Promoting your protest

Nobody will come to your protest if you don’t tell them about it! That’s why it’s so important to promote your protest to your pro-life contacts, and anywhere that pro-life people will be. Find the tools you’ll need below, starting with a “heads up” email message to all your pro-life contacts.

Promoting your Protest through email

You will want to send out at least two emails about your protest, and the Defund Planned Parenthood team has provided you with templates for both:

  • Heads up email alert: Send this out immediately so all your pro-life contacts know that your protest is coming on April 2. You might want to send a version of this message out more than once.
  • Last minute email announcement: Send this email out on March 31 or April 1 to remind people of your protest.

For both of these emails, follow these guidelines:

  1. Write as if you’re addressing a single person. People are more likely to respond to an individual plea (“Dear Friend”) than one addressed to a whole group (“Dear Friends”).
  2. Avoid using the word “we” to refer to a group that the recipient is not a part of, since that can be subtly alienating. Using “we” to mean “you and I” will help your recipients feel included.
  3. Keep paragraphs short—a maximum of 4 lines of normal length.

Promoting your Protest in church bulletins

Bulletin announcements and pulpit announcements are solid gold for drawing people out to your Protest—perhaps the most important promotional action you can take.

The national team has provided a sample bulletin announcement you can submit to churches for their bulletin or pulpit announcements. You may also wish to have the full Defund Planned Parenthood flyer printed in the bulletin, or have copies stuffed into bulletins (offer to have volunteers do the work).

Deadlines: Deadlines will vary by church, but we recommend submitting your bulletin announcements two Fridays before the Sunday you wish the announcement to run. Don’t miss these deadlines for the coming weeks’ bulletins:

Submit materials by:For bulletin date:
Friday, March 7Sunday, March 16
Friday, March 14Sunday, March 23
Friday, March 21Sunday, March 30

Since this is a free service, there’s no reason not to have an announcement in every church bulletin you can.

Follow up on sending your announcement with a phone call. If there are a lot of churches you need to reach, consider breaking up the list and having multiple members of your team make a handful of calls each.

Promoting your Protest on social media

Social media has become essential for getting the word out about important events like your Defund Planned Parenthood protest. If you’re not on social media, it would be a good idea to enlist someone for your Protest Team who can handle this side of the promotion effort.

Use whatever social media platform is popular among your pro-life contacts or is used by the social media manager on your Protest Team.

Make posts about your protest, being sure to include the time, date, and location of the protest in all your posts!

Check back here for more social media resources as April 2 draws closer.

Promoting your Protest with a customizable flyer

To help you promote your Protest anywhere you think there might be pro-life people, the Defund Planned Parenthood team has created a full-color, customizable flyer for you to use.

Take care to follow the instructions below precisely or you may not end up with a usable flyer:

  1. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader, which you can find here. This is the program you will use to open and edit your flyer.
  2. Download a copy of the flyer to your computer. [NOTE: The link to the flyer is found at the end of these instructions.] To download, right click the link and select the option to “Save link as.” When your computer asks where you want to save the file, choose an appropriate location and click “Save.” The flyer will not work correctly if you try to edit it in your web browser.
  3. Open the file and fill in the bracketed information with the details pertinent to your city. Several fields are required, including the basic information. Additional fields may be left blank or filled in with other information you feel is pertinent to your Protest.
  4. Important: If you do not have relevant information for any of the fields, be sure to delete any “space saver” text in those fields, or it will appear on your flyer.
  5. Save your customized flyer. Don’t just print out your customized flyer—save the flyer with your information as a new file with a different file name, too. Otherwise, the information you’ve filled in won’t be there next time you or someone else opens the file.
  6. Print your customized flyer. The flyer is designed to be printed on regular letter paper. You can print a small number of copies on your home computer. If you need a larger quantity, consider getting them printed at a professional print shop like FedEx Office or Office Depot.
    Note: Some Windows users have had trouble printing the customizable flyer. If you are having trouble, tell Adobe Reader to print the file, but before giving the final print command, go into the “Advanced Options” menu and choose “Print as Image” and it should print correctly.

Click here to download the customizable flyer! [PDF]

You can pass out the flyer at church, Christian or Catholic schools, or at any special events where interested people might be in attendance, or submit it to local churches for printing in the bulletin.