This is a list of additional guidance materials relating to resources which can be used to support your digital preservation advocacy. Use these additional resources to stengthen your advocacy plan. 

DPC Training courses

• Novice to Know-How online Training with modules on:

  • Advocacy

  • Digital Preservation Skills for Beginners

  • Providing Access to Preserved Digital Content

  • Email Preservation

  • Building a Digital Asset Register

DPC Digital Preservation Assessment and Planning Tools

• DPC Digital Asset Register (DAR) Toolkit

• DPC Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Materials

• DPC Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) (Plus DPC Member-only benchmarking data)

• DPC Competency Framework and Competency Audit Toolkit (CAT)

Maturity Models

• Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Model

• NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation

• Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model (DPCMM)

Communication Tools

• Resources and training prepared for non-digital preservation stakeholders:

  • Topical Notes on:

    • What is Digital Preservation?

    • Back-Up and Storage

    • Digital Images

    • File Naming and Formats

    • Metadata

    • Personal Digital Archiving

    • Preserving Email

    • Preserving social media

    • Preserving the Authoritative Records

    • Preserving the Web

  • Prater, Scott, “How to talk to IT about Digital Preservation”

Organizational Strategy and Planning Tools:

• Digital archiving: Storage media prioritization tool (University of Glasgow)

• Digital Preservation Policy Toolkit

• Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit

• Digital Preservation Procurement Toolkit

Advocacy in digital preservation looks different in every organization, team, and community because each operates with its own priorities, pressures, cultures, and capacities. What succeeds in one setting may not translate directly to another, and that is entirely to be expected. Across all scenarios, advocacy is a process that blends clarity about what you need, an understanding of your audience and a thoughtful way of making your case.

These stories are not templates to copy, but prompts to inspire ideas, help you adapt approaches to your own context and build confidence in your advocacy journey.

If you have an Advocacy Case Study you would like to share with the digital preservation community through the Toolkit, contact info@dpconline.org.

Providing evidence to support your advocacy ask strengthens credibility, reduces uncertainty, and helps decision‑makers understand why action is necessary now.

Evidence moves the conversation beyond opinion or technical preference and shows that your request is grounded in real organizational needs, risks, and opportunities. It can also help stakeholders visualize the scale of the problem, the consequences of inaction and the benefits your proposal can deliver. Strong evidence can also reassure colleagues who may be risk‑averse or unfamiliar with digital preservation by showing that similar organizations face the same challenges and that practical solutions exist. Evidence can help turn digital preservation advocacy from ‘a good idea’ into a compelling, defensible, and actionable case for investment, support, or change.

Internal evidence

You can use much of the preparatory work you did before you embarked on your advocacy activities as evidence to support your ‘ask.’ The results of a DPC RAM Assessment will show where you are, where you want/need to be and, if you are a DPC Member, how you compare with other organizations.

You can also use the Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Materials to highlight the risk classification of some of the digital materials in your collection and the Digital Archiving: Risk Prioritization Tool to make the case for urgent action.

A method of using real-life scenarios or ‘Vignettes’ as evidence was developed by the digital preservation team at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in the Netherlands. They observed that in digital preservation, we often focus on future proofing, planning ahead, anticipating risks, and building resilient systems. But sometimes the most powerful lessons come not from looking forward, but from looking back.

A single real-life example of something that went wrong (or almost went wrong) can illuminate the importance of digital preservation far more clearly than abstract arguments ever could and situates the message in a highly relatable context that is immediately understood by an organizational audience.

Digital preservation in the media

• BBC Domesday Project. Digital obsolescence because of proprietary storage formats. Rescued only partially through enormous effort. Obsolescence after fewer than 20 years.
• NASA Viking Mars program had brittle tapes and couldn’t decode data formats from 1976 mission. Eventually found enough paper information that they re-keyed everything.
• Hackers Who Recovered NASA's Lost Lunar Photos
• Hurricane Sandy caused flooding in data centers resulting in potential loss of business data
• High-quality footage of Apollo 11 moonwalk lost to history because backup tapes were lost/recorded over.
• BBC (and American networks) regularly re-used tapes. Many important programs like Dr. Who have lots of missing episodes.
• With the change in presidential administrations, web pages and data sets were removed from government agency websites.
• This is the oldest tech still used by the US government
• Five of the most outdated IT systems in the government
• Retail data, patient data, etc. might be manipulated without owners noticing. Good digital preservation is essential for discovering hacks and recovering data.
• S. Nuclear System Runs on Early Computers and 8-Inch Floppy Disks
• As much as 80% of scientific data from the 1990s is irretrievable
• Precedent-setting Supreme Court opinions contain links to online sources that are disappearing
• Meet the digital historians on a mission to preserve data for future generations
• How Archivists Could Stop Deepfakes From Rewriting History
• Fake news

Aligning the motivators you have identified with the real benefits digital preservation can deliver helps you to frame your ‘ask’ in terms that matter most to your stakeholders.

Stakeholders are most likely to respond well to messages that speak directly to their priorities. Framing digital preservation around outcomes such as reduced risk, strengthened accountability, improved efficiency, or increased innovation helps position it as a strategic enabler, not a complicated problem or a technical obligation. This shift moves the conversation away from systems and workflows and towards value, impact, and organizational goals, making your ‘ask’ positive, clear, relevant, and persuasive.

Below is a set of sample messages for the most commonly occurring motivators identified above, each highlighting a key opportunity created by digital preservation. 

Your stakeholders’ motivators will vary depending on the sector your organization operates in and the specific priorities, pressures and language that resonate within that context. They will also differ according to the role of the person you are approaching, as decision‑makers, practitioners and senior leaders will each respond to different drivers and evidence.

This section contains a sample set of common motivators by sector and by role to help you identify what might be most important to the stakeholders within your context.

Motivators by Sector

Motivators by Role

Internal Audiences - Strategic roles 

Internal Audiences - Governance and operational roles

Internal Audiences - User roles

External audiences - Strategic & Oversight Stakeholders

External audiences - Community and Use

External audiences - Assurance, Finance and Risk

1. Articulating your ‘Ask’ 

Once you understand the digital materials you want to preserve and your current digital preservation capability, you can define what you would like to happen next to help you achieve your goal – this is your ‘ask.’ In the first instance this could be a request to join a working group or complete a training course, or as you make progress larger scale ‘asks’ could include securing approval to hire additional digital preservation staff, becoming a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition to strengthen your support network, implementing a policy or procedure, or even developing or deploying a digital preservation system.

By breaking down your overall goal into the steps you need to take to support effective digital preservation in your organization, and by undertaking small achievable tasks, you can help:

1. Make invisible problems visible by highlighting risks and challenges that may otherwise go unnoticed.

2. Build organizational buy‑in by engaging colleagues and decision‑makers in the need for action.

3. Unlock funding and resources that enable digital preservation activities to progress.

4. Shape policy and long‑term planning by ensuring digital preservation is reflected in strategic frameworks.

5. Drive behavioral change and good practice through ongoing communication and reinforcement.

6. Build partnerships and community by connecting stakeholders with shared goals.

7. Accelerate understanding, innovation and adoption of new methods, tools, and approaches.

8. Strengthen long‑term sustainability by embedding digital preservation within organizational culture and priorities.

By understanding the different ways advocacy has impact, you can better define your long-term goals and communicate them as a series of clear ‘asks.’ You can also use DPC RAM or CAT to determine your priorities and translate them into realistic goals.

2. Identifying Stakeholders 

Successful advocacy starts with a clear understanding of who your stakeholders are, what matters to them and how they can influence progress against your goals. Because digital preservation spans multiple parts of an organization, you will often need to engage colleagues across IT, archives, governance, legal, procurement, program teams, and senior leadership, each of whom have their own priorities and constraints.

Using a Stakeholder Map can help you understand where stakeholders sit in relation to your goals, and who to approach first. Those with both high power and high influence, such as CIOs, CTOs or Heads of Information Governance, are key players who can approve policy, allocate funding, or authorize organizational change – but you may need to approach other colleagues first, before you reach these stakeholders. Others may have high power but less influence, such as procurement teams or finance leads. These stakeholders act as decision gatekeepers because they control resources and governance processes. Individuals with lower power but high influence, including archivists, information managers and IT administrators, shape everyday workflows and organizational culture, while those with lower power and influence may still contribute to digital preservation outcomes through their involvement in specific processes.

Understanding these dynamics in your organization helps you prioritize engagement and tailor your approach so that each stakeholder receives the right message, in the right way, at the right time.

3. Understanding your stakeholders’ motivators 

Role related motivators

Once you have identified your stakeholders, you can begin to understand their drivers, or motivators. These are factors that motivate action or resistance and identifying these can help you frame digital preservation in a way that feels relevant, understandable, and convincing to each audience.

Creating Stakeholder Scenarios helps you get into the mindset of your stakeholders and understand their role‑specific motivators, enabling you to go on and tailor messages that position digital preservation as a solution to their needs and challenges once you have uncovered this information. For example:

If you can, having a conversation with your stakeholder directly about the challenges they face will help you uncover less visible or less obvious challenges they may be facing (there is no need to mention digital preservation at this stage - you are just fact finding!). If you cannot speak to them directly, talking to colleagues around you, or within your stakeholder’s department, can also be useful in completing this exercise.

Organizational level motivators

You could also undertake some research into your organization’s strategic documents to help you see both the organizational landscape, and pair this with the personal or role-specific motivations you uncover within it. This dual perspective strengthens your advocacy by ensuring your messages resonate with real priorities, addressing real pain points and acknowledging the real constraints people operate within.

A practical way to uncover these high-level motivators is to review an organization’s Strategic Plan, business strategy, digital strategy, annual report, or other guiding document. These documents often reveal explicit priorities such as innovation, regulatory compliance, or a mandate to preserve cultural memory as well as implicit concerns like resource constraints, reputational risk or technical debt.

4. Creating tailored messages that resonate with your stakeholders 

Match up the motivators you have identified for your stakeholders with the tangible benefits your digital preservation ‘ask’ can deliver.

This translates technical digital preservation concepts into meaningful, relatable outcomes: instead of describing systems or workflows, you can describe how preservation helps your stakeholders meet obligations, avoid risks, save time, unlock opportunities, or achieve strategic goals.

A strong tailored message clearly links their motivator with a benefit and ends with a specific ask.

By grounding your message in the stakeholder’s own language, pressures, and responsibilities, you make your advocacy more relevant, persuasive, and actionable.

5. Using storytelling 

Effective advocacy is not just about presenting the facts; it is about telling a story that resonates with your audience. People connect with meaning, emotion, and relevance, not always just logic and data. That is why storytelling can form an important part of your digital preservation advocacy activity. The two models below are examples which show how to structure what you have already learned about your stakeholders into communications that feel personal, persuasive, and tailored to their needs.

You can use whichever feels best for you, or something else completely! Just remember to relate your ‘ask’ to your stakeholders’ motivators in a way which will matter to them (not you).

NOSE

• Need: Empathize with your audience by showing them that you understand their own needs – what is the problem they might be trying to solve? (their motivator)

• Opportunity: Use motivators to identify a way to introduce the opportunities that digital preservation enable - how can digital preservation form part of a solution to their problem? See Section 4. Messages for Digital Preservation Advocacy for inspiration.

• Solution: Identify what you need to move your solution forward (your “ask”) e.g., a meeting to showcase digital preservation benefits, extra training, more server capacity, or an updated policy. Remember, start with a small, achievable ask that supports your larger goal!
  

• Evidence: Use facts and figures, graphs, and charts to show how this might work or what could happen in the absence of digital preservation e.g., projected cost savings and efficiencies, data losses, case studies. See Section 7. Evidence to Support your Ask for inspiration.

Head, Heart and Hand

• Head (thinking): Provide clear, evidence‑based explanations of risks, benefits, and long‑term value so your audience understands why digital preservation matters.

• Heart (feeling): Use motivators to create stories, values, and messages to make preservation meaningful and emotionally resonant.

• Hand (action): Offer practical next steps, tools, and achievable starting points so people feel empowered to contribute (your “ask”).

6. Choosing communications channels and opportunities 

Once you have created your messages and decided how to structure your communications, the next step is to deliver these effectively. Advocacy for digital preservation requires reaching diverse stakeholders, each of whom will have different priorities and levels of understanding. Choosing the right communication channel and format is essential for impact and will differ for each audience and each stage of your advocacy journey.

The likelihood is that you will start by introducing digital preservation into more informal conversations first where your audience is diverse and potentially lower level, before moving to more formal presentations and proposals with more specific and senior members of your organization.

As you move through your advocacy journey, you could communicate your message through:

Informal conversations 

Advocacy often happens in informal settings pre-/post meetings, in the kitchen, on the fringes of larger events or activities. Be ready with your tailored messages to explain why digital preservation matters and how it aligns with organizational goals.

Intranet, social media and Blogs 

If your organization uses an intranet or publishes a blog series, you could use the opportunity to introduce your work and explain how digital preservation impacts and supports the organization’s work and broader strategic objectives. You could share stories of the collections you manage, successes or a few practical and useful tips for those who are less familiar with digital preservation. 

Events and occasions 

Anniversaries or commemorative events are a great opportunity to engage with marketing and PR departments, and dig into the collections you are preserving to provide material to support the campaign in question…and then to remind your organization that the access to the materials you provided, in the format required, was only possible (and will only continue to be possible) through the implementation of effective digital preservation! You could also capitalize on the annual World Digital Preservation Day celebrations each November to share your advocacy messages and promote your cause through the distribution of flyers and stickers, by holding breakfast briefings or arranging to set up a stand in public or communal areas. 

Working groups or taskforces 

There may be opportunities to include digital preservation in discussions as part of established and aligned working groups within your organization, e.g., Knowledge Management, Data Retention, IT, Legal and Compliance meetings. If you can secure an invite to an aligned group like this, you have a great opportunity to share how digital preservation impacts and supports their work through a brief presentation or webinar. Equally, if you have a digital preservation working group, invite members of other teams and departments along to explain how your work intersects with theirs. 

More formal briefing papers, reports, and business cases 

Once you have begun to engage with senior leaders and policy makers, provide concise, evidence-based documents to communicate the benefits of digital preservation for the organization, as they relate to strategic objectives. These should highlight risks, benefits, strategic value, and evidence! 

7. Timing your approach

While there is no need to delay informal conversations, the timing of a formal request can significantly influence its success. Understanding your organization’s internal rhythms, such as budget cycles, policy review schedules, and periods of high or low activity, will help you align your advocacy efforts for maximum impact.

• Budget cycles: If you are seeking funding, identify when budgets are planned or reviewed and time your proposals so they can be properly considered.

• Policy updates: If you are advocating for a policy change or the introduction of a new policy, find out when existing policies are due for review and use those moments as natural opportunities to present your case.

• Stakeholder availability: Pay attention to when key decision‑makers are most receptive. Look for quieter periods in their schedules or recurring opportunities where you naturally cross paths, such as regular meetings or events.

Being strategic about timing helps ensure your message is delivered at a moment when it is most likely to be heard and acted upon.

8. Common challenges and how to respond. 

9. Maintaining momentum

Maintaining momentum is a vital part of effective advocacy. Following up and being prepared to repeat your message more than once is often necessary, especially when competing priorities, limited resources or lack of time make it difficult for others to engage. Anticipate these barriers and approach them as a normal part of the process rather than a setback. Reflect carefully on any feedback you receive, whether it is positive, negative, or simply silence.

All responses are useful: they help you refine your approach, adjust your timing, or reframe your message using different or more compelling motivators. Persistence, responsiveness, and a willingness to adapt will keep your advocacy moving forward even when it feels like progress is slow.

Before you start to advocate, it is important to understand your context, current capabilities and the type and volume of content your organization holds. By assessing where you are now; your policies, resources, and practices, you can define where you want to be and prioritize where you direct your advocacy efforts to have the greatest impact.

Knowing what you have

The DPC Digital Asset Register (DAR) Toolkit can help you and your organization visualize and understand the scope of your digital holdings. Once you have this, it can help make your case for preservation more concrete and urgent. You can use this resource to:

• Create visibility - Many stakeholders underestimate the volume and complexity of digital assets or find it too complex to wrap their heads around. Using the DAR toolkit to create an asset register provides a clear inventory, showing what is at risk if preservation is not addressed.

• Highlight business-critical assets - The toolkit encourages categorization by value and risk, helping you to demonstrate that digital preservation is not just about archives—it is about protecting core business records, compliance data, and intellectual property.

• Provide evidence for resource requests - A well-documented asset register provides you with hard data to justify investment in storage, systems, and staff. It moves the conversation from abstract principles to quantifiable needs.

• Support risk assessment - By identifying assets and their vulnerabilities, the toolkit helps you to explain the potential consequences of inaction, such as legal exposure, reputational damage, or operational disruption.

Once you have completed your Digital Asset Register, you can cross-reference your content with the DPC Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Materials as a way to identify and prioritize what is most at-risk amongst your collection, helping you focus your efforts where they are most urgently required. You could also use the Digital Archiving: Storage media prioritization tool, developed by the team at the University of Glasgow, to help you do this.

Understanding your capabilities

The DPC Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) is designed to help you understand your organization’s maturity in digital preservation and, by applying this model, you can produce evidence-based data about your organization’s capability and maturity over time, as well as being able to answer questions such as:

• Where is our organization now?

• What are the gaps in our organization’s preservation capabilities and what do we need to progress?

• Where would we like to be in the future?

• How close is our organization to reaching the level of preservation maturity we would like?

• What should the priorities be for improving our organization’s preservation capability?

• What support and resources do we need to help our organization move forward?

• How has our organization’s capability improved over time?

DPC Members may access benchmarking data derived from RAM assessments across the Coalition to help strengthen a case for action.

Other maturity models you could use in the same way include:

• Digital Preservation Management Model

• NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation

• Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model

The DPC’s Competency Framework and accompanying Competency Audit Toolkit (CAT) link digital preservation skills directly to workforce capability, organizational risk, and service sustainability.

By articulating the skills, knowledge and behaviors required across all roles within an organization, the framework helps practitioners demonstrate that digital preservation is not just a technical function but a shared responsibility requiring planned investment in people as well as technology. The Competency Audit Toolkit enables teams to assess current capability against these competencies, identify gaps and present the results in a structured, non‑confrontational way that resonates with senior leaders.

Used as part of your advocacy endeavors, the outputs from the DPC RAM and CAT can support clear asks for essential digital preservation infrastructure and processes, as well as training, recruitment, role definition or resourcing, and can help reframe digital preservation as an enabler of resilience, compliance and strategic value rather than an optional or specialist add‑on.

This Advocacy Toolkit is designed to be used, not read cover‑to‑cover.

It brings together practical tools including templates, examples and message‑building frameworks which are supported by guidance to help you apply them effectively in your own organizational context. You can dip in and out of the toolkit as needed, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Use tools independently, or together

Each tool in this toolkit can be used on its own:

• Templates can be reused, adapted, and revisited over time.

• Tables and examples can be copied directly into your own documents (but they are more effective if you tailor them to your own context first!)

• Message building and storytelling frameworks can be applied to emails, presentations, funding requests, or informal conversations.

The accompanying guidance explains why a tool exists and how to use it effectively, but it is not mandatory if you already have experience or clarity in a particular area.

Expect to return, reflect, and iterate

Advocacy is rarely a one‑off activity. You may return to the same tools as your context changes or you encounter new stakeholders, shifting priorities or new opportunities.

This toolkit is designed to support small, achievable actions, as well as reflection and refinement. You are free to return to it as you make progress and your confidence and influence grow. 

What is Advocacy?

Advocacy is the act of actively supporting, promoting, or arguing in favor of a cause, policy, or idea. It involves influencing decision-makers, raising awareness, and establishing people and resources to achieve your desired outcome. In the context of digital preservation, this means making the case for why preserving digital content matters, ensuring stakeholders understand its value and securing the commitment, funding and policies needed to sustain it. Advocacy has become a core competency for digital preservation practitioners because our work often happens behind the scenes, which makes risks and needs largely invisible to those who control budgets, priorities, and strategy. Practitioners must therefore advocate for resources, policies, staffing and long‑term commitment to ensure digital materials remain accessible for as long as required.

Other terms and definitions

This Digital Preservation Advocacy Toolkit is designed to be used, not read cover‑to‑cover. It brings together practical tools including templates, worksheets, examples and message‑building frameworks which are supported by guidance to help you apply them effectively in your own organizational context. You can dip in and out of the toolkit as needed, depending on where you are on your advocacy journey or what you are trying to achieve.

	Introduction An overview and definition of Advocacy and key terms used within this Toolkit. Use this to find out more about what we mean by advocacy and why this is important for digital preservation.
	How to use the Advocacy Toolkit An explanation of what the Toolkit contains, and how to use the tools and templates it offers. Use this to get started!
	Before you Start Tips to help you prepare background information about your context and capability, which can then be used to help you develop and implement your advocacy goals. Use this to establish where you are now and where you would like to be.
	Step-by-Step Guide to Planning your Advocacy activities A step-by-step guide which starts with articulating your 'ask,' and moves on to identifying stakeholders and their motivators, before crafting and delivering mesages that resonate and result in action. Use this to create an Advocacy action plan.
	Sample Motivators A bank of sample motivators and stakeholder scenarios by sector, role and audience type. Use the language provided to help you identify motivators for stakeholders in your own context
	Messages for Digital Preservation Advocacy A bank of sample messages which link digital preservation to some common motivators. Use the language provided to help you create tailored messages which work for your own context
	Evidence to Support your 'Ask' An explanation of why evidence is important for advocacy, alongside some templates and tools for generating supporting data, as well as examples from the media. Use this to help strengthen your advocacy messages.
	Advocacy Case Studies Examples of what real-life advocacy looks like in different organization types. Use these examples as inspiration for advocacy activities you might undertake in your organization
	Further resources A list of additional guidance materials relating to resources which can be used to support your digital preservation advocacy. Use this as a reference point for stengthening your advocacy plan.

The Advocacy Toolkit was first created by DPC Members in 2019 as the Executive Guide on Digital Preservation, with the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Memory of the World PERSIST Project. Since then, the profile of the DPC Community - as well as the digital preservation community at large - has grown and developed, and we now find ourselves considering a significantly expanded set of challenges (see the Bit List 2025 for context).

This Advocacy Toolkit replaces and expands upon the original Executive Guide on Digital Preservation to take into consideration that evolution and our current context. It was created in a time of conflict, climate crisis, and political instability, and acknowledges new and current drivers and motivations for preserving digital materials. The resource draws on the experience and expertise of the digital preservation community and includes examples, templates and practical tips contributed by DPC members. We are enormously grateful to our Advocacy Toolkit Working Group of members and all those who have shared their advocacy efforts, resources, and perspectives; by learning from each other, we strengthen the case for digital preservation everywhere.