Project brief: In the wake of an unprecedented $1.7 billion in state funding cuts, California’s three public higher-education systems joined forces last April to stage a united advocacy day in Sacramento, asking lawmakers to restore higher education as a priority in the 2010–11 budget. The communications team in the UC Office of the President was asked to create a collateral piece that would help them make a compelling case. This advocacy piece was directed at state legislators to increase state funding and support for California’s three segments of higher education: California Community Colleges, California State University and the University of California.

Approach: We focused on collecting data from across all three systems that conveyed both the breadth of the successes of higher education and the economic impact of the system on the state. But we also wanted a piece that would grab lawmakers’ attention by keenly focusing disparate examples—in sheer numbers, dollars, projections and blunt quotes—of the risks we’re facing in California through chronic underfunding: how prison funding has outstripped that of higher education, how other states and countries are surpassing our investment and poaching our brightest faculty and students. We designed the piece with an aggressive palette and a broadsheet feel to (economically) convey a sense of news and urgency. We ended on an explicit call to action for legislators to put state money where our greatest minds will be.

Effectiveness: The project was successful because it was impactful. During the advocacy day, Governor Schwarzenegger held a roundtable with higher-education leaders where, citing statistics called out in the collateral piece, he pledged not to sign a state budget unless it included the restoration of roughly $848 million in higher-education funding that had been cut from the three systems. The final budget included that funding.

Pure. Simple. Effective. Quickly and simply brought forth the gravity of the situation in a powerful and frugal format.