Our Impact

The Climate Advocacy Lab helps advocates transform public support into political power for climate action.

In just a few years, the Climate Advocacy Lab has changed the climate advocacy field.

Since 2015, our membership has grown into a community of over 3,400 climate advocates, organizers, field and academic researchers, and data specialists. Since 2015, our team has facilitated over 70 in-person trainings and workshops for more than 1,500 participants in 25 states and the District of Columbia -- from Santa Barbara to Sioux Falls, Birmingham to Boston. We have also produced over 100 online trainings serving hundreds of climate advocates of all stripes.

The Lab team may only be eleven staff, but our impact is felt movement-wide. Organizations using our tools and insights have passed laws, stopped rollbacks of environmental protections, and supercharged their public engagement campaigns. Most importantly, we continue to increase the sophistication and connectivity across the climate advocacy field, and the appetite among climate advocates to work smarter. Our insights and best practices save money and time, and help organizations build more political power to win more and faster.

For more information, download this summary.

And be sure to check out our 2022 Annual Report!

Working with the team at the Lab was one of the highlights of the experiment. They are responsive, friendly, knowledgeable, and skilled.

The knowledge and skills I acquired [from Training for Impact] have empowered me to become a more effective climate advocate, equipped with evidence-based organizing strategies.

The wisdom, power, and knowledge shared by Assata and my peers have been transformative, fostering a deep sense of learning and personal growth.

Through [Training for Impact], I gained invaluable self-awareness and learned to embrace my unique strengths as a leader. Recognizing that I am not primarily a task-oriented leader allowed me to leverage my strengths effectively.

The emphasis on the Ladder of Engagement [in TFI program] helped us to recognize the different levels of involvement and how to strategically engage individuals, particularly within marginalized communities, ensuring their voices are heard and valued.

I witnessed a transformation in myself as I gained a deeper understanding of strategic, organizing, narrative, disruptive, and electoral and institutional capacities and applied them to my work.

I have been bringing learnings around power-building and base-building to many of the coalition spaces I am a part of. I am using relational organizing frameworks a lot and have noticed a positive difference in our organizing program!

One of the things that has been most useful has been the curriculum and developing a more in-depth fluency with the Lab's resources. I now feel prepared to find what I need when I need it when doing organizing work!

I am sure [Climate + Health peer learning] will continue to develop and blossom in my organization and me. The connections alone were highly generative.

The Climate + Health Peer Learning Circle is great if you are working at the intersection of climate and health -- you'll learn real skills about how to be more effective and more importantly, how to make your work more impactful.

The Climate + Health Peer Learning Circle provides genuinely helpful, actionable strategies and frameworks that you won't find anywhere else regarding climate change and health advocacy.

I had no idea what I didn't know! Now I have a structure in which to approach my climate/health work, and the ongoing support of the Lab means the world.

My favorite part of [the Climate + Health Peer Learning Circle] was connecting with my peers... Knowing there is such great climate leadership occurring across the country in the space of climate and health provides me with a newfound sense of hope.

The facilitators [of the Climate + Health Peer Learning Circle] Rebecca and Diamond were so awesome! The thoughtfulness of their presentations, in curating content in a way that was manageable and easy to understand, cannot be overstated.

The opportunity to network and connect with fellow energy justice advocates is invaluable. I love the cross-pollination that happens at Lab events and have followed up with many people.

The campaign planning and development modules were concrete and so helpful. This was the training I have been waiting for!

Developing the playbook allowed us to collect & share from advocates and frontline community members... we learned that we are not alone and that we don't have to reinvent the wheel in order to hold utilities accountable.

The results from our research project with the Lab came at an opportune time. Based off our results, I proposed a significant investment of resources in texting so we could... reach and engage Latinx Coloradans.

Throughout the process, the Lab team worked to help us identify the most useful questions and were flexible and generous in providing expertise, guidance, and additional resources we needed to be successful.

The Training for Impact modules have been so relevant. I... was quickly able implement the different strategies for sharing your “story of self” and 1:1 meetings. I have noticed a positive difference!

A colleague forwarded me your newsletter and I knew this was a community that I needed to be a part of as a person of color doing climate change work!

The Lab emails are one of the few that I consistently open and read: the authentic voice and useful resources. I always know there will be something of interest to me in there.

We’ve re-vamped our on-boarding process and base-building plan based on recommendations from the cohort. Those shifts are already yielding results!

Participating in the cohort reminded me how many resources are available through the Climate Advocacy Lab. When I or my co-workers have a question about something, my first move is to check and see ‘What does the Climate Advocacy Lab have?’

What a treasure trove! I wish every social justice issue had its own advocacy lab just like this one.

My praxis group has also been amazing, and we have getting together outside of the bi-weekly meetings to strategize and brainstorm about climate work in the Midwest! It has really changed my life.

What I also love about the Lab, especially as someone who is young and a newer organizer, you have these series talking about different organizing strategies that are not as available as you think.

Working with the Climate Advocacy Lab is absolutely a dream. We have felt so much support and confidence every step of the journey because of the outstanding guidance.

Instantaneously I felt safe. It was such a unique cross-section of activists and organizers. The storytellers were incredibly humble and that helped to demystify a lot of things. I work in finance, but in the narrative and storytelling could see myself.

Y'all have gotten really good at creating shared learning spaces that are actually really productive and where work moves forward afterward.

Based on what I learned through the cohort, Our Climate is revamping our entire digital approach to center moving people from online to offline!

Using pillars of power, EJ framing and best practices (esp. authenticity and meeting needs of constituents) from the Lab have been key to two huge wins, so THANK YOU. These are solid gold strategies that we will keep using to accelerate more wins.

Lab membership has connected me to a whole network of advocates and social scientists..., helped seed collaborative work, and provided much needed motivation and optimism.

The tests we've run in partnership with the Lab led us to adjust our own relational organizing model, more effectively recruiting and moving volunteers up the ladder of engagement.

The Lab provides excellent information, training and resources.

The Climate Advocacy Lab connects you with smart, evidence based approaches to winning on climate.

Engaging with the Lab has helped instill a greater appreciation for data-driven decision making in our organization.

The Lab provides a hub to learn about what has and hasn't worked elsewhere, access to powerful tools and findings, and helps us avoid doing redundant work.

The Climate Advocacy Lab is becoming a drawer in my proverbial toolchest of building persuasive stories.

Being part of the Climate Advocacy Lab and gaining resources and connections has allowed me to make a strong case and transition to a much better position for data-driven learning...

A benefit of working with the Lab is learning about experiments that other organizations have run and getting insights that I can apply to the work that I do.

Joining the Lab has been a great way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of climate research and maintain a grasp on what social science is saying about advocacy work.

Work with the Climate Advocacy Lab if you want to find smart insights into public engagement and policy campaigns.

The climate advocacy space in the US is at the forefront of bridging science and society. This would not be happening without the online and in-person community that the Lab has created and continues to nurture and build.