Is there anything worse than seeing your email spam rate spike out of nowhere?

Role model narratives—stories about specific people taking recommended actions—are a proven communication strategy for encouraging socially beneficial behaviors such as climate action. However, the extent to which climate activists share role model narratives on social media has yet to be investigated. To measure the prevalence of climate action role model narratives on social media, Instagram and TikTok posts tagged with the hashtags #climateaction and #climateactivist (dated between August 2021 and October 2024) were collected and a content analysis of the over 600 posts was conducted.

This survey of nonprofit professionals in the social and educational sectors is a partnership of Stanford University and Project Evident.

This resource from consultancy Whole Whale offers a helpful framework for how to write AI prompts.

This case study recounts and analyzes the 2023 ballot initiative campaign for Maine to take ownership of the two investor-owned utilities in the state and create a new publicly-owned utility called Pine Tree Power. Along the way, the Our Power campaign integrated research throughout their campaign to evaluate their power-building strategy. While the referendum lost at the ballot, Our Power draw out a number of insights from their campaign for energy democracy, including:

How a storm of false and misleading claims about extreme weather events spread unchecked on social media putting lives at risk.

Every year, M+R, a progressive digital consulting firm, releases its much-anticipated Benchmarks Report. This year, 216 advocacy nonprofits submitted data about the performance of their email, social media, SMS, web, and paid ads programs. The result is rich report, full of interesting and useful insights for anyone who works in nonprofit communications, fundraising, organizing, or digital strategy.

To reach the feeds of those who don’t pay attention to political news, politicians or advocates need a viral message — one that will not just resonate, but spread organically among social networks. While low-engagement voters distrust social media influencers by a -50- point margin, they trust their family members and friends by a +64-point margin. It’s not always possible to create a viral moment, but it’s worth trying to be bold — in 2024, the campaign event voters heard the most about in October was Trump’s stunt at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Greg Landsman and Ro Khanna have racked up millions of views on their TikTok videos, which often feature them delivering straightforward descriptions of what is happening in Washington directly to their followers.

Learn how to become an activist, plan a political campaign strategy, and start a grassroots movement -- all while not burning out. This guide includes chapters on organizing, campaign strategy, action tactics, wellbeing, communication, digital tools, legal rights, and theory of change. Learn how to set up an inclusive movement, how to make decisions democratically and how to mobilize people and keep them engaged. There are different types of strategies depending on local political and social contexts. Find tools for editing videos, designing graphics, managing social media, developing websites and much more. Even though you might not refer to yourself as an ‘activist’, this handbook can be useful for anyone who would like to achieve societal change.

Short videos can increase support for solar and wind energy. This research found an 8% increase in persuasion via videos on social media that showed clean energy improves the local economy. Persuasion was particularly effective for self-identified moderates compared to somewhat conservative or conservative participants. Political “moderates” supported expanding clean energy by an additional 22% compared to the control group (compared to -9% to -1% effect range for very conservatives). Persuasion was also particularly effective for people who did not support expanding clean energy in the pre-survey. Support for expanding clean energy increased by 19% for those who did not support it in the pre-survey (opposed or neutral). One month later, persuasion towards clean energy persisted only among people who were neutral in the pre-survey. All other effects had decayed away, demonstrating that continued, long-term exposure to messages is needed for persuasion to persist.