The Opportunity Agenda’s Activities

 The Opportunity Agenda works across social justice issues to build public support for greater opportunity in America.  With a growing community of partners that spans diverse issues and constituencies—human rights, racial equality, immigration, health care, labor rights, education, criminal justice, and others—we work to move hearts and minds as well as public policy and political discourse.  Over time, our activities will achieve: (1) measurably better media coverage that shifts the public debate; (2) visibly improved public support for social justice values and policies; and (3) greater capacity within social justice organizations and movements to communicate our shared values and vision for America.  The program’s activities include:

Developing and Shaping Messages
The Opportunity Agenda uses research on values, public opinion, media, and framing, as well as conversations with everyday people, to understand public attitudes and craft strategies for influencing the public debate.  Focusing on deeply held values like opportunity, community, and redemption, we identify and sharpen common narratives to increase support for expanding opportunity in America.  These messages are refined and coordinated through our collaboration with partner organizations working on specific issues.

Strategy Convenings and Planning
Through convenings, workshops, and planning sessions, we work with diverse coalitions to craft truly strategic approaches—methods that combine communications, advocacy and research, and that amplify existing campaigns while building a long-term constituency for social justice.  Our approach allows for both long-term, strategic planning as well as rapid response efforts inspired by current news events.  Where possible, we work with ongoing coalitions of groups over time, building mutual trust as well as shared knowledge and increased capacity.
 

Media Training and Placement
We help social justice leaders to understand the power of the media and how it can be used for maximum impact.  We train communications and program staff on how to speak to the media, work with partners to produce op-eds, place stories and generate coverage that builds a consistent drumbeat of messages about expanding opportunity in America.
 

Communications Tools and Resources
We work with partners to develop timely and effective communications and advocacy tools that most groups lack the time or expertise to create.  Our toolkits, talking points, fact sheets, and other materials translate effective narratives, social science research, and policy analysis into usable forms shown to resonate with audiences.  Examples of recent talking points and fact sheets include: Immigration Reform and Opportunity for All, Rebuilding the Gulf Coast: Expanding Opportunity, and Learning Together: The Supreme Court’s School Diversity Cases.
 

New Media and Online Community Building
Media is changing, and social justice advocates have a tremendous opportunity to harness the power of new tools and platforms.  We work with partners to blog, produce digital video and podcasts, and to use interactive community-building tools like YouTube, Blogs, Social Networking, Flickr, and Google Maps that reach vast new audiences.  Key to those efforts is building the capacity and sophistication of the social justice community to engage and utilize the new media environment.
 

Translating Social Science Research into Social Justice Solutions
A wide range of think tanks, university-based scholars, and government agencies are actively producing raw data, new research, and analysis of policy problems and solutions.  Yet much of that research fails to influence public awareness, political discourse, or policymaking.  The Opportunity Agenda works to make that invaluable information clear, communicable, policy-relevant, and readily available to advocates and policymakers.  Our work in this area includes mining and analysis of new applied research, producing accessible reports, fact sheets and briefings, and working with partners to integrate the resulting information into their work.