Building Support for Your Program Part 2

6) Involve a wide range of groups in fundraising for program. If you ask, you’ll often be surprised.

7) Design effective public relations material and distribute through various media. Visuals are helpful. Keep on telling and retelling the story.

8) Offer to speak and present before local influential private community groups, fraternal and religious groups. They are often looking for speakers. Students help here is a great learning opportunity also.

9) Spend time on one-on-one discussions of your program with administrators or other influential persons. Personal politics are important. Time is precious to everyone, but this is usually time well invested.

10) Have students / clients do a community service-oriented curriculum unit and share results with various media audiences. Helping a local charity or service agency not only helps the students but builds support.

No one does all or even most of these effectively but to the extent that you can do even a few, you are making your program stronger and more durable. Building them into your curricula can make both the support-building and the curricula more experiential and more enjoyable.