind a table. Get some volunteers with clipboards, set up your SGA's banner, have some candy or other goodies, play music, and stop students as they walk by!)
   - Canvass student apartments or do a "Dorm Storm" (go door-to-door in the dorms).
   - Ask professors if you can make announcements in classes, or make announcements in student organization meetings.
2. "Text Out the Vote". Get students to take 30 seconds to text 10 of their friends to remind them to vote. This is a great way to reach even more people! You can use the same tactics to do it: tabling, canvassing, announcements, etc. (Tip: Also get students to sign a Pledge to Vote.)
3. Phonebanking. Now that you've collected all these Pledges to Vote, you should call them all back the night before Election Day to remind them to vote. The more times you remind someone, the more likely they are to actually vote!

Those are some of the tried and true tactics for Getting Out the Vote.

The first thing you should do is set a goal for how many students you want to contact, and make a plan for how to do it. Click below to check out a good example of a Get-Out-the-Vote plan:

Running a productive meeting is a skill. Once you learn it, your meetings will get more accomplished, they'll be better attended, and your members will feel like part of a community.

Here are 7 ground rules for running a productive meeting.

RULE #1: Before organizing a meeting, make sure you need one.

Meetings are a good place to make group decisions, develop a plan for an event, or delegate responsibilities to a group. If you only need to disseminate information without getting input, you don't need a meeting.

Once you have decided that you need a meeting, you have to prepare for it. This includes:

• Defining the goals
• Preparing an agenda
• Developing a list of attendees
• Identifying somebody to facilitate the meeting
• Preparing the facilitators and attendees
• Anticipating pitfalls
• Planning an opportunity to debrief with meeting leadership

RULE #2: Preparing for a meeting takes at least as long as the meeting itself.

The logistics of a meeting can define its success. Consider the following:

• Is the location easily accessible, is the time convenient, can we avoid conflicts with classes, other meetings, etc?
• Is the room the right size for the group?  (It's always better to have lots of people in a smaller room, than very few people in a large room) 
• Are the chairs set up in such a way that makes it easy to see each other and to hear each other?
• Is there a chalkboard for brainstorming?
• Is there a sign-up sheet?
• Are there materials for people to take?
• Are there refreshments or a plan for post-meeting socializing?
• What is the scheduled duration of the meeting?

RULE #3: Know your goals.

Every meeting should have a goal. Figure out what you're trying to get out of this meeting, and then make sure the agenda helps you do it. If something on the agenda doesn't help you accomplish the goal of the meeting, it might be unnecessary.

RULE #4: Decide on follow-up before the meeting.

Every productive meeting requires follow-up - everything from thanking VIPs who attended, to making sure delegated tasks are actually happening. Before the meeting, make sure that there is a workable plan and timeline for following up on decisions that have been made and tasks that have been delegated.

RULE #5: Prepare all participants.

Everyone coming to the meeting should have a basic sense of the goals of the meeting, how they will participate, and who else will be in attendance. In addition, the facilitators should have a sense of what needs to be done coming out of the meeting and who at the meeting is best suited to do each task.

RULE #6: Anticipate pitfalls.

The most difficult part of running a productive meeting is dealing with group dynamics. Here are some common pitfalls and potential solutions:

• Lack of participation
  • Solutions:
    • Prep people to participate prior to the meeting
    • Frame discussions clearly
    • Use "criteria" to frame decisions
• A few people are dominating the discussion
  • Solutions:
    • Talk with dominant talkers before or during meeting
    • Be prepared to call on others
• Too much time on one issue
  • Solutions:
    • Agree on time limits at the outset of the meeting
    • Use straw polls to gauge the sense of the group 
    • Prevent too much discussion if really the group is largely at a consensus
• Don't create a false sense of power or false decisions (for example: brainstorms that aren't actually necessary, pretending to "make a decision" that's actually already been made)
  • Solution:
    • If a decision has already been made, lay it out and context why it was made
• Dealing with things in a meeting that should be dealt with individually(personal gripes, etc)
  • Solution:
    • Don't do that, save it for individual conversations 

RULE #7: Debrief after the meeting.

After the meeting, pull together anyone who helped plan the meeting to quickly discuss:

• Was the agenda appropriate?
• Were the people who attended the ones who should have attended?
• Were the facilitators well enough prepared?
• Were the participants well enough prepared?
• How were the logistics?
• What is the appropriate follow up for each person in the group?
• What should we do differently next time to improve the meeting?

Getting these ground rules right will take skill and time. Remember to learn from mistakes, and teach these skills to other students so they can run productive meetings too.

Whether it's a Lobby Day, a rally, a Community Service Day, an educational forum, or your first big Kick-Off Meeting, big events are often important to winning your campaigns.

Why organize big events?

• It'll help you win your campaigns. Help you get your message across to a decision-maker, generate media attention for an issue, educate participants, etc.
• It creates a ton of good visibility for your student government.
• It's a chance to team up with important people on campus and build your relationship with them. Student orgs, campus administrators, local VIPs, etc.
• Big events help to develop more leaders within your SGA. You'll need a lot of people in SGA to step up and take on more responsibility. In doing so, they'll learn the skills to be better leaders in SGA.

How to organize a big event:

• Start with a goal.
• Create a plan.
• Get people involved.
• Nail the logistics.

Setting goals:

• Things to set goals for:
  • How many people at the event
  • How many coalition partners on campus will be involved
  • How much publicity will you do
  • How many media stories will it generate
  • How much campaign product will it generate (petitions collected, voters registered, etc.)
• Why set goals:
  • Goals allow you to plan.
  • Goals help to motivate the SGA and create a sense of shared vision.

Making a plan:

• Start with the goals you've just set.
• Then, work backwards week-by-week to figure out what you need to do to hit those goals.

Click below to check out a good example of a 4-week plan for organizing a Lobby Day:

Get people involved:

• Recruit volunteers. (Check out our training about that.)
• Recruit coalition partners. (Check out our training about that.)
• Get VIPs involved.
• Invite the media.

Nail the logistics - common considerations:

• Space
• Materials
• A/V equipment
• Food and drinks
• Transportation
• Budget  

The beginning of the new school year is a great time to focus a ton of energy on recruiting new volunteers to get involved in your SGA.

With more people involved, you can bring more ideas to the table, generate more public support for your cause, run a more visible campaign and build a bigger buzz on campus, and develop more leaders to take on more responsibility - all of which means you’re able to win more victories on the issues that affect students.

Student governments should strive to have a large base of volunteers who are involved in projects, even if they’re not elected members of the SGA.

Here are some basic principles for recruitment.

• Cast a wide net. You never know who will want to get involved and you need as many people as possible - so ask everyone!
• Recruit people into action. Recruit people to help collect petition signatures, to help put up posters, to help run a table - rather than to come to a meeting.
• Make it easy. Anyone should be able to get involved, even if they’ve never been active on campus before - so have simple things people can do, and give first-time volunteers a quick training.
• Make it fun. Think snacks, music, t-shirts, props or costumes, maybe even a little friendly competition (who can register the most voters in an hour?) - volunteers will come help out again if they have fun!
• Create a sense of urgency. After all, you’re probably working on really urgent issues! For everyone who signs a petition, ask them if they can sign up to volunteer. For everyone who signs up to volunteer, call them that same day to follow up. For everyone who comes out and volunteers, invite them to come back and volunteer again the next day. And so on.
• Ask people to take on more. To make the biggest impact, you need as many leaders as possible. Ask people right away to take on more responsibility. For example, if someone volunteers at a table for the first time, you can invite them to manage a tabling shift the next day.
• Remember the rule of halves. If you want 25 people to volunteer at an event, you need 50 people to say “yes” that they’ll volunteer. If you need 50 people to say “yes”, you need to call 100 people. If you need to call 100 people, you need a list of 200 volunteers with phone numbers. (Yes - all just to get 25 volunteers at an event!)

Recruitment is as simple as two steps:
1) First, build a list.
2) Second, call the list.

Step 1: Building the list. In order to get a ton of people involved in your campaigns, you need a list of hundreds or thousands of students who are interested in getting involved. Here are some good ways to build a list.

• Class announcements - These are a great way to build the visibility of your organization, talk to a ton of students all at once about your campaigns, and give them the opportunity to sign up to volunteer.
• Tabling - This is a great way to recruit volunteers while also getting campaign work done at the same time - for example, table to collect petition signatures on your campaign, AND to sign up volunteers. (Hot tip: stand in front of the table, don’t sit behind it!)

Step 2: Calling the list. E-mails are great, but nothing replaces getting on the phone with people, finding out why they’re interested in your campaign, and personally inviting them to volunteer.

• Organize a phonebank - These are the best ways to call a ton of people, and way more fun than calling by yourself. Get together a bunch of people, order some pizza and play some music, and call through your whole list of volunteers.

In our last post, we gave you some tips for how to pick the right issues for SGA to work on.

But after you decide what to work on, sometimes the hardest part is just figuring out where to start. Here are a set of questions you can ask - to help you take a problem, and turn it into a campaign that SGA can work on and win.

1. What is the problem?
2. Why is it a problem?
3. What are the solutions?
4. What is the process?
5. Who are the decision-makers?
6. What do they care about?
7. What's our goal?
8. What's our strategy?
9. What are our tactics?

Here's an example of how you can use these questions to turn a problem into a campaign - using an example of the problem of ATM fees on campus.

Problem: Students - especially low-income students - are getting screwed by ATM fees on campus. Most of us don't have our bank on campus, and we take out money in smaller amounts so we pay more fees.

Solution: Have ATMs on campus that don't charge fees.

Process: The Student Union Business Manager signs a contract with the bank to allow them to put an ATM on campus. He could implement a new policy that bans ATMs that charge fees.

Decision-Makers: The Student Union Business Manager.

What do they care about? He does genuinely care about keeping costs low for students. He also cares about student opinion, and what the school's peer institutions are doing.

Goal: Get the Student Union Business Manager to implement a new policy that bans ATMs that charge fees from campus.

Strategy: Demonstrate personal stories, demonstrate widespread student support, and demonstrate peer institutions that have similar policies.

Tactics: Get 10 low-income students to meet with the Student Union Business Manager to tell them their personal stories. Collect 1,000 petition signatures. Write a short report about other schools that have banned ATM fees.

WIN!

Last weekend, the Student Association of Michigan (SAM) teamed up with the SET Project and USSA (the United State Student Association) to run a skills training and political briefing at their statewide conference.

As SAM delegates from across the state came together to set their agenda for spring 2011, SET and USSA ran a day of workshops to set them up with the skills and knowledge to advocate on behalf of Michigan students.

SET trainer Adam Gaya ran a briefing on the Michigan legislature and key players, to set up SAM with the political context and lay of the land. The rest of the day was geared at the skills to help build SAM's higher education affordability campaign, including workshops on lobbying and developing a persuasive message.

You can read more about SET’s work to help develop and strengthen State Student Associations, and contact us to talk about how SET can help you build your SSA.

Lobbying is one of the tools for getting a decision-maker to act. You can lobby a state or federal legislator by meeting with them (or their staff) at the statehouse or DC, visiting them while they’re in-district, or even inviting them to come to campus.

Steps for setting up a lobby meeting:

1. Send in a request, by letter or fax. Your request should introduce who you are, when you would like to meet with the legislator, and the purpose of your visit.
2. Make a follow-up call. Many legislators will have staff that can assist you in scheduling.
3. Confirm the details. You may need to call back several times to settle all of the details. You should always make a confirmation call the day before the meeting is scheduled, as legislators’ schedules often change.

Tips on how to effectively advocate for your position:

• Be prepared. Be on time. Have materials ready. Be presentable. Have a pen and paper.
• Have a constituent in the meeting, if possible.Legislators are far more likely to listen to people they actually represent. Personal stories make a visit more effective.
• Be conversational. It’s better not to read facts and arguments straight from fact sheets or notes. If you need to, take time to memorize your points beforehand.
• Be confident! Legislators are regular people and they are there to listen. They represent you; you have a right to tell them what you want.
• Listen. These legislators have important feedback for you and your issue. Give them time to respond - don’t just talk to them.
• Stay on message. Have a basic message and stick to it.
• Make a strong ask. Ask them for their support clearly and directly.
• Stay calm and polite. Some legislators may be strongly opposed to your position and you should respect their perspective just as they should respect yours. Always be polite to legislators and their staff.
• Be honest. Never lie or make up information. If a legislator asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, simply say, “I don’t know the answer to your question, but I will get back to you with the anser.” Then, be sure to follow up and answer their question.
• Keep it short. Legislators and their staff have full schedules. Take enough time to make your case and ask for support, but don’t take too long. Always thank them for their time.
• Thank them. Always send a thank you note when you meet with a legislator, and have everyone that attended the meeting sign it.
• Keep track of the results of the meeting. Write down the details of what happened at the meeting to share with the rest of your student government.

Sample lobby meeting agenda:

1. Introduce yourself and your organization.
2. Thank them for something - either for their past support of your issue, or just for meeting with you.
3. Introduce the issue you wish to discuss.
4. Present your position. Remember to include personal stories, in addition to the facts.
5. Get their feedback - whether they are supportive, opposed, or undecided.
6. Make your “ask”. If they are supportive, ask them to make a specific commitment. If they are opposed or undecided, ask what would convince them.
7. Create a plan to follow up.
8. Thank them.