We made it easier to launch a petition on our action sites!

Is your school or public library being threatened with budget cuts? Is there a compelling piece of legislation in your state that would support or disrupt library services? Are there organizations or government agencies that are disrupting library services, programs, or events? If so, then let us help!

To get started, just use this form to create your petition today.  After you submit your petition, we will follow up with any questions if we need to and you will receive contact information to reach out to us with any updates or information.

LAUNCH A PETITION
We made it easy to launch a petition and gain access to all of our resources to support it.
Just click here to get started!

We would love to host your petition on our platform and use our extensive reach and resources to ensure that your petition is successful. Our petition platform is different than anything else that is available to you. That’s because we don’t make you fight alone. By working with us on our platform you will gain access to all of the pro-bono tools, data, funding, and training that EveryLibrary has to offer. For example, by using our platform, EveryLibrary will:

• Provide free consulting on the content of your petition to ensure that it is highly engaging and actionable by your community
• Provide up to $500 in digital ads in your community to ensure that library supporters in your area are given the opportunity to see and sign the petition
• Email our lists of pre-identified library supporters in your community who we know will take action to support their local library.
• Post your petition to our social media where we have a reach of over 1.5 million Americans each week
• Provide pro-bono consulting on engaging with your community and building more structured support for your library
• Provide you with the list of library supporters who signed your petition at the end of the campaign.
• Send emails to your supporters and signers on your behalf to encourage further action, give updates, and thank them at the end of the campaign.

Typically, we will activate your petition on our platform within 24 hours of your submission. However, we may have questions or suggestions to make your petition more effective. We also usually try to contact you to discuss your strategies for deploying your petition in your community as well as talk through next steps for petition signers. For example, we want to know if there are meetings that they should attend or if there is a rally or event to support the library. If so, we can build those actions in our communications strategy.

We are able to provide these services thanks to our donors.
By starting a monthly donation of just $1 per month, you will help us continue to support libraries in need.

In order to make your petition as successful as possible, we do have a few tips for you;

1. Be sure to completely fill out the form. All of this information is important if we want to make your petition as successful as possible.
2. Please be sure to include a compelling name or title for your campaign that will engage and excite your community. The more clear, concise, and engaging your title is, the more likely it is to be shared.
3. The content of your petition should begin with a brief and engaging summary. For example, “The county commission is attempting to defund the library. We can’t let that happen. Please use this form to contact the county commissioners.” This short and concise introduction engages people immediately and encourages action. This is important because very few people read beyond the first paragraph and if we can capture them in the first 25-30 words, then they are more likely to take action.
4. Follow that paragraph with the details. Explain how this issue will impact the community and what the community will lose if we don’t fight back. For a great format for your text, you can follow the Problem Agitation Solution model as outlined here https://copywritematters.com/paso-copywriting-formula/.
5. If you would like this petition to email decision makers, please provide the text that should be emailed to them. This text should be positive, upbeat, and written as the voice of an engaged community member. For example, “I am writing to you today in order to express my support for my library. Etc…”
6. Think about what you would like petition signers to do next. That means letting us know about upcoming meetings, rallies, or events to support the library so that we can engage you signers in further actions.
7. Take the time to share the petition on your own social media, listservs, email lists, etc… We will amplify your efforts with our reach but the most effective petition campaigns have engaged people like you behind them.
8. Provide some great high-quality images for social media shares and ads. The more engaging the images are that you provide, the more likely people are to sign and share.
9. Keep us updated about changes, successes, or failures so we can help you strategize or so we know when your campaign has ended and we can remove the petition.

We look forward to working with you to support your library!

*Our focus is on politics and library, literacy, information, funding, and access issues. To that end, we reserve the right to deny petitions that do not fall under our mission as a 501c4 organization and endangers our status with the IRS. That means that we may choose not to run petitions that attack library industry associations, organizations, vendors, or individuals. Our 501c4 status precludes us from campaigns and actions around labor disputes or internal or personnel conflicts within a library, library system, organization, or between individuals.