No single organization ever wins lasting policy change on its own. Lasting success involves team play. It involves recognizing and affirming the different strengths that varying organizations bring and working with them in a manner that is scaled to their capacity and grounded in their unique assets.
We power movements to become more than the sum of their parts by equipping them with the media and communications support that enables the larger team to maximize their impact. We eliminate redundancy and wasted staff time to realize economies of scale. We identify top messages, map the media landscape, and define an overall communications strategy to shape the public discourse and shift public opinion.
Media strategy is not just a necessity in any successful policy campaign. It is a medium through which to build high-performing coalitions.
Funders are an integral part of this work. In working alongside our funding partners for over 15 years, we have learned a few things about which investments are the most additive and make the biggest difference to achieving powerful, sustainable change.
Amplify New Voices
When it comes to creating policy change and moving public opinion, who gets heard matters. At ReThink, we refer to this as “voiceshare.”
While any “one message fits all” approach is destined to fail, strengthening message cohesion is critical to winning lasting change.
No single organization can win and sustain a policy victory. We win when we maximize our efforts and strengths across movements in pursuit of a shared goal.
Every data point is an opportunity for learning, allowing us to refine and adapt our collective work and strengthen our hand for the next fight.
When we are first to respond to the news, we have the power to shape the narrative and the public perspective on the solution.
Experimentation is critical. It’s how we leverage successes, share best practices, and prepare groups to navigate a constantly changing landscape.
Ensuring a deep bench of diverse and trained spokespeople across a sector is critical to developing new leadership and ensuring that our organizations and our issues remain relevant to new generations and fights in the work ahead. Challenge the status quo of spokesperson roles being held tightly by the most senior leadership. Champion the voices of those most impacted by the issues and policies you are working to advance. Invest in a diversity of spokespeople at both the local and national levels who will, in turn, appeal to a broader spectrum of journalists and news outlets.
Mapping the media and opinion landscape on an issue lets groups see where there are opportunities and where threats exist and whether our messages are resonating or not. These findings shouldn’t belong to any single organization, they belong to the movement—with different organizations discussing shared challenges and insights that require shared strategies and responses. Therefore, stop funding proprietary messaging and opinion research.
With limited resources, we have to look for “economies of scale” that eliminate redundancies and lift all ships, whether those are well-resourced organizations or not. For example, when we provide media and opinion tracking, press lists, and rapid response support for a movement, we save every organization staff time.
Winning lasting change is a team effort. Every organization has its unique brand, constituency, and role to play, but harnessing those strengths in concert with one another builds the most power. Ensure that your measurements of success and reporting guidelines don’t inadvertently reinforce competition across movements. Instead, invest in collaborative strategies and practices that focus on impacts, eliminate redundancies, and don’t inadvertently promote unhelpful competition.
Today’s media environment requires fielding urgent requests and managing crisis communications scenarios. It means monitoring the issues 24/7 and helping organizations and community members respond quickly. We respond immediately or we miss the news cycle and the opportunity to shape the narrative altogether. Movements need dedicated communications capacity steeped in an in- depth knowledge of the issues, the groups, and the media landscape that they are operating in.
If you work for a foundation and want to learn about what we can do for your sectors and your grantees, please reach out.
If you work for a progressive organization and want to find out about training your spokespeople, please contact us.
If you want to learn more about how building spokespeople’s voiceshare contributes to movement-building and winning on a policy level, please let us know.
