Advocacy Navigator is a full suite of communications services to help community colleges develop compelling stories that support advocacy for funding and policy change. It offers solutions at a time when policymakers are desperate to save local economies.

Contact Doug Gould today for more information, or download the brochure.

What We Know Works

• Research to determine the most effective messages and carefully target the supporters who can advance your cause.
• Training of key spokespersons and advocates who lead the charge in your messaging – particularly presidents and trustees who can compel various audiences to act when they have the right messages to convey.
• Strong Messages that inform publics about what community colleges add to your state's bottom line.
• Effective Tactics to turbo-charge your advocacy efforts.

What does Advocacy Navigator provide?

• Focus Group – To create questions and assess areas of concern.
• Message Testing Poll – Conducted by our strategic partners, the FDR Group, to prove which messages will work best, benchmark public opinion, and identify public opinion weaknesses and strengths that need to be addressed.
• Confidential Advisory Memo – A proprietary document on problems that the research reveals with recommendations on how to address challenges.
• Make the Case Report – An advocacy plan that outlines how community college advocates in your state can engage key potential business partners and policymakers. This can be shared by college presidents, development departments, and advocates alike to make sure that all are on the right page when it comes to reaching funders and public officials.
• Training Session – Our trainings simulate real-life media encounters and boost your lead spokesperson's public speaking confidence. We also provide personalized DVD's of the training to help spokespersons prep for upcoming interviews or speaking engagements and learn from their mistakes.

How do we know this works?

We've worked with community college systems in seven states to provide research and communications strategies that boost effective advocacy.

We are familiar with how to get things done within the community college system and offer a combination of strategic and tactical implementations that provide maximum impact and positive results.

Our professionals have created and led programs that leverage the value and visibility of community colleges within frameworks that present them from a fresh, engaging perspective.

What Sets Us Apart?

We recently conducted statewide opinion research and message development in California that resulted in a primer for community college advocacy called, " Make the Case for California Community Colleges."

We have taught leaders how to tell these stories in a number of mediums and we know what works. Recently, Douglas Gould penned a thought leadership piece, " Don’t Let the Downturn Get You Down," published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Community College Times that offered advice on how state community college systems can defend against budget cuts by accentuating their value to state economies.

Contact Doug Gould today for more information, or download the brochure.

Our Clients

• Ford Foundation Bridges to Opportunity – For this initiative Douglas Gould and Company built an online national resource hub located at www.CommunityCollegeCentral.Org and led an opinion research and messaging project that included multiple focus groups and a national poll.
• Hewlett and Irvine Foundations – As advisors on statewide opinion research and message development in California, we helped to inform research and messaging strategies and assisted Bates Neimand, the direct grantee, to formulate the final " Make the Case for California Community Colleges" presentation to community college leaders.
• Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) – KCTCS, the Commonwealth's largest provider of postsecondary education and workforce training, seeks to double enrollment at its colleges by 2020 and asked Douglas Gould and Company to develop an advocacy communications plan that helps tell the story of how its community colleges help Kentucky citizens achieve their dreams.
• Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce – Douglas Gould and Company has been working with the new Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and its director, noted economist Anthony Carnevale, to develop positioning, branding, and messaging and for the Center. The Center offers empirical research that links the higher education sector and the labor market.
• Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) – After CSW, in collaboration with other national organizations, produced "Building Tomorrow's Workforce: Promoting the Education & Advancement of Hispanic Workers in America," it turned to Douglas Gould and Company to disseminate the report more broadly to media and affinity groups to impact policies and develop a long-term communications strategy to maximize awareness of successful business/community college partnerships.
• Pathways to College Network – Pathways to College Network, which seeks to reform K-12 education policy and facilitate access to higher education for underserved students, asked Douglas Gould and Company to conduct a needs assessment and advise the network on fine tuning its communications infrastructure.
• Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University – Our two-year partnership included refining communications tools to help inform the national dialogue regarding enrollment and equity issues for college access.

Contact Doug Gould today for more information, or download the brochure.