Many non-profits and federal agencies have local outreach resources but do not always engage them in their national campaigns – much to their disadvantage. Just as all politics are local, the same is true of public education campaigns. The real change takes place out there in the thousands of communities across our nation and to be successful in changing public sentiment about any issue it is vital that you do it locally. This article is brief by intention because we have published other articles such as “How to Place PSAs in Your Community” that cover the logistics of local outreach.

Assuming that you do have a grassroots network, the point we want to make here is to make sure they know every detail about your national strategy in terms of how it impacts the local community. There are many ways to accomplish this goal including:

• Create a DVD with samples of all the materials that you distribute to the media and send it to your outreach network The graphic below shows some of the items you may want to include

• Create a Tool Kit such as the one shown with actual samples of materials

• Create a website where all the materials can be downloaded and then
  provide instructions for accessing the site to your outreach network

Above all, make sure your community partners know exactly what media and who received public education materials and encourage them to make local follow-up calls. A call from someone in the community is worth more than ten coming from a national source.