SaveMICity Initiative Honored in Statewide Diamond Awards Program
Here’s a special, advanced look at a press release the Michgian Municipal League will be sending out soon about a major award this SaveMICity effort recently received. It’s the first of two awards related to this initiative that we will be announcing to the world this month:
The SaveMICity initiative supported by the Michigan Municipal League and several partner organizations received a statewide honor recently through the Michigan Society of Association Executives (MSAE).
The League received a Silver Certificate in the 17th annual Diamond Award for the SaveMICity campaign that aims to fix Michigan’s broken municipal finance system. The award was in the government relations campaign for organizations with an annual budget of $1 million and greater.
The purpose and goal of SaveMICity campaign, found at SaveMICity.org, is to raise awareness among the public, business leaders, state legislators, and the media that Michigan’s system for funding its communities is broken and must be fixed for the state’s economy to succeed.
Across the country, Michigan ranks 50th—DEAD LAST—in investing in its communities since 2002. The results of this disinvestment are clear—crumbling roads, deteriorating infrastructure, cuts to local police and fire protection, and cost-cutting measures that led to disastrous consequences, such as the Flint water crisis.
After years of working within the existing paradigms, the Michigan Municipal League (MML), with the support of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation, started the SaveMICity legislative and policy push in 2016. The SaveMICity effort was dramatically enhanced into a broader public relations campaign in early 2018 thanks in part to the generous support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. January 2018, MML retained Vanguard Public Affairs team to put in place a multi-year strategy to fix Michigan’s broken system for funding its municipalities and to take the SaveMICity work to the next level.
Two separate EPIC-MRA polls commissioned in 2016 and again in 2018 clearly showed that the public wants their tax dollars spent on local services, but there is a dramatic lack of understanding about how communities are funded and why they continue to struggle as the state and national economy improves.
Several additional components have been added to the SaveMICity initiative in recent months, including the release of a three-minute animated video that explains the issue; a series of shorter, 30-second videos to drive home important messages for cities and villages across the state; storytelling efforts; messaging training for a new group of municipal ambassadors; an improved savemicity.org website with fresh content; more podcasts; and an updated social media presence. A new video was created toward the end of 2018 featuring League members talking about the impact of the broken system on their communities. You can find all the videos on the SaveMICity YouTube channel.
Learn more about the program at SaveMICity.org.
Michigan Municipal League is dedicated to making Michigan’s communities better by thoughtfully innovating programs, energetically connecting ideas and people, actively serving members with resources and services, and passionately inspiring positive change for Michigan’s greatest centers of potential: its communities. The League advocates on behalf of its member communities in Lansing, Washington, D.C., and the courts; provides educational opportunities for elected and appointed municipal officials; and assists municipal leaders in administering services to their communities through League programs and services. Learn more at mml.org.
