Marketing Welfare: What Charities Should Do to Influence Public Policies

With Congress planning to reshape welfare laws next year, nonprofit groups need to develop a “social marketing strategy” similar to what corporations use when they promote a new product, says Michael Laracy, senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore.

One reason, he and others say: Charities and foundations did not have much influence on the 1996 legislation that overhauled the nation’s welfare system, so they need to learn new ways to make their opinions known.

Last year, Mr. Laracy and Mark Greenberg, a lawyer at the Center for Law and Social Policy, wrote “Welfare Reform: Next Steps Offer New Opportunities,” a report published by Neighborhood Funders Group, an organization that represents grant makers.

Mr. Laracy, who has studied welfare policies for the past two decades, urges organizations to follow five steps to make their voices heard:

Start thinking early. Instead of reacting to government proposals, as some feel many nonprofit groups did in 1996, organizations need to present their own plans and then defend them, says Mr. Laracy. The $100-million foundations have spent to finance research on welfare should give nonprofit groups the ammunition they need, he says. “I think we’ve planned it out this time.”

Listen to the public. In 1996, nonprofit organizations underestimated the public’s desire for the government to discourage welfare dependency, says Mr. Laracy. “I don’t think we truly realized how strongly the public felt about work being part of the welfare equation.”

This time around, organizations seem to be taking the hint from polls, such as a recent one backed by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation showing that a majority of Americans support revamped welfare rules like those instituted in 1996.

The poll found that many people would like to see an increase in job-training programs, government-subsidized day care, and help for the working poor to pay for housing — even if it means an increase in taxes they themselves would have to pay.

Don’t be in denial. Organizations attempting to influence the public debate from both the right and the left need to take a long look at what has been working with welfare and what hasn’t. Mr. Laracy believes that, so far, most have. “The environment has been detoxified. We’re starting to see consensus in some areas because people on both sides are taking an honest look at them.”

Have strong empirical data. “You have to really state your case nowadays,” Mr. Laracy says. “You can’t go in with feelings or values or anecdotes. That won’t cut it.”

Play smart politics. In 1996, the Heritage Foundation piggybacked on the Republicans’ “Contract With America” fervor and was able to influence welfare legislation, observers say, by lobbying politicians with whom it had developed personal relationships.

“Heritage Foundation was a leader because they were politically aware,” Mr. Laracy says. “They articulated their side in a way that was compelling to lawmakers.”

Copies of the report are available online at http://www.nfg.org/publications/index.htm, or by writing Neighborhood Funders Group, 1 Dupont Circle, Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20036.