Sharing Inspiration – National Council for Community and Education Partnerships

Every now and then we like to take a look at an advocacy campaign we’re not involved with and offer some friendly feedback.  See our commentary on AJWS’s “Angry Birds” and 350.org’s “The Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me.”

This week, we want to offer kudos to the quick work of a new client. We take credit only for an assist and some brainstorming – Nathan Monell and our friends at NCCEP (our client) and the GEAR UP community did the hard work (more about them both below.)

Three things we think all organizations struggling to get heard during this tough budget cycle can get some inspiration from:

1. Town Hall Success

California GEAR UP jumped at the opportunity to act fast and mobilize its people.

Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a federal grant program that provides six-year grants to education/community partnerships and states to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed at college. Serving an entire cohort of students beginning no later than the seventh grade, GEAR UP provides services at high-poverty middle and high schools and college scholarships to low-income students. The nature of the services delivered means GEAR UP programs build significant community and relationships with kids and families.

California GEAR UP staff recruited a parent to attend Rep. Bacerra’s Town Hall event, prepared her to ask a question about his support for GEAR UP funding, and achieved a success!

Skip to minute 42:30 of the C-SPAN video of Rep. Bacerra’s Townhall meeting to see the work in action, and hear the Congressman (one of three House Democrats on the deficit “Super Committee”) reiterate his support for GEAR UP: goo.gl/EWIq0

2. Quick & Effective Sharing

The National Council for Community and Education Partnerships (NCCEP) is a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization whose mission is to develop and strengthen broadbased partnerships throughout the education continuum, from early childhood through postsecondary education. They work with the hundreds of GEAR UP programs across the country to facilitate sharing of best practices and data collection to constantly evaluate, improve, and demonstrate the impact of the programs.

We’re working with NCCEP to ramp up their advocacy capacity on very short order – this budget environment requires quick, effective action.  We’ve got to build the road with NCCEP while we’re driving on it, so  there’s no time or budget for complicated solutions that require long ramp-up.

NCCEP’s Government Relations staff saw a need for GEAR UP program staff to share their advocacy work with each other quickly and easily.  We needed to foster a “culture of advocacy,” build confidence in the approach, and help program staff know they weren’t alone in this work.

Within a few days NCCEP had a new tumblr blog up and running got those advocacy postings going, including this terrific report-back: http://goo.gl/51upI
Perfect and fully-fleshed out? No. Exactly what we need right now? Absolutely.

3. Jujitsu Tough Times to Build Capacity

As a federally-funded program that helps low-income people, GEAR UP is at risk in this budget environment. The success of thousands of students served by hundreds of programs is at stake. We’re helping them build an advocacy program concurrently with fleshing out the strategy and plan for it. It’s a stressful time.

But NCCEP is putting some jujitsu on it and using this crucible to learn, build capacity, and emerge strong. A few examples:

• With increased advocacy comes increased data complexity. We need to know who’s taking action, where, and how so we know what to do next. NCCEP staff has jumped on top off modifying list protocols and testing new systems as we go. At the end of this push, their data will be cleaner and their systems will be better suited to using the data.
• Effective advocacy requires good “engagement ladders” – structures for identifying advocates and helping them move to ever-more high-impact actions. Again, NCCEP is using this opportunity of increased advocacy activity to build a ladder, test it, and have it ready for the next steps.

We hope you’re inspired by NCCEP’s awesome August. We know we are.