Colleen,

The two best options are advocating on the grounds that it will save money and it will keep the university competitive. When I was at the University of Missouri we advocated for the Office on the grounds that it would not only be able to justify its budget through cost savings but that it also would bring a host of additional benefits.

The AASHE resources Coordinator Salary Survey and the Newsletter Digest were both beneficial in highlighting the grants, research, programs, and educational opportunities that we were missing out on by not having an Office and Coordinator to handle them.

http://www.aashe.org/publications/surveys

http://www.aashe.org/publications/digest.php

We also played off rivalries and the "other universities are doing it" benchmark. Our biggest rival, Kansas University, had created an Office a few years before and so we pulled everything we could off their website to highlight what we could be doing but were not yet.

The other big factor we had was a strong show of student support for the creation of the office. At Mizzou students had consistently shown interest in sustainability initiatives and we were able to point to that as a reason for the university to take an active leadership role. Student support in the meeting is great from an advocacy stand point and educationally beneficial for the student(s) you bring with you.

I feel the best option is to highlight the ways the position and office can reduce workload and better the universities position.

Pat

Pat,

Thanks for your answer. I'm a student from a university in Chile and I had the same question. I hope other members from AASHE could support with comments.

Santiago.

I'd like to second everything that Patrick said  - I was involved in the process at University of Missouri also.  Now, a year and a half later, I'm a full time employee in the office that we helped to start.

I would add to Patrick's comments by emphasizing that it's important to put the issue in terms they understand and which speak to them.  For our university (and probably many others) finances and competitiveness were key issues and ones which we knew would speak to the administrators' concerns.  You'll want to make sure to frame it for your institution's specific circumstances (although these two concerns are pretty common).

I wanted to mention one key anecdotal point:  We put all of our advocacy materials in a small three ring binder and gave them to our chancellor so that he had all the information right at his fingertips.  We met with him and showed him what was in the binder and discussed each document very briefly (Since the hardest part is getting someone to look at something once, then it gets demystified and they're much more likely to look back through it later, we made sure he saw what was inside to make him curious). 

Our advocacy period took place over approximately nine months (July 2008-April 2009).  We gave him the binder at the beginning of the process; he brought it back out several months later and asked a specific quesiton about one of the documents.  To me, that meant that it had been useful and he had actually looked through it.  I'm not sure exactly how this would fit in with your proposal or if your proposal would replace it, but one of the strategies that helped our efforts the most was doing all of their homework for them so that it was easy for him to look through the content and say 'yes'.