The President’s Budget Eliminates Federal Funding for Public Media
The President’s budget submission to Congress marks the official start of the congressional budget and appropriations process, so it’s important that lawmakers hear from a significant number of constituents now.
Today, we will activate Protect My Public Media’s grassroots advocates, asking them to contact their lawmakers in support of public media funding.
Here’s how we will be activating our network:
Advocates who have taken recent action will be asked to call their legislators.
Advocates who have not taken recent action will be asked to email their legislators. Once they act, we will request that they call their Members.
Existing and prospective advocates will be targeted through digital ads to take a variety of different actions.
Advocates can also sign a petition by texting PUBLIC MEDIA to 52886.
We will strongly encourage advocates to conduct outreach for at least 10 days.
Resources
This could be the biggest national threat that public media faces this year. We urge you to send your audiences to the campaign to act.
We strongly encourage partners to send their audiences to the campaign to act. Promotional resources are available in the partner portal. The password is: welcome.
For your convenience, social media scripts, graphics and a newsletter summary are available for your use.
Best,
Loris Taylor
President & CEO
Native Public Media
www.nativepublicmedia.org
Partner Update
Dear Loris, We are a little more than a week into our effort to mobilize grassroots supporters to contact legislators in response to the President’s budget recommendation to eliminate federal funding for public media. Preliminary Results We are pleased to report that more than 29,000 emails have been sent and 1,000 calls have been made to legislators in support of federal funding for public media in a little more than a week. Additionally, we’ve collected 3,500 petition signatures in support of funding. The results are strong considering that this is the President’s fourth budget proposal to cut funding, and we have consistently secured funding, despite such proposals. Additionally, several Members of Congress have signaled that they will not take up this year’s budget, and plan to move directly to the appropriations process which determines how much federal funding is provided to specific programs. Upcoming Engagement Efforts We will continue to mobilize advocates to take various actions through this weekend. We strongly encourage partners to send their audiences to the campaign to act. Promotional resources are available in the partner portal. The password is: welcome. In the following week or so, the campaign will switch to a new mobilization effort. As in past years, grassroots advocates will ask their legislators to sign onto the public broadcasting “Dear Colleague” funding letters. The “Dear Colleague” letters are a critical opportunity to identify public media supporters in Congress, and we expect advocates to help boost the overall number of signers this year. Resources will be available to help promote the effort. If you have questions, our contact information is below. Best regards, The Protect My Public Media Team