Audience: Environmental 'Base'

A social media toolkit drawing attention to clean energy tax credits and savings that are at risk of being cut by Congress this year.

Up your impact this session and learn advanced techniques for educating policymakers, drawn from a comprehensive review of research. This training builds on our “101”-level content (https://www.climateadvocacylab.org/policymaker-contact), and we recommend reviewing that material prior to participating.

We are in tough, uncertain, disempowering times right now. And yet we’ve been here (or someplace close) before. Looking back to Lab newsletters from the first year of Trump’s prior term, we wrote about dealing with ‘dark times’ and pushing back to save the EPA from assault. A core point from that advice still holds true: cultivating a sense of empowerment (for ourselves and our supporters) is the candle in the dark that will kindle hope, resistance, and progress. That’s why the opposition is obsessed with snuffing it out through intimidation, posturing power, and wanton disruption. In social science, we refer to empowerment as a constellation of “efficacy” beliefs. This newsletter hasn’t covered efficacy in-depth since the first Trump Administration, though much new research has emerged in recent years, including a number of field research projects we conducted with various partners. In today’s newsletter I’ll cover the latest on what we know about efficacy, along with examples and practical tips for fostering empowerment among supporters.

In 2025, the only thing we can expect is the unexpected. Political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and climate-related weather events – it’s … a lot. How do we prepare for big, unexpected events, keep our eyes on the prize, and continue to grow stronger as advocates, organizations, and movements?

Following our training “Recruitment and Retention: Building Your Base and Keeping Folks Around,” this tip sheet offers practical guidance on how to bring new people into your work and keep them engaged over time.

Join us for an hour as we dive into best practices of recruitment strategies and how to foster entry points for new people in your organization.

Join us for an hour as we dive into best practices of recruitment strategies and how to foster entry points for new people in your organization.

Extreme weather events. Attacks on our democracy. Crises in our communities. We’re living and working in an increasingly chaotic environment, with more pressure to respond to crises and more channels to do so. In this training, we’ll walk through how to prepare for the unexpected.

In this training, we’ll walk through how to prepare for the unexpected. We’ll talk about how to build grassroots power and shift the narrative in big moments, while being respectful and collaborative.

The Climate Advocacy Lab seeks to provide a comprehensive archive of research and insights for the movement. By keeping our ear to the ground, receiving submissions from you all, and scouring over 69 academic journals, we have added 459 polls, case studies, social science papers and other resources published in 2024 to our Resource Library. To help you make sense of them all, we’ve highlighted some of the most notable trends and individual resources below. Read the whole roundup on our site, with additional sections covering the Inflation Reduction Act, clean energy, public opinion, and perceptions of activism.