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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we're sharing part two of how to defend against attacks on your federal funding.
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So, stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Cath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive non profit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast.
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Hey there, folks.
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Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because there is so much more still to discuss about how we can defend against ongoing attacks on your federal funding.
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In last week's episode, we focused on strategies that are connected to engaging your elected officials, particularly your members of Congress, and getting them to do everything in their power to fight for your funding.
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So that's awesome, and I'm hoping that you're continuing on that work, because it will be needed in the weeks and months to come.
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In this episode, what we're going to focus on is the second piece, which is shaping public opinion and getting members of the community to, first of all, be on board with the continuation of your funding.
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But even more so to get them to start raising their voices in support of your funding and in opposition to the insane behavior of this administration of cavalierly starting and stopping, randomly shutting off critical funding for so many different programs that benefit members of the community.
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So this is all about how we're going to get the members of our communities pulling for us in this fight.
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I mentioned this last week, but I think it's really important to say again, which is that a powerful lesson that we've learned in these last couple of weeks with the administration engaging in this completely erratic behavior, interrupting, interfering, creating havoc with vital funding for programs that help real people in real communities.
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The most powerful lesson in what happened when they did that.
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Is that thousands upon thousands of constituents, members of the public, screamed about it and said, What are you doing?
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You can't do this.
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And they specifically screamed about it to their members of Congress.
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And then that lit a fire under the members of Congress.
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So all that pushback happened.
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And what's important to notice is that when it happened, When, all of a sudden, thousands of people were up in arms and angry and pushing back, the administration backed down.
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They did it piece by piece, and they basically said, oh, wait, no, that popular program over there, no, we didn't mean that one, and oh, we didn't mean that other popular one either.
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We didn't mean any of the programs that people like.
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And so that told us a couple of really important things.
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Number one, pushback works, and specifically it works on this administration.
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And number two, is that if something becomes deeply unpopular, that matters.
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It affects the behavior of the administration.
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In combination, that is such valuable strategic information for us, and we have to use it.
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We don't have unlimited tools to fight for all the things we need to fight for, and particularly to fight for our continued funding, because for most non profits, loss of federal funding or deep cuts in federal funding would have pretty devastating consequences.
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We're not about to let that happen.
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So we need to make very effective use of the strategic tools we have.
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So today we're going to focus on the very valuable tool of shaping public opinion.
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Getting people on our side, and then engaging members of the public to help be that voice that pushes back and says, no, you can't do that.
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We need those services here in our community.
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They're valuable to us and you cannot mess that up.
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When we're able to do that, we have clear evidence that the administration will back off.
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And one of the reasons for that, to be aware of, is that, honestly, this president cares a lot about popularity and ratings, so to speak.
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Remember, this is basically a TV dude, and so he's all about the ratings.
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He wants to be popular.
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He wants everybody to be happy with his stuff.
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And if he starts hearing that stuff he's doing isn't popular, he changes course.
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Now, it's deeply troubling on a lot of levels that he basically has zero convictions, zero moral core, zero any underpinning beliefs that actually guide decision making.
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That's not a good thing in a president.
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But, weirdly, from a standpoint of advocacy, it is very useful strategic information.
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Because if we're able to rally public opinion and public voices, to express their displeasure and to make an action of the administration unpopular among the voters and among the viewing public, as it were, then he'll change it.
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He'll do something different.
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And furthermore, he'll lie about it and say, oh no, I never meant to do that in the first place.
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Whatever.
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Personally, I don't think it's that productive to expend energy on being upset or irritated by the fact that the man lies all the time.
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It's who he is.
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We've known that for a long time.
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He's made it very clear.
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So, you can get upset about that, or you can just say, yep, that's part of the deal.
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From a strategic standpoint, how are we going to use what we know to fashion the most effective advocacy tools?
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And here's what we now know.
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Pushback works on this administration.
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They want to carry out their agenda, their whole Project 2025 blueprint, but they don't want to have to deal with the blowback from the American public.
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And when they get that blowback, they fold pretty quickly under pressure.
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So the lesson in that for us is apply more pressure.
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Be vocal, be loud, be persistent, and push back.
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That said, we want to be as strategic as possible about how we do that for a couple of reasons.
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One, limited bandwidth.
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We got to do this in addition to all the other work that's on our plate, and these kinds of chaotic interruptions in access and funding make our work harder already, and just adds to the pile of things on our plate.
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So, we don't want to be directing our pushback in ways that's not helpful.
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We want to be effective.
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And so what that means in part is that our messaging has to be highly strategic around this.
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We don't want to waste time on messaging that doesn't work.
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And I have noticed that the most effective messaging that has produced the greatest result in terms of backing the administration down and pulling members of Congress in and getting them to take action is simple messaging that communicates the impact of the funding on real people's lives.
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We actually have two audiences here.
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We have government officials as one audience because we want them pushing back with us.
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We want our allies to help us maximize the power in our voice.
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But we also must engage the public.
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We must engage members of our community, our neighbors, to help them understand how these kinds of draconian acts are harming them and their neighbors.
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That this isn't abstract, this is not owning the libs, this is not a bunch of winning.
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This is doing direct harm to the communities people live in.
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And we have to help them see how that connects.
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We began to explore this a couple of episodes ago where we were starting to talk about the need for strategic messaging to combat the right wing messaging that basically says all government is bad and certainly all government funded programs are bad.
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And that the people who receive services from government programs are generally bad.
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So we already know we have to counter that.
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But in this specific situation where it is our funding that is under direct threat, our mission becomes a lot more focused.
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And our communication, our messaging wants to be even more focused.
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So that's what I want to zero in on with this conversation is specifically around defending our funding, and getting the average person in our community to understand why this matters to them.
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Because ultimately what we want is not only congressional leaders and state and local leaders in government stepping up and rallying to the cause and saying we must keep this funding flowing.
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It is vital to the health and well being of our communities.
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We want members of the community invested in saying that as well, and understanding that and saying yeah that's right, we need this here.
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What are you doing?
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Don't take that from us.
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Initially, this first round of attacks, people got upset in part because they began to understand that the funding being targeted was stuff they knew about and cared about.
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Things that just about everybody walking around understands are things like Meals on Wheels.
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Virtually every community in the country has got a Meals on Wheels program.
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And virtually everybody in every community knows someone who benefits from that program.
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So it was very easy to communicate to people, Hey, this is an attack on Meals on Wheels.
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Why on earth would you attack that?
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Seniors need that.
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That was easy.
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People already get that.
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They might not have known that federal funding supports the vast majority of Meals on Wheels programming.
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But they at least already knew what Meals on Wheels is and what it does.
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You didn't have to explain that to them.
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You didn't have to explain why it matters, who it helps, what its impact is, what difference it makes in people's lives.
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They already know that.
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So cool.
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If you're a Meals on Wheels program, you're in great shape.
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But most direct service nonprofits don't have that built in advantage.
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So we have to come up with messaging that really connects the dots for people and helps them have a picture in their head.
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A clear, vivid painting of who is helped, what kind of a difference the help makes in their lives, and what their life would be like if they didn't have that help.
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So this is the same kind of story based messaging we talk about for a lot of other contexts.
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Only in this case we are thinking about how do we craft this messaging in a way that the average member of the community, who does not know about how federal funding works for different programming, they don't know how all that flows, they don't know what pays for what, they may not even know the services exist.
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But even if they do, they probably don't know how they're paid for.
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Or they might assume that because it's a non profit providing them that somehow maybe just charitable contributions pay for it.
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And for most of us, that is a part of our funding mix.
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But for the vast majority of direct service non profits, there's also a substantial federal funding stream involved one way or another.
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So what does the average member of the community need to understand in order to feel invested in this?
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Well, they need to get what the help is.
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What it is you do and who you help and what difference that makes in people's lives.
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But they also need to, ideally, connect that to somebody they know or to a circumstance that feels familiar.
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And for the vast majority of you, that is not difficult to do because the services we're providing are things that every human being needs.
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It's just that some folks are in a circumstance where they can't solve those needs on their own at this point in their life.
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Doesn't necessarily mean they'll never be able to, but at least for now, that is not an option for them.
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So we're also tapping into shared values around, we help our neighbors.
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We help our neighbors who are struggling.
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Because that could easily be us one day.
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Or even if it couldn't, it could be someone we know.
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We need as much as possible for the work that we do and the impact that it has to feel kind of personal to the members of the community who are not directly involved in the work that we do and who do not directly benefit from it.
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So how do we connect the dots in a way that makes the average person care enough to want to help us push back on attempts to cut off this funding?
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Well, the first thing we do is we start with the story.
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And we start with the broad concept and then move to specifics.
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Your firstt line, or your first piece of the story should be immediately understandable to someone with absolutely no background on the issue.
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So that means focus on the obvious common sense benefit or result.
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So for example, we provide vital services that help seniors stay in their homes instead of having to go to a nursing home.
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Cool.
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Now here's the part that's going to be really hard for most of us.
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Because we want to explain what we do and how we do it.
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And you'll get that chance.
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But the average member of the public doesn't care about any of that until they care about the result of what you do.
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So we start with that result.
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And that's very clear.
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There is not a person, and I'm picking something that absolutely every person alive who has any living family can relate to.
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Which is that if we're lucky, we all get old someday.
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And if we're unlucky, in the process we need extra care and support in order to be able to continue to function and thrive.
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Just about everybody has got a member of their family who is either at that age or approaching that age, or they have lived through having some family members who were that age, who've passed on.
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But this is a scenario that absolutely every family goes through.
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You'll get a chance to tell them how you keep people out of nursing homes, what kind of support you provide, how that works, how it helps.
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But you start with, what's the end result?
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What's the thing that everybody wants desperately that they get because of your services?
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So in this example, it's that seniors get to stay in their home as long as possible and not have to go to a nursing home.
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Everybody wants that.
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No one wants to wind up in a nursing home if they can possibly avoid it.
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So if that's your arena, then you start with that.
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What is it that you do?
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What is the end benefit that everyone can relate to?
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And you frame it very simply.
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In some situations, and here's the part that's gonna, like, really be a struggle.
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Because we want to talk about all the stuff we do and how we do it.
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There may be settings in which you don't explain that.
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You may just say, the services we provide And then you tell the story of the end result that everyone can relate to.
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In a sentence.
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In most cases, you can do this in a sentence.
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Maybe two at the most, if you do something super complicated.
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Or if the end benefit is one step removed from the work that you actually do.
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But it doesn't matter what arena you're working in, whether you're in housing or healthcare or nutrition or hunger issues, or domestic violence issues.
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Anything that you do, as a direct service non profit, the people who experience your services get a very important result in their life that matters deeply to them, that is life changing for them.
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And that everyone who hears that sentence or two of a story understands that benefit, understands intuitively why that's a good thing.
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So that's what you want to have teed up as your primary message for the impact that you have.
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And then the biggest dot you're going to connect is that Federal dollars pay for that result.
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You could not do that work without the support of federal dollars.
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It's a vital piece of your funding puzzle.
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And you can say as much or as little about that as winds up being necessary to help people get it.
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But the core message is that the federal funding that you receive is essential to your being able to cause this result that everybody agrees is an absolutely wonderful and important thing, and is desperately needed in the community.
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Whether it's making sure that families can feed their kids at the end of the month, whether it's making sure that kids get access to basic healthcare, Whatever it is.
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It's something that everyone can understand that of course, that's a good thing.
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Of course we need to make sure that our neighbors who need that help are able to get that help.
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And then you have a sentence or two that explains what the person's life would be like if that support were taken away, if they couldn't access those services.
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Again, it's a sentence or two.
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You can elaborate on it, of course, but a sentence or two that communicates the basic picture.
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Going back to my original example of services that help seniors stay in their home and not have to go to a nursing home.
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You can say, whatever version of this is correct, that without, and then this is where you might say three of your vital services.
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Without, community health worker check ins, or our visiting nurse service, or our home meal delivery service, whatever your piece of that puzzle is.
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Without that, they wouldn't be able to stay in their home.
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They would have to leave the home they've known all their life, where they feel most safe and most comfortable, where they feel secure and are surrounded by their stuff and their pets and things that make their life stable and worth living.
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And they would have to pack up and go to a nursing home, which nobody wants.
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And you can say as much more about that as is helpful to bring life to the story And I'm always in favor of robust stories.
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Because the more detailed picture you can paint, the more vivid and alive it becomes in your audience's mind.
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And that's what you want because people connect to those powerful mental images of something they can see and understand and say, yes, I get that.
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That's a good thing.
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What you're doing is a really good thing.
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That's really important.
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It would be terrible for those folks that you help if that weren't there.
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I want to say a little bit about that last thing, if it weren't there.
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We have to be careful l with that because there are a bunch of common messaging mistakes that get made around saying things like, well if the funding isn't there we'll have to close our doors.
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We want to be careful because we don't want to exaggerate first of all.
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But we do want to say what the consequences would be to the people we serve and keep the focus on that.
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Even if the truth is we really would have to close our doors, the focus of the messaging is still on the impact that would have on the members of the community.
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This is back to how we explain scope of impact.
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And if let's say one in five families in your community make use of your services, then you can say that.
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But the better way to say that is, if you walk down the street, every fifth house is in need of this.
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Just in your little neighborhood, that's dozens of families.
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If you think about the whole community, it's hundreds of families.
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All of whom are in XYZ situation.
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And that's more of your story detail.
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And their ability to receive that service is the difference between them being able to be okay and keeping themselves together and on a path to getting to where they can thrive.
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It's the difference between that and...
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and then you describe what happens in their life if they don't have the service.
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And you describe that in some detail.
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That is a way for people to understand the difference and the impact if the funding gets sharply cut back.
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There will be some families who get no help at all.
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And this is what that will look like in their life.
00:21:44.692 --> 00:21:46.321
This is what will happen in their life.
00:21:46.826 --> 00:21:48.346
Perhaps they become homeless.
00:21:48.366 --> 00:21:50.083
Perhaps they wind up in a shelter.
00:21:50.430 --> 00:21:51.420
With their kids.
00:21:52.073 --> 00:21:54.202
That's nobody's idea of a good idea.
00:21:54.757 --> 00:21:56.817
And you can talk about what it's like.
00:21:57.346 --> 00:22:03.380
And a lot of times, particularly when you serve families, the ability to explain the impact on the kids is really helpful.
00:22:03.930 --> 00:22:14.247
Because there are a lot of folks who, for a bunch of psychological reasons, want to blame adults who are in a tough spot, and say it's their own fault.
00:22:14.247 --> 00:22:18.317
If they had done x, y, and z differently, then they would be fine.
00:22:18.326 --> 00:22:20.502
Look, I did x, y, and z, and I'm fine.
00:22:20.849 --> 00:22:22.720
It's their fault they're in this situation.
00:22:23.307 --> 00:22:27.204
But it's really hard to say that about a kid, because they have no agency.
00:22:27.204 --> 00:22:30.270
They can't make decisions about anything.
00:22:31.073 --> 00:22:53.205
Far from being exploitative to talk about the impact on kids, I would submit that it is strategically very important because it sidesteps one of the kind of default, lazy thinking objections that can come up in some people's minds, of saying, well, you know, they should have just planned their life better.
00:22:53.205 --> 00:22:56.476
They should have been smarter with their decisions or this, that, or the other.
00:22:57.002 --> 00:22:58.762
You can't really say that about a kid.
00:22:59.887 --> 00:23:14.097
So, be mindful that helping to explain the impact on kids and on the elderly, where it becomes much harder for people to say, yeah, well, you should have just made better choices, or you should be smarter, or you should do this or that or the other.
00:23:14.097 --> 00:23:24.518
That becomes much more difficult when someone is way past prime working age and can't just go get themselves a job and work their way out of the problem that's about to put them in a nursing home.
00:23:24.928 --> 00:23:26.288
And a kid can't do that either.
00:23:27.046 --> 00:23:37.019
It's just a very effective way to engage a universal empathetic response that isn't blocked by judgment.
00:23:37.720 --> 00:23:44.113
Judgment is much less likely to kick in if you're talking about kids, if you're talking about frail elderly.
00:23:45.010 --> 00:23:52.775
Now, not all of you will be in situations where you can do that, but for those of you who are, just be aware that that is very helpful.
00:23:53.621 --> 00:24:09.278
If that's not your situation, there are certainly other ways to bypass or soften that judgment instinct, that thought of, if they'd been better at this or did this thing that I did, then they wouldn't have this problem and blah, blah, blah.
00:24:09.768 --> 00:24:14.647
We can absolutely help people see why that's not true for the people that we serve.
00:24:15.067 --> 00:24:16.778
That there's other stuff that got in their way.
00:24:17.528 --> 00:24:25.732
And that's when going into a deeper layer of story about what's typical for the experiences that have conspired to bring a person to your door.
00:24:26.327 --> 00:24:28.671
Because it's almost never just one thing, right?
00:24:29.234 --> 00:24:34.045
A series of stuff has happened that has put them in a position where they need help.
00:24:34.615 --> 00:24:40.728
And what we want to break through for people is understanding that we all need help from time to time.
00:24:41.320 --> 00:24:51.175
And how quickly you wind up needing to access support from a non profit is mostly tied to how many resources you went into the situation with.
00:24:51.875 --> 00:24:57.915
If you've got tons of money, and can buy your way out of most of your problems, then you'll probably never be in that position.
00:24:57.915 --> 00:25:01.460
But most people actually are not that well resourced.
00:25:02.394 --> 00:25:08.310
So there are ways to help people understand that this is a set of circumstances that has brought a person to this.
00:25:09.190 --> 00:25:19.365
We want to help them understand the circumstances, the story, the impact, and we also want to help them understand how many of their neighbors are dealing with this, because they probably don't know.
00:25:19.900 --> 00:25:26.482
Even if it's something that is easily understandable, like keeping folks in their home rather than having to go to a nursing home.
00:25:27.073 --> 00:25:33.633
Everybody understands that concept and how important it is, but they probably don't have any idea how common it is.
00:25:34.212 --> 00:25:45.819
And so one of the things you can do to help kind of snap their attention into focus is to say you'd be surprised at how many people are struggling with this problem in this community.
00:25:46.323 --> 00:25:50.210
It's one in five families, or one in four families, or whatever it is.
00:25:50.715 --> 00:25:54.242
This is something that lots and lots of our neighbors are dealing with.
00:25:54.941 --> 00:26:00.090
And if the federal funding were drastically cut or eliminated altogether, what would that mean?
00:26:00.694 --> 00:26:19.675
And that's where you talk about one third, or one half, or three quarters, of our total funding comes from, this one, or these two, or whatever the number is, federal programs that were designed to solve this problem in every community in the country.
00:26:20.409 --> 00:26:22.648
Every community experiences this.
00:26:23.179 --> 00:26:27.989
Common sense tells you that of course, ours isn't the only community struggling with this.
00:26:28.388 --> 00:26:29.396
We all deal with this.
00:26:29.406 --> 00:26:31.346
All families struggle with these things.
00:26:31.846 --> 00:26:36.613
And for some families, they're not able to manage it entirely on their own.
00:26:36.613 --> 00:26:37.333
They need help.
00:26:37.752 --> 00:26:39.522
That's where these services come in.
00:26:40.063 --> 00:26:49.771
And Congress has for decades recognized how important it is to make sure that we provide support for people in every community.
00:26:50.301 --> 00:26:55.922
No matter if their community happens to be very wealthy or if they don't have many resources at all.
00:26:56.352 --> 00:27:02.736
One of the reasons to have there be federal funding is it makes sure that it doesn't matter where you live.
00:27:03.232 --> 00:27:11.242
It doesn't matter if you're lucky enough to live in a fabulously wealthy community where they have lots of local services, then this might not be such an issue.
00:27:11.573 --> 00:27:13.403
But most communities aren't like that.
00:27:13.823 --> 00:27:20.272
Most communities are more like ours, where, you know, we wish we had resources to do all the things we need to do, but we don't.
00:27:20.272 --> 00:27:30.099
And so that's where federal funding comes in, and it's a very important part of the picture of supporting these services and making sure that they're available for everyone who needs them.
00:27:30.673 --> 00:27:37.992
If we had to rely on just city or county or even state funding, that wouldn't be enough to meet the need.
00:27:38.893 --> 00:27:46.537
But with the additional federal support, that's how it's possible for us to make sure that everybody in the community who needs this help is able to get it.
00:27:47.123 --> 00:27:48.913
That's why that's so critical.
00:27:49.866 --> 00:28:03.962
One thing that I do see, a mistake that happens a lot in messaging on this, when we get kind of worked up and we're talking about what would happen if a big chunk of funding got taken away, there's a temptation to want to say, and the services would go away.
00:28:04.680 --> 00:28:06.099
That's about you.
00:28:06.676 --> 00:28:20.200
What we must stay focused on is our neighbors would not have the services they need in order to fill in the blank common sense result, easily relatable result, outcome that you produce.
00:28:20.910 --> 00:28:35.730
If this federal funding is drastically cut or eliminated, that means that huge numbers of our, again going back to my original example, our senior neighbors will be forced into nursing homes because the supports that help them stay out of nursing homes will be gone.
00:28:36.247 --> 00:28:37.346
That's how you tie it.
00:28:37.537 --> 00:28:40.967
You talk about the consequence to the person who gets the services.
00:28:40.967 --> 00:28:44.406
You don't talk about the consequence to the services.
00:28:45.257 --> 00:28:49.267
I hope that's a distinction that is resonating for you because it's critical.
00:28:49.910 --> 00:28:56.809
When we talk about the services being impacted, that is heard as being about us.
00:28:57.440 --> 00:29:01.170
It's not relevant to the member of the community who's listening to you.
00:29:01.891 --> 00:29:04.691
If you say the services will go away, that's abstract.
00:29:04.721 --> 00:29:05.617
What does that mean?
00:29:06.087 --> 00:29:12.278
You talk about if this funding goes away, this is what happens to the people who are now getting the services.
00:29:12.288 --> 00:29:26.067
And you keep the focus squarely on the story of the people who get the help, what their life is like with the help, what their life is like if the help is taken away and what disastrous consequences they experience.
00:29:26.539 --> 00:29:30.009
And then the basic message is we can't let that happen to our neighbors.
00:29:31.109 --> 00:29:36.029
So the messaging construct for this particular purpose is quite simple really.
00:29:36.730 --> 00:29:40.549
It is simpler than many of the types of messaging that we construct for decision makers.
00:29:40.986 --> 00:29:44.615
Because we need decision makers to understand multiple layers of detail.
00:29:45.046 --> 00:29:46.855
With community members, we really don't.
00:29:47.286 --> 00:29:49.645
We need them to understand three things.
00:29:50.260 --> 00:29:58.520
How the members of the community are helped, and what common sense benefit or result they get when they can get these services.
00:29:59.284 --> 00:30:03.421
What would happen to them if they suddenly could not get those services...
00:30:04.096 --> 00:30:13.165
And why and how federal funding is so important to the total picture of what supports those vital results that we're able to get for the folks that we serve.
00:30:14.019 --> 00:30:20.957
And then doing all of that in a way that triggers empathy, causes people to relate and say, I get that.
00:30:20.967 --> 00:30:24.416
I understand that problem, I understand what it must be like.
00:30:24.426 --> 00:30:37.996
Even if I've never experienced it myself, I can feel and think and perceive how it would be to experience that problem, and how good it would be to have that solution, and how terrible it would be to have that solution ripped away and what life would be like.
00:30:38.605 --> 00:30:43.276
We want people to grasp that, to be able to visualize it and feel it in their gut.
00:30:44.256 --> 00:30:54.058
When we do that, and then we explain that there's this terrible attempt to yank that all away, and we have to say no to that.
00:30:54.806 --> 00:31:00.096
That's when you get people coming along with you and saying, yeah, you're right, that's wrong, we don't want that.
00:31:00.846 --> 00:31:12.051
Let's be clear, most members of the community will not then write a letter or raise up and come to a town hall or do anything to speak out necessarily.
00:31:12.705 --> 00:31:15.759
Some will, and we certainly want to ask them to do that.
00:31:16.266 --> 00:31:18.205
We absolutely want to make that ask.
00:31:18.701 --> 00:31:23.082
People can decide what they'll do, but we give them a couple of different ways.
00:31:23.432 --> 00:31:35.156
We say to them, if this is as troubling to you as it is to us, there's something very important you can do to help make sure that our neighbors are able to keep the services that are so vital to them.
00:31:35.733 --> 00:31:38.003
And then you give them a thing they can do.
00:31:38.606 --> 00:31:45.497
Whatever you decide is going to be the right thing in your community, but it's typically going to involve some communication with your member of Congress.
00:31:46.161 --> 00:31:48.413
And that really probably should be the primary target.
00:31:48.854 --> 00:31:52.183
because they need to hear from their constituents about this.
00:31:52.733 --> 00:32:05.126
So it could be, I'm not usually a fan of petitions, but in this particular situation, it is sort of the lowest hanging fruit of something somebody could do that would add theirr voice.
00:32:05.717 --> 00:32:08.126
And in this case, I think that could be valuable.
00:32:08.987 --> 00:32:22.477
Also, this is a very important organizing principle to understand, which is that if you can get people to take one small action, it makes them more likely to take another action the next time you ask.
00:32:23.366 --> 00:32:27.497
So give them something super easy, even if it's just signing a petition.
00:32:27.946 --> 00:32:30.483
Then maybe next time you can get them to write a letter.
00:32:30.483 --> 00:32:33.124
Maybe the next time you can get them to come to a town hall.
00:32:33.513 --> 00:32:36.811
This is a process of engaging community support.
00:32:37.786 --> 00:32:42.551
This is not just about defending against this one attack.
00:32:43.071 --> 00:32:44.541
There are going to be more.
00:32:45.155 --> 00:32:53.832
This is an overriding ambition of the right wing is to eliminate as much federal safety net funding as humanly possible.
00:32:53.832 --> 00:32:55.182
They want it gone.
00:32:55.682 --> 00:32:59.432
In their perfect world, even social security and medicare would be gone.
00:33:00.141 --> 00:33:06.844
That's unlikely to happen because the pushback would be utterly unprecedented in its volume and intensity.
00:33:07.564 --> 00:33:11.544
That cuts across all political stripes, all political affiliations.
00:33:11.854 --> 00:33:18.903
Everybody in America is deeply invested in those two programs and there's no way they're going to successfully eliminate those.
00:33:19.584 --> 00:33:25.114
However, they may try to pare them back, and I would expect to see that.
00:33:25.473 --> 00:33:27.763
So pushback will be needed on that too.
00:33:28.503 --> 00:33:32.696
But for situations where it's one step removed, and it's not their personal fight.
00:33:33.108 --> 00:33:37.602
Getting members of the community to at least raise their hand and say, Hey, this is important.
00:33:37.622 --> 00:33:39.451
We should be paying attention to this.
00:33:39.781 --> 00:33:41.541
We shouldn't let this go away.
00:33:42.645 --> 00:33:44.425
We need public opinion on our side.
00:33:44.746 --> 00:33:51.596
To have members of the community aligning themselves with the work that we do, and most importantly, the impact we create.
00:33:52.165 --> 00:33:57.046
The results, the benefits, the real world life change that we create in people's lives.
00:33:57.516 --> 00:34:02.550
That makes life better for those members of the community, but also for the community as a whole.
00:34:03.136 --> 00:34:08.617
And keep coming back to the shared value of helping our neighbors of caring for one another.
00:34:09.349 --> 00:34:14.298
It's easy to get cynical in this really nasty political world we're in right now.
00:34:14.298 --> 00:34:23.309
But the fact is, most people do still hold those values of caring for our neighbors and looking out for one another and being there for one another.
00:34:23.753 --> 00:34:37.780
And so we need to tap into that and pull those better instincts out because there's so much messaging on the right that is intended specifically to drive people in the other direction.
00:34:38.110 --> 00:34:40.210
They want people at each other's throats.
00:34:40.210 --> 00:34:49.778
They want people judging and dismissing their neighbors and saying, well, if you have problems, it must be because of something wrong you did or something wrong about who you are.
00:34:50.317 --> 00:34:51.806
So we have to counter that.
00:34:52.240 --> 00:34:59.300
Not only does our organizational survival depend on that, but so does our ability to help the people who desperately need our help.
00:35:00.061 --> 00:35:06.706
So I'm hopeful that this basic messaging strategy is going to give you a solid starting place.
00:35:07.153 --> 00:35:08.833
It actually is pretty simple.
00:35:09.226 --> 00:35:13.226
We tend to overcomplicate, and this is a situation where we really don't want to do that.
00:35:13.842 --> 00:35:25.442
If we aim our messaging at building support among members of the community, that will have a beautiful spillover effect to members of Congress as well, because they can appreciate simple messaging too.
00:35:26.371 --> 00:35:31.751
And the other thing is that the simpler your messaging, the more likely it is to be repeated by others.
00:35:32.362 --> 00:35:38.931
And that's when you know you have hit messaging gold, is when you hear people starting to say pieces of your messaging back to you.
00:35:39.690 --> 00:35:47.744
And then the last thing is, when you engage members of the community and get them on board with supporting you, give them something to do that's concrete.
00:35:48.353 --> 00:35:57.987
Let them take at least a small action, whether it's signing a petition or if they're willing, making a phone call or sending an email to their member of Congress.
00:35:58.487 --> 00:36:00.521
But start with something easy.
00:36:00.920 --> 00:36:03.891
You could have a petition, you could have them sign a postcard.
00:36:03.891 --> 00:36:09.603
You could have them write a postcard with like two or three sentences on it, nothing complicated.
00:36:10.173 --> 00:36:12.494
That's the beauty of postcards, you can't fit a lot of message on them.
00:36:12.983 --> 00:36:15.384
So it has to be succinct, it has to be concise.
00:36:16.103 --> 00:36:17.634
So just say the core thing.
00:36:18.117 --> 00:36:25.443
The message could be to a member of congress, say, Help make sure that our neighbors continue to have access to fill in the blank service.
00:36:25.916 --> 00:36:29.523
Please oppose any cuts to XYZ federal funding.
00:36:30.317 --> 00:36:30.757
Boom.
00:36:31.077 --> 00:36:31.356
Done.
00:36:31.907 --> 00:36:33.137
It doesn't have to be fancy.
00:36:33.623 --> 00:36:39.664
All they're doing when they're on the receiving end in Congress, they're just counting the for's and the against's.
00:36:40.543 --> 00:36:46.079
And if they're getting a lot of pressure to keep something, then that's going to motivate them to take action.
00:36:46.565 --> 00:36:52.652
If they're wanting to do the right thing, but maybe are concerned that it won't be popular, you're giving them political cover.
00:36:53.235 --> 00:37:02.556
If they are inclined to do nothing and are starting to get a lot of pressure, then they may be inclined to change their position so they don't get in trouble with their voters.
00:37:03.369 --> 00:37:11.092
We are entering an era where we're all going to have to get more cognizant about using different types of pressure.
00:37:11.523 --> 00:37:15.382
And the voices of the members of the community are going to be critical in this.
00:37:15.623 --> 00:37:23.309
If we want them to make their voices heard, we've got to help them get why they need to speak up and why they need to be on our side.
00:37:24.789 --> 00:37:26.400
Let's keep this conversation going.
00:37:26.750 --> 00:37:43.945
There's a lot more to talk about in terms of how we can work together to improve our advocacy strategies and our messaging to make sure that we're doing everything possible to preserve our federal funding and to maintain the vitally important work that everyone here is doing.
00:37:44.706 --> 00:37:50.826
If you know some other nonprofit leaders that you think would benefit from this episode, I hope you'll encourage them to give it a listen.
00:37:51.619 --> 00:37:56.400
Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode, right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
