Building and Executing a Successful Ballot Campaign

2024-2025, Vote Yes for Prop L Campaign, Cape Girardeau, Missouri

The Cape Girardeau Public Library needed to pass Proposition L, a funding measure, in a tax-averse county with a history of ballot fatigue and voter skepticism toward tax increases. I organized and chaired the Vote Yes Committee, taking responsibility for strategy, materials, and stakeholder coordination from the ground up.

I built and led a stakeholder committee designed to be intentionally representative of different patron groups across the community, ensuring the campaign reflected the voters it needed to persuade. I designed and coordinated campaign materials, managing print production and confirming every piece met compliance requirements before distribution. I advised the media strategy for the campaign and led the response when local media ran critical coverage, managing that risk directly and using it as an opportunity to showcase transparency and care.

Proposition L passed with over 70% of the vote, and the Cape Girardeau Public Library is sustainably funded for years to come. 

Work completed: Campaign committee formation and leadership, stakeholder coalition building, campaign material design and production, regulatory compliance, media strategy, response to critical press coverage.

Case study: Rural County Library System 

May-July 2026, Pre-Campaign Community Research and Strategic Recommendations, Rural Upper Midwest

A rural county library system was preparing for a tax increase request in 2-3 years in a deeply conservative county with a complicated history of ballot fatigue. Library leadership needed a clear picture of who their community actually was, what drove their skepticism, and how to build trust years out from a campaign.

I conducted demographic and psychographic research, a media and channel audit, stakeholder interviews, and built audience personas. The resulting research summary gave the library's consulting team a grounded, evidence-based foundation for their long-range communications strategy, with specific recommendations on messaging, channel selection, and community engagement tactics tailored to the county's distinct conditions.

Work completed: Community and audience research, stakeholder interviews, audience personas, media channel audit, strategic recommendations.

Case study: Community-Informed Vision for the Library

2023-2024, Strategic Planning Subcommittee Leadership, Cape Girardeau, Missouri

As funding was scheduled to sunset, I led the Strategic Planning Subcommittee as a Trustee on the Cape Girardeau Public Library Board of Trustees, working to capture honest insights and build a 3-5 year vision for how the library could better serve our community.

I organized targeted focus groups and listening sessions with key community partners executed by other Trustees and library staff, designed to surface specific, real needs instead of general impressions. Those sessions returned concrete findings that shaped the board's thinking in ways broader, less personal survey data couldn't capture. In one session, a public school teacher described how her students relied on the library as a warming center during winter months, a detail that reframed how the board understood the library's role in the community beyond programming and materials access.

Coalesced with insights from other listening sessions, this qualitative research helped identify which expansions and additions would be most meaningful to Cape Girardeau residents. That vision directly informed the "Vote Yes for Prop L" campaign, illustrating community-grounded examples of what expanded library support could meaningfully deliver.

Work completed: Subcommittee leadership, community listening session design and facilitation, stakeholder engagement across community partners, qualitative insight synthesis, translation of community research into campaign strategy.

Tell me about your library. 

If you have a funding campaign, ballot initiative, community engagement challenge on the horizon, or other library-related business, let’s connect.