Giving Compass' Take:

• Ann Christiano and Annie Neimand describe evidence-based strategies for nonprofits trying to engage the public and make them care about an issue. 

• How can funders help nonprofits adopt these strategies? 

• Learn how to make reports more impactful through better communication. 

Social service organizations collectively spend millions of dollars each year on communications that focus on informing people. Sadly, these kinds of efforts ignore the scientific principles of what motivates engagement, belief, and behavior change. Consequently, a lot of that money and effort invested in communications is wasted.

We are required to do better, because challenges such as poverty, homelessness, and racial and gender inequity have endured in the face of lasting and robustly funded efforts.

Research from multiple disciplines tells us that people engage and consume information that affirms their identities and aligns with their deeply held values and worldview, and avoid or reject information that challenges or threatens them. This requires advocates to move beyond a focus on building and disseminating a message to stepping into the world of their target community.  Think of communication less as a megaphone and more as a gift to your audience. Does it help them solve a problem? Does it make them feel good about themselves or see themselves as they want to be seen? Does it connect to how they see the world and provide solutions that are actionable? If we want people to engage and take action, we have to connect to what they care about and how they see themselves.

People in the social sector work on complex issues that are fairly abstract: justice, equality, wellness, fairness, and innovation. One of the challenges with these abstract concepts is that they leave space for people to make assumptions about what these terms mean to them. For example, someone hearing the term “innovation” might worry about how innovations in tech could make their job unnecessary, while another might interpret it as a way to apply fresh thinking to stubborn challenges.

But concrete, visual language engages the visual and emotional areas of our brains.

A study by Princeton University linguist Adele Goldberg suggests that “metaphorical sentences may spark increased brain activity in emotion-related regions because they allude to physical experiences.” Her study showed activity in the emotion area of participants’ brains when they heard metaphors that connected to experience. “Sweet” drew a stronger response than “kind.” “Bitter” drew a stronger response than “mean.” Goldberg’s coauthor, Francesca Citron, a psychologist at Lancaster University, suggests that figurative language creates a rhetorical advantage.

Research tells us that people are really good at avoiding information for three reasons: It makes them feel bad; it obligates them to do something they do not want to do; or it threatens their identity, values, and worldview.

Another pleasant emotion, pride, can be exceptionally powerful. Researchers have found that people anticipating feeling pride in helping the environment were more likely to take positive action than those anticipating guilt for having failed to do so.

Read the full article about caring by Ann Christiano and Annie Neimand at Stanford Social Innovation Review.