Take Action: Letter Writing Guide

Thank you for your interest in joining our letter-writing campaign! Your personal involvement and decision to take action is an important and necessary first step for creating change.

Please keep these ideas in mind when writing your letter:

• Be polite. Our aim is to ask people to help us make changes to benefit the sport of skating; not to insult, condemn, or harass the people who receive our letters. Always write from the viewpoint that the person who will receive your letter is sincere and open to reason.

• Focus on the need to take action. Stress the importance and urgency of the issue, and emphasize that the recipient can help by getting involved and taking immediate action. Communicate the idea that taking action is the "Right Thing" to do.

• Keep to the point. A letter-writing campaign is most effective when everyone who writes requests the recipient to perform the same action. Please read carefully the background and instructions provided by the WSF for the specific Take Action item, and confine your letter and request to the matter at hand. Other complaints or requests may be impossible to address from a legal or practical point of view, in addition to being a distraction from the primary aim of the letter-writing campaign.

• Personalize your letter. Although we provide sample letters, if you take the time to write a letter in your own words instead, it will carry more weight. One particularly effective thing you can do to personalize your letter is to explain your connection to skating (are you a skater or coach yourself?) and why the matter you are writing about is of particular concern to you.

• In the first paragraph, briefly explain what you are writing about, and why it concerns you.

• The next paragraph can explain in more detail why you think this matter is important. This is a good place to appeal to the recipient's sense of justice or fairness, or similar widely-shared principles. Again, pay attention to the WSF's Take Action request for the specific focus of the appeal.

• Close by making your request and expressing confidence that the recipient of the letter will act upon it.