Getting What You Need

• the Internet
• individuals and organizations
• public records and proceedings
• polls and surveys

Using the Internet back to top

If you have access to the Internet, get online first before you go to the library. These days, you can find lots of information, old and new, on the Internet, though, for some older materials, you may still need to search the library’s stacks or microfiche, go to a bookstore, or call a publisher.

When surfing the Internet or combing the library’s card catalog, keep an eye out for:

• Reports and articles. These can come from a variety of resources that include academic sources like journals and law reviews and policy organizations (think tanks), government agencies, conference proceedings, and organizations specializing in your issue.
• Newspapers and magazine articles. Scan your local newspaper, the ethnic media, and maybe a few national papers, such as the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com), the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com), and the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com), for stories about your city, developments in other places, and names of experts and organizations frequently mentioned. Get a sense of how your issue is portrayed in the mainstream and ethnic press.
• Books. Visit your local library or bookstore and find out who has written a book on your advocacy issue.
• Websites of national and local advocacy organizations. See whether they have identified this issue and have proposed solutions.
• Campaigns in other states focused on an issue you’re concerned about. It’s a good way to find advocates with experience who can advise you about lessons learned from their efforts
• Listservs. Internet-based discussion groups are a place to keep up with developments and also to post requests for information or ideas related to the issue you’re working on.
• Official policies and other records. If you can’t get the information from the Internet or by simply asking for it, you can file a Freedom of Information Act request to require disclosure. More on this below in Getting access to public records and proceedings.
• Polling and survey data. Looking at old data can give you a sense of trends in public opinion on your issue, and new data that are favorable to your position can strengthen your arguments and increase the persuasiveness of your proposed solution. Also, if you know what’s been asked before, you can ask some of the same questions again and provide historical comparisons.
• Court cases and consent decrees (lawsuit settlements). Searching for past lawsuits and settlement agreements can help you learn about past problems. Court orders and consent decrees from other places can give you ideas for reforms you may want to pursue. Just remember that consent decrees are negotiated settlements where in all likelihood all sides had to compromise. Lexis-Nexis (http://www.lexisnexis.com) and Westlaw (http://web2.westlaw.com/signon/default.wl) have online searchable legal databases, but you have to pay to access them unless you can gain free access at your local library, or get a lawyer, law professor, or law student to help you for free. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the Internet, try your county law library, a local lawyer, or the local Bar Association.

Contacting individuals and organizations back to top

One-on-one conversations with people who have knowledge about, personal experience with, or influence on your issue are invaluable to deepening your understanding, furnishing anecdotes about the effects, and brainstorming about possible solutions. Consider talking to:

• Other advocates. Get in touch with local and national advocates working on your issue. They may have information about the issue you are working on or be able to direct you to others who can help. In addition to tapping into their knowledge and experience, you may be able to get their support.
• Experts. One way to identify the experts on your issue is to take note of the names repeatedly mentioned or quoted in your Internet research: advocacy organization publications, academic journals, national newspaper articles, authors of books or opinion editorials. Another is to ask some of the national advocacy organizations whom they consider to be the go-to people.
• Community members. Conversations with people—young and old and of different races and ethnicities—who are harmed by the problem are critical to understanding its nature and extent. They can bring real-life experiences into the discussion, help make your arguments more compelling, and offer meaningful solutions. Keep an eye out for stories you may want to highlight later and for potential spokespersons for news conferences, media interviews, hearings, and rallies.
• Local lawyers. Talk to local lawyers about past problems, lawsuits, and settlements. This can help you put the issues in a historical context and consider what has and hasn’t worked to come up with effective solutions.
• Public officials and their staff. Find out where your elected and appointed local, state, and federal officials stand on the issues you’re concerned about. This might be the city manager, your city council representative, the chair of the council committee working on your issue, the mayor, the state attorney general, the chair of the committee working on your issue in the state legislature, your representative in the state legislature or Congress. (Even if they do not have decision-making power over the issue, they can be helpful by calling for or even holding public hearings on the issue.) And always get to know their staff: most elected officials rely heavily on the advice and instincts of their staff members.

Getting access to public records and proceedings back to top

Gather any official government materials—documents, reports, transcripts of proceedings, data—relevant to the issue you’re working on. Being able to point to official records bolsters your arguments and your credibility with allies, the broader public, elected officials, and the media.
A lot of government documents are available online; start there. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, call the agency and request the materials. If you still have no luck getting what you need, you can file an official request—a FOIA or Freedom of Information Act request—which by law the government must respond to. The government’s response may be that it will give you what you asked for, or it may refuse, based on some exception. Denials can be appealed to the agency and, if you lose, to the courts.
There’s a federal FOIA law for access to U.S. government information; every state has an equivalent law that covers access to state and local records, and also government meetings. You can look up the open-records and open-meeting laws (sunshine laws) in your state in Tapping Officials’ Secrets, published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which is available at http://www.rcfp.org/tapping/index.cgi.
You can find lots of how-to information on the Internet about using FOIA at the federal, state, and local levels. Two resources with step-by-step instructions, sample letters, and much more are the Freedom of Information Clearinghouse web page at http://www.citizen.org/litigation/free_info/ and the publication Using the Freedom of Information Act: a Step-by-Step Guide at http://www.aclu.org/library/foia.html.
A few pointers to keep in mind:

• Look at the sample letters in the links mentioned above to make sure you’re including the right information in your letter and making a specific enough request.
• Make sure you’re sending your request to the right agency. If you’re not sure, call and ask before you send your letter.
• If cost is an issue, ask for a fee waiver or reduced fees for search and copying charges.
• If you want copies of electronic records, videotapes, audiotapes—something other than paper documentation—be clear about that in your request.
• Not all state FOIA laws are written or implemented the same as the federal FOIA; different legislatures place different priorities on public access to information. Some require agencies to maintain a list of the documents under their control to help the public identify the right agency and the right documents, others don’t; some process requests quicker than others; some impose copying fees of a few cents a page, others a few dollars. Review the laws in your state so you know your rights and what to expect.
• What agencies are covered by the sunshine laws? It may be that meetings conducted in closed session should be open. What kinds of meetings can legally be conducted behind closed doors? What constitutes a meeting? Is public comment at the meeting required? How much time is each speaker supposed to get? Are meeting minutes public? Videotapes? Photographs? Tape recordings? Can you videotape meetings? How much and what kind of notice is the public supposed to receive of upcoming meetings?

Conducting polling and community surveys back to top

Polling and community surveys are valuable tools for gauging public opinion and experiences. They allow you to take the responses of a relatively small number of people and make some broader generalizations (for example, how often low-income consumers are turned away from local emergency rooms or how a community views specific problems, solutions, businesses, or institutions).
The difference between the two? Some people use poll and community survey interchangeably to refer to one thing: conducting a statistically valid survey using a random representative sample and following a precise methodology. For purposes of this manual, the terms mean different things.
Here, poll refers to the statistically valid type of survey. Most people hire an outside organization, professional pollster, or researcher to do this type of canvass. You can do a statistically valid poll in-house, but it takes a lot of expertise, time, effort, and resources.

Community surveys don’t follow the technical rules of statistical research. They are less formal, are usually given to fewer people, and tend to cost less. The questions are developed by a community organization and administered by volunteers at community gatherings, in front of the neighborhood grocery store, or anywhere else you are likely to find the people whose opinion and insights you are interested in. Sometimes people ask a local university professor who has done surveys in the past to review their questions to make sure they are not leading, biased, or otherwise phrased in a way that makes it easier for people to discount the survey results.
Both polls and community surveys can have power in moving an advocacy agenda: you don’t always need a statistically valid survey to show what is happening in the community or paint a compelling picture of a problem. As between the two, it’s worth noting the following:

• On getting information to guide your advocacy effort. Since a poll is statistically significant, it can give you reliable information about whom to target for support, how to frame your issue so it resonates broadly, what messages to use in the media and mailings, which solutions to push for because they are most popular. It can also tell you what NOT to do, such as when you shouldn’t go forward because you don’t have the support you thought or when you are moving public opinion in the wrong direction. Though you will not get that kind of strategic direction from community surveys, they can help you find out how people view or have experienced a problem, pick up stories and spokespersons, and determine what kinds of solutions are favored so you can tell your council representative, for example, that 75 percent of the community organizations and 90 percent of the business owners in Neighborhood Y support a particular policy.
• On getting publicity. Reporters are used to covering polls, although you should be prepared to defend your methods. Take a look at “20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results” at http://www.ncpp.org/qajsa.htm for the kinds of questions they might ask. Community surveys can also get you free news coverage, but they are a harder sell unless you can find a good hook. In your news release and conversations with reporters, if you make sure you don’t overstate what you’ve got, you inoculate against the it’s-notstatistically-valid argument. Say up front that it is not a representative sample, lay out the procedure you used to develop the survey and get the responses, then make your point: “It’s shocking that in our survey of 100 high school students…”
• On influencing decision-makers. If you’re trying to influence a specific decision-maker, first try to find out what she or he would consider credible. In most cases, decision-makers who are fair-minded will find both polls and community surveys to be persuasive, especially if they have received significant media attention. However, some decision-makers consider anything that’s done by an organization having a stake in the issue to be biased. In those instances, you should have a third party (such as a policy organization, professional pollster, or university researcher) conduct the survey. In some cases, decision-makers will consider only statistically valid polls. In these instances, you will want to either conduct or commission a poll rather than a community survey.