Issue: From Webinar

Learn how to improve your advocacy (quickly) with state of the art research techniques. The perennial conflict in research – quality vs. speed – is a compromise no more, with quick-turn-around numeric tools and always-on focus groups you can trust, rigorous public opinion research and detailed audience engagement measures. Join Potential Energy as they share tips on research methodology and tools, and how you can get for-profit insights on a non-profit budget. Find out how to get deeper audience understanding that will make your messages truly connect with your audience for greater impact.

Optimize your climate messaging with the surprising results and important guidance gleaned from 76 climate persuasion experiments, presented by the social scientists who collectively analyzed them. Individual studies come out all the time (and the Lab loves to let you know about all of them), but it can be difficult to piece together the big picture from all the data points. That’s why it’s so valuable when researchers occasionally comprehensively review and synthesize a whole body of studies, such as this combined analysis of dozens of separate climate persuasion experiments in the US from the last 10 years. The social scientists will also share insights from their review of research on reducing political polarization on climate.

Using data on extreme weather to locally target messaging in areas experiencing it can dramatically increase impact. Through a pilot with Climate Central, the Innovation Team at the Partnership Project acquired a data set from NOAA of geographies impacted by extreme weather. They partnered with the National Wildlife Federation to examine the performance of two emails sent in July on extreme heat. They found people in the zip codes experiencing extreme heat for at least two consecutive days responded at a higher rate, doubling conversions. This confirms polling suggesting that local extreme weather influences opinions. Additional weather data sets from the NOAA are available by county, zip code, and Congressional district. This data is available for use to inform your online and offline targeting and match the right local extreme weather message/creative to the people impacted by that particular type of extreme weather. You can also watch a debrief video.

What is a strategy? How are your strategy and theory of change interrelated? How do you develop a power-building strategy?
In part 4 of our Power & Strategy training series, we spoke about all things strategy! We will be focusing on why having a power-building strategy is important and the steps to developing a transformative strategy. This training focused on:

Cover the basics of strategy – what it is, why it’s important, and its relationship to our theory of change and tactics

Give you some time to reflect on your current strategy and then share in small groups ​​

Share research on the importance of “strategic capacity” and the key capabilities necessary to build it 

An  “Organizing Pathway” provides a simple but effective structure for helping organizers combine in-person organizing with the reach and scale of digital tools. For UFR this has been central to their ability to unlock the power of their leaders at the scale needed to beat major corporations.

We test as one way to learn the answers to these and many more questions. We test because our assumptions and gut feelings are frequently wrong. “Testing” is the process of carefully trying out variations in what you do and measuring the results so you can learn what works. This webinar provides a step by step guide to the basics of testing and prepares you to conduct simple tests (such as on email or Facebook) and to be an informed partner if working with a research expert on more ambitious projects.

Opinion data reveals signs of increased climate concern across the U.S. We may very well be nearing the tipping point in public opinion so essential for action. So what type of climate messages do we need now? We at Potential Energy have been rigorously testing different message frames and have learned a lot about what to say (and what not to say) at this critical juncture in the climate change movement. So we share with you clear, concise, actionable takeaways about what words to use (and what words to definitely avoid) so that we can drive up support during this once-in-a-lifetime moment for action.            

The training featured two peer-to-peer text messaging case studies. Max Parish and Stephanie Bowman of the climate organization Mothers Out Front, gave specifics on how a small social justice group (not MOF) in North Carolina used a long but effective canvassing script delivered via text message (SMS) to help find new supporters for a racial justice fight and how Mothers Out Front uses SMS as part of their distributed organizing program to find members ready to help the organization expand into new turf.