PR Rx Section 4: Decision Makers

Building Relationships

Public relations is a constant process and so is building relationships with decision makers. If you rely only on formal meetings or the occasional letter, you will likely be displeased with the results. Advocacy and public relations build on familiarity and trust—two things that can only be built by consistent and sustained communication.

• Ask them to come to the library and be involved in reading hours for kids, kicking off campaigns, greeting a new round of freshmen at a library orientation, photo ops, tours, etc. You are limited only by your creativity.

• Invite decision makers to sit of your board or to participate in some ongoing activity.Give them an opportunity to be involved and look good doing it.

• Keep them in your library’s loop by sending them issues of your newsletters and publications. Invite them to your special events and get quotes from them for your PR materials. Link your name to their interests.

• Contact them with news about your library. Let them know about changes or updates in what you are doing.

• Make yourself available to help them research. The library is there, after all, to facilitate information access.

• Say hello to them at social events and thank them for their good work supporting the school, community, or college students.

• Make a point of visiting with them about library issues in the “off season.” This task is especially important when dealing with elected officials. Visits in the home district are often so much more meaningful than visiting during very legislative sessions.

• Thank them for what they do.

As you develop these relationships, keep in mind:

Understand the climate in which you and your organization operate.  Go beyond corporate and institutional culture.  You need to understand the pressures, resources, personalities, and economics affecting the people (and institutions) that make decisions concerning your library.  From state legislatures to school board members, city councilmen to regents, know who you and your bosses are accountable to. Learn their priorities. Relate to them within this framework.

Be, or at least appear to be, reasonable. Passion and philosophically driven positions are important, but never let them cloud your judgment or back you into a corner.  Just as you want decision makers to understand why your library or project must be funded or why some policy must or must not be implemented, you must be prepared to listen to why decision makers shouldn’t support your position. Take decision makers’ concerns seriously, address them, and be willing to respond to those concerns in your request if at all possible. Find out what you can do to help them with their work.

Make partners/develop contacts. As in all work operations, the greater contact you have with people outside of your institution or department, the greater number of potential proponents you have at your disposal.  Keep partners informed of what you are doing and planning, and they will be more likely to support and help you.  Sometimes, the best way to position yourself is to have someone else (unrelated to library work) promote your work to decision makers.  It’s one thing for you to tell your city manager that your library is the center of community education, but it is something else (i.e., extremely validating and objective) if other city department leaders or faculty members say so. Let others help build your relationships!

Keep records of outcomes not just statistics.  When library administrators discuss library needs, they tend to talk about the library.  However, decision makers do not want to hear about space needs and staffing.  They want to know how the library benefits patrons and what difference the additional funding will make. Traditional library use statistics, while useful, do not convey a sense of the importance of your library and the difference it makes on the lives and success of individuals.  Most decision makers do not really understand differences in circulation records or interlibrary loan data.  Moreover, they do not want to learn.  They care about outcomes. Help build a relationship by using a language that both of you will care about.

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