Step‑by‑Step Guide to Planning your Advocacy activities

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.