Peter Pearson

Everywhere you turn in the world of libraries these days, you hear people talking about the need for private fundraising. ALA conferences have multiple concurrent sessions on fundraising, articles dealing with fundraising in library publications abound, and listservs everywhere are dissecting the pros and cons of private fundraising.

We hear the word advocacy used a lot these days. And I have heard definitions of advocacy that are all over the board. Some people define advocacy as speaking up about the importance of a topic (such as libraries) to their friends, neighbors, and even strangers they may encounter. Others talk about advocacy as being a targeted public awareness effort. For purposes of this column, I will be referring to advocacy as a political process in which we speak to our elected officials about the importance of an issue and request specific action on their behalf such as increasing funding for the issue.