All of us working for social justice are seeking good answers to this question: how can we influence changes in attitudes toward values we hold dear, like love, community, family, freedom to be our best selves, and equal opportunity under the law?

The good news is that there is a way to tap into these values to increase acceptance of people who are part of an “out group.” The social science literature is clear: conversations in the context of friendship reduce prejudice. And it’s not just correlation; there is strong evidence that these interactions cause attitude change.

That’s the good news. The challenge is, these conversations aren’t always easy to have. They can be awkward, difficult, or risky. In the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality, we have seen how difficult it is to engage people to have these conversations. As Matt Foreman of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund says, it’s like we’re working toward equality with one hand tied behind our backs.

The Haas, Jr. Fund engaged LightBox Collaborative to research these thorny questions. Together we wondered: how can we motivate, engage, and support gay people in having these conversations with their straight friends and family? And what are the results of conversations, not just on the straight person’s attitude, but on the quality of the relationship and the gay person’s well-being?

We dove deep into these questions and learned enough to create a model mapping the conversation path toward greater acceptance and openness. Here are just a few of the highlights of what we learned about the journey:

Many gay people are no more motivated or influenced by appeals to rights and public policy than “movable middle” straight people are.

Instead, strong motivations for gay people to have these conversations include:

• Living openly and authentically
• Having better relationships with the straight people in their lives
• Concern for young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning

The conversations may be easier than we thought. Not only are casual conversations about ordinary life as a gay person easier to have than conversations that make being gay a big deal—these casual conversations also work better at increasing understanding and acceptance.

We heard from gay people who have had these conversations that their relationships with the straight people in their lives are better than ever, and that the discomfort of potentially awkward conversations is well worth gaining greater well-being and the freedom to be yourself.

Holly Minch and I have just returned from Creating Change, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual organizing and skills-building conference for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and their allies. While we were there we did a workshop on our research findings. What we heard back is that this line of research, learning, and strategy is necessary for creating the change we envision: a culture that is safe, welcoming, accepting, and fair for all people, including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Several people told us how meaningful it was to see themselves and their experiences reflected in a study like this.

A 90-minute workshop—or a 500 word blog post—just scratches the surface of this research. We are grateful for the enthusiastic feedback we heard at Creating Change, and we are looking forward to the next steps: taking what we’ve learned and turning it into tools and strategies for action. If you are interested in reading the full report, sign up to have our blog delivered to your inbox. We’ll be blogging about our findings when the report is released.

(Image courtesy Flickr user Chris Blakeley, Creative Commons)
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Cynthia Scheiderer is a LightBox Collaborator who has high hopes for many more courageous, authentic conversations.

The re-emergence of Newt Gingrich takes me back to his earlier heyday in 1994. That’s when he took out his Contract On America. (OK, he called it the Contract With America, but “on” is so much more accurate in so many ways.) While it largely failed to make policy changes, it did usher in the nasty, unproductive partisanship that continues to plague our nation. And now Newt is bringing it back to try again. But I digress.

Back then, I was working for the Sierra Club, which was particularly concerned about Gingrich’s policy proposals because it would have gutted a wide array of laws and regulations that protect clean air and water, wilderness, wildlife, and human health. It also provided new subsidies for logging national forests and exempted Big Oil from various environmental laws. In the eyes of the Sierra Club, the Contract On America amounted to a War on the Environment.

In fact, we had an enewsletter titled as such – which we called “the Daily WOE.” One of my responsibilities was to help publish the Daily WOE informing the media and activists of the emerging details of why the Contract really would be disastrous for the environment. We were telling activists they had to act immediately to organize and write their Congressional representatives or all would be lost. Those familiar with grassroots mobilization recognize it’s threats to the things people care about that tend to motivate the action needed to protect them. While it’s important to create urgency for our issues, in hindsight I think we can all agree that serving as the daily harbinger of woe for our constituents is perhaps not the best position for an organization’s brand….

Further, while the communications department was busy saying the sky was falling, the development department was appealing for funding with a message of hope—that our organization was busy saving the beautiful flora and charismatic megafauna of the world. Those familiar with grassroots fundraising are well aware that people tend to give to solutions, not to problems.

Yes, people are unlikely to contribute to something they perceive to be hopeless. Still, they need to understand the problem they can help solve—with their dollars or their activism. And both contributors and activists will be more motivated if they feel they can make a difference in fixing the problem. In my story from the Sierra Club, while each department was using a smart communications approach for our specific goals, we were, in effect, contradicting and cancelling out each other’s messages to our key supports.

Of course the last thing you want is for your organization to be caught talking out of both sides of its mouth. Get your departments talking to each other to align your messages for all your audiences, then tailor that general message to appeal to each specific target. Keeping an up-to-date editorial calendar is a great way facilitate and promote this coordination. Check out the latest version Lightbox Collaborative has prepared to help you align your organization’s voice.

Has this ever happened in your organization? What are your successes and challenges in aligning messages across your organization?

(Image courtesy www.onevoicechorus.org)

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Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder and is happy to no longer focus on her daily woes.

This quote from Rick Moyers at Meyer Foundation captures the key question that many nonprofit leaders are asking in today’s multi-platformed world. Media and communications opportunities seem to change almost daily. Is your organization’s staff keeping up?

Many organizations hire communications specialists, expecting them to do whatever it takes to publicize the organization and its issues. Back in the olden days, that meant producing newsletters and collateral, and getting stories into print and electronic media. With far more limited media and other ways to talk to members and other key audiences, it was a reasonable expectation.

Effective communications have always been integral to achieving program goals, but the job was largely left to the “experts.” Program staff mostly provided ideas, background information and fact-checking. Today, however, with media as diversified and interactive as it is, this model is not only unrealistic but unwise. Instead of leaving the job to the communications staff, your organization must build a staff that communicates.

Old media activities were more like lectures—pretty one-sided. But the new communications ecosystem is about sparking and participating in conversations—across multiple platforms—to build relationships with your audiences. A meaningful presence requires all hands on deck to monitor, participate in and respond to relevant dialogs. It’s what builds your organization’s credibility and influence.

Your program staff is probably already reading blogs, tweets and other content ripe for sharing. But do they take the next step and post it to the organization’s Facebook page or retweet it? The trick to effective communications today is ensuring that the entire staff feels responsible for its success.

Here are a few tips to get your team to contribute to the conversation:

• Support and align empowered voices. While it’s important for all communications to promote an organization’s desired reputation, staff members will be more motivated to participate in social media if their own personalities can shine through. Make sure your social media guidelines are clear and easy to follow, but let people be themselves, too.

• Coach your team to communicate for success. Today’s communications director should encourage the team to get in the habit of content creation. Now more a coordinator and cheerleader, it is up to her to infuse best practices in social media and storytelling throughout the organization’s work, and to encourage the entire team to come up with stories and ideas to post to the blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and wherever else your audiences live.

• Build relationships. Whether it’s old media or new, all staff should build the personal relationships with key reporters and bloggers that will improve coverage of your organization.

• Make it easy. While you want your staff to play an active role in the online conversation, including writing blog posts, you don’t want it to be all-consuming. This is where the editorial calendar comes in. It’s the best way to coordinate all communication activities online and off.

• Keep it on the agenda. Discuss communications opportunities at every staff and board meeting to keep communications front and center. In addition to surfacing upcoming conferences, events, and decision points ripe for media attention, it will help create a fertile environment to grow new ideas to work into the editorial calendar.

Communications: it’s not just for the professionals anymore.

(Image courtesy Flickr user KEXINO, Creative Commons)

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Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder and hopes that 2012 is the year of the empowered communicator.