Behind the scenes of community-led advocacy in Hamilton, complete with resources and examples you can use!
Prepared by Jamie Stuckless and Kate Whalen – We are two local consultants who volunteered our time to support Cycle Hamilton’s Save Bike Share advocacy campaign. We were later brought on by Cycle Hamilton to compile our lessons learned, templates, and examples, and to make them available as community resources. We’ve presented this information in the form of an interview where we share our story. Along the way, we provide links to templates and examples that can be used by other community organizers looking to delegate to the City Council about municipal issues in Hamilton. When it comes to transferability, we hope the resources we’ve linked here are transferable to other organizations and community leaders.
A full list of resources are provided below. They are also referenced throughout the interview, to provide you with context for why and how we used them.:
- Our community mapping template
- Sample social media messaging
- Community meeting templates (e.g., email invitations, agendas)
- The slide deck from our delegation training workshop
- Sample delegations
JS: What was the motivation behind the Save Bike Share campaign?
KW: In late 2024, a staff report was sent to Council recommending that the City continue to provide operational funding for Hamilton’s bike share system. Staff assumed it would be a slam dunk. It really wasn’t on anyone’s radar that there could be an issue, but councillors debated the decision in the meeting. In the end they decided that they wanted more time and deferred the vote. It wasn’t the ideal outcome, but it was better than having them vote “no”. This gave us time to organize a campaign to get council to vote “yes” to City Staff’s recommendation for Bike Share’s continued funding.
How did you find out about the Council vote on whether to keep funding bike share?
An engaged citizen in our network was at the meeting and they flagged the issue with me and with Abbie Little, the Chair of Cycle Hamilton. We weren’t at the meeting ourselves, but they sent us the meeting minutes and we were really grateful to them for doing so.
What was the first thing you did once you realized there was a chance the City of Hamilton might pull its funding from bike share?
Honestly, the first thing I did was feel frustrated and disappointed, left wondering “how did this happen”. To answer that question, we requested to meet with City staff and Councillors to understand the background and what support from Cycle Hamilton would be helpful.
We got three key pieces of information:
- City Staff were preparing a formal report in response to Council’s questions raised. Read: we didn’t need to do that part!
- Clarification on what was currently top of mind for councillors – affordability, accessibility, liveability, and safety.
That our unique role was to make clear how Bike Share advances Council’s priorities through sharing real stories from real Hamiltonians. Sharing personal stories of Bike Share that directly reflected council priorities became the focus of our campaign.
How did you go about bringing people together?
First, we made a list of people who could help and who council needed to hear from, then we reached out to people we knew and asked them to reach out to people that they knew. We brought everyone together–first on Zoom to inform them of the issue and to develop a plan, then in person to prepare them on how to register and deliver their delegation.
What’s worth highlighting is that we didn’t just engage the usual cycling advocates. We considered council’s priorities and the importance of including diverse voices and perspectives–students, women, people on low incomes, seniors, new residents, business owners, and people from as many wards as possible (especially those without Bike Share!)
Resources:
What was the Save Bike Share campaign asking for?
Simply, our ask of council was to approve the Bike Share funding proposal that was recommended by City staff.
Our ask of the community was for as many people as possible to delegate to Council and share their stories about how bike share has impacted them and their mobility.
What supports did you offer to help people participate in the campaign?
Delegating can be intimidating and the process can be confusing. Our role was two fold:
1) mobilize people and
2) support them in delegating with confidence.
We hosted two in-person community meetings to share information, map out our approach, and take people through the steps of delegating to Council. We answered questions that people told us they had like how to register to delegate and what to include in their remarks, and we shared sample delegations.
Sample Resources:
- Community meeting tips and examples (here)
- Direct email communication samples (here)
- Delegation workshop slide deck (here)
- Sample delegation (written) (here)
- Sample delegation (video) (here)
- Link to city’s delegation webpage (here)
Did people show up to delegate?
Did they ever! We had 21 delegations at the meeting and 22 additional written submissions. The positive energy in Council chambers and online was tangible. Delegates sat together, encouraged each other, and shared words of congratulations in-person and online. By the 43rd moving delegation, there wasn’t a dry eye in sight.
Resources:
- Student delegation video (try not to cry) (here)
So, what did Council decide?
Not only did they vote ‘yes’, this time it was a slam dunk with a unanimous vote in support of continued funding for Hamilton Bike Share!
In the days following the Council vote, we heard a lot of positive feedback on how the Save Bike Share campaign helped get Council to “yes” on this vote, and how participants felt about being involved.
On Instagram (@craigcassar), Councillor Cassar shared the following, which exemplified a lot of what we heard from others involved:
Thank you to ALL of the delegates who spoke today and the many more who took the time to write the letters that were on the agenda. Today’s delegations were the most thoughtful and well-prepared I have seen. There were so many touching stories about how Hamilton Bike Share has made such a positive impact on the lives of Hamiltonians. We heard from parents, businesses, McMaster students, the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, new residents, long-time residents, young people, and older people who stay healthy by cycling. Thank you so much for your civic engagement and ensuring that all of Council understands what a vital role Hamilton Bike Share plays in our city.
What, if anything, would you have done differently?
By the time of the Council vote, we were so exhausted and ready to get back to our day to day lives that we didn’t really celebrate. Thinking back, we didn’t know if it was going to pass, but that shouldn’t have mattered. This campaign was a lot of effort from a lot of people, and we should have made plans to celebrate the effort and thank everyone involved, regardless of the outcome. We posted the good news on social media, but if I was to go back and do something differently, I would have made plans to bring people together again to celebrate and I would have done this as part of our planning process, instead of waiting and letting the momentum fade.
We also learned not to take any Council vote for granted.
This campaign sounds like it was powered by a lot of volunteer work, as well as privilege and some luck. How transferrable do you feel it is?
Yes, we were operating from a place of having two main assets:
- Relationships – We could get on the phone with Councillors, staff, and organization leaders.
- Time – We are entrepreneurs with flexibility in our schedules. Because City staff needed time to prepare their report, we also had a decent runway of several weeks before council met again to revisit the issue.
Notably, we were also supporting an ask that had already been put forward by staff, as opposed to pushing the City to consider something completely new.
Those were the assets we had, and then we asked what our community had, and here’s what they offered:
- Sponsorship budget for snacks (Thanks, The Biking Lawyer!)
- A space to host our meetings (Thanks, Amy from King John Building!)
- A unique passion for watching Council meetings and pulling out the highlights (Thanks Nancy Hurst!)
There are for sure unique elements of this campaign that are hard or impossible to replicate. Here are two key things that are highly replicable:
- Training your people how to delegate to Council. Unless that process changes, you can follow the steps we’ve outlined in that resource.
- Bringing your community together. You might not have access to what we had–you will have access to your own unique skill, resources, and connections. Leverage your community to pool your resources and do what you can, with what you have, where you’re at.
Consider us resources if you have questions along the way!
What advice do you have for other organizers to help them prepare for similar campaigns?
The Save Bike Share campaign was a relationship-centred campaign. We really relied on the relationships we had; we called on our community and people showed up willing to help. I’d encourage others to foster relationships and community, not just so people show up to do a delegation, but to take care of each other and show up and support each other. I think the biggest risk post-COVID and from online organizing is to lose those direct relationships.
I would echo the other lessons learned I have shared about bringing people together, sharing information, connecting with staff when possible, and providing supports to make it easy for people to participate. Maybe most importantly, stories matter. We saw first hand the impact of story telling during this campaign. The facts and figures in the staff report were necessary, but stories were what changed the hearts and minds of Councillors.
KW: What stood out to you about this campaign?
JS: I think the thing that really stands out to me is the work that was done to actively invite people into the campaign. It wasn’t simply an email asking people to delegate, you connected directly with people and let them know that their perspective and participation was really important. This way was definitely a lot more work, but it was a huge part of why this campaign was so impactful.
JS: Why put this resource together?
KW: After the day of delegations, a senior staff person remarked to our team that the Save Bike Share campaign was a “masterclass in advocacy”, and we thought that, yeah, we should turn this into some kind of resource. This resource is an opportunity for us to document our work both for other organizers who might find it helpful, and for ourselves to use on future campaigns. Because we know there will also be other campaigns at Cycle Hamilton.
A big thank you to Cycle Hamilton for giving us the opportunity to pull these resources together, otherwise, there’s a very good chance they would have remained distributed amongst emails and chat messages, unable to be readily shared, used, and built upon, which is our sincere hope for what we’ve created together.
If you'd like more resources provided by Cycle Hamilton, check out our full list on the Resources page.
