August 28, 2023
Announcing the Winners of SPN’s 2023 Communications Excellence Awards
State Policy Network is pleased to announce the Institute for Reforming Government, Opportunity Arkansas, and Yankee Institute are the winners of the 2023 Communications Excellence Awards.
The SPN Communications Excellence Awards recognize and encourage outstanding achievements in marketing, communications, and media across the state think tank Network. The awards consist of three categories—Bold Brand Boost, Expanding Your Audience, and Powerful Storytelling.
Presented at SPN’s 31st Annual Meeting in Chicago, the winners received a grant to pursue future projects, as well as a trophy to honor their effort and results.
The Bold Brand Boost Category recognizes work that increases the positive awareness, reach, and influence of a state think tank’s brand. The Institute for Reforming Government (IRG) won the Bold Brand Boost Category for its new oversight project, the Center for Investigative Oversight (CIO).
CIO conducts and supports rigorous, independent, and objective oversight of Wisconsin’s Executive Branch. Although the Wisconsin Legislature has the constitutional authority and obligation to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch, in practice it was not doing so. The CIO aims to change that by helping the Legislature learn to exercise its oversight function while separately investigating administrative waste, fraud, and abuse that can become the subject for future legislative oversight hearings.
Through earned media, digital advertising, and a range of other marketing efforts, IRG has already shifted Wisconsin’s public discourse into expecting more state legislature oversight, and their next efforts will focus on harnessing that energy to demand the Wisconsin Legislature do its job.
The Expanding Your Audience Award recognizes organizations whose communications efforts have led to expanded audiences and increased capacity for educating diverse audiences in their states. Opportunity Arkansas won the Expanding Your Audience Award for their (non)Debatable Newsletter—an email that provides lawmakers with policy news, information, resources, and polling that will help Arkansas live up to its name as the land of opportunity.
Opportunity Arkansas is a start-up think tank and realized casting a big net to collect as many audience members as possible was not only ineffective for advancing their strategy—it was also too labor intensive for their small staff. In their (non) Debatable newsletter, Opportunity Arkansas decided to target the organization’s key audience—policymakers.
Opportunity Arkansas conducted direct outreach to legislators, administrative heads, and staffers in the executive and legislative branches. Not only did they obtain the initial signups they were hoping for—several high-ranking officials and key policymakers subscribed. The newsletter received an already impressive open rate of 60+%, but for their key policymaking audiences they saw open rates averaging above 75%—with some hitting a perfect 100% over several weeks. Their level of success with the highest-leverage audience shows that high-quality content and tailoring that content to a specific audience can be highly effective strategy. The success of the (non) Debatable newsletter contributed to the many legislative wins that Opportunity Arkansas saw throughout the 2023 legislative session.
The Powerful Storytelling Award recognizes storytelling work that improved an organization’s brand and contributes to positive policy change. The Yankee Institute received the Powerful Storytelling Award for their credible and powerful reporting that highlighted the failures of Connecticut’s mental health system. In April 2022, the Yankee Institute launched an investigative journalism project called the Connecticut Inside Investigator.
Through this outlet, Yankee has been able to investigate abuses of power, failings of government, and a wide range of issues important to Connecticut that the Institute itself wouldn’t usually be able to dedicate time towards.
One such investigation, which was originally supposed to be a single-case examination of the convoluted mental health system of Connecticut, quickly spun into its own award-winning multi-year accountability project. Starting with the story of 13-year old Stacy who suffered in the state’s care, Yankee was able to put a very real face on the failure of the state to adequately address the problems in their mental health system. This story gained widespread publication, spurring a statewide conversation and resulting in several tips from citizens concerned about abuses and failures they’d also witnessed. Among several stories that came from those tips, some highlights include finding a private non-coercive peer-to-peer support model that was barred from helping people in Connecticut, and exposing the failure of the state to follow through on a pledged mental health task force. Yankee has gained new audiences through this storytelling, built bridges to potential allies in the future, and helped position themselves as solution-oriented organization that will work with anyone who wants to improve the state.
Congratulations to the winners! Your stories are inspiring and serve as an example for other state think tanks working to build audiences, improve their brand, and use storytelling to reach their goals.
