September 5, 2024
CEA Spotlight: Grassroot Institute of Hawaii — Expanding Your Audience Award
No matter how just your cause, or how masterful your research, nothing you say matters if it’s said to an empty room. Sending your messages out to the same audience again and again is only slightly more useful.
In today’s political climate, it is imperative that organizations strive to expand the reach of their message to achieve new heights, build new coalitions, and attract new allies.
The Expanding Your Audience Award recognizes an organization whose efforts to expand their audience has led to an increased capacity and infrastructure for educating and mobilizing their states.
The winner of this year’s Expanding Your Audience Award is the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii!
With only 1.4 million residents in the Aloha State, the Grassroot Institute aims to be a household name. The last couple of years have seen a tremendous boost on the organization’s social media platforms. Those platforms are mainly Instagram and TikTok.
In fact, Grassroot saw its social-media views skyrocket from 3.8 million in 2022 to a whopping 14.3 million views in the first few months of 2024. This increased social-media presence has already paid dividends.
Legislators and other policy groups in the state, for example, have confided to Grassroot staff that they are envious of the groups’ reach. What’s more, Grassroot staff are regularly stopped on the street by Hawaii residents to express their love of the videos.
Many people—both young and old—learn about current events in the state from Instagram, and the Grassroot Institute’s presence is building a wall of support for reforms. Some of those reforms include tax cuts and the removal of government restrictions.
One example of this is passage of a complicated housing-reform package that restores affordable “missing middle” options to Hawaii’s housing market. The bill, drafted by Grassroot Institute, was incredibly complex and hard for the average resident to understand.
Grassroot jumped into action, creating a two-minute explainer video that explained the relevant details of the package in layman’s terms. The video garnered over 100,000 views from 74,000 unique accounts.
By bolstering their presence in the everyday lives of Hawaiians, the Grassroot Institute is also normalizing the values of individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government—especially among the younger generation.
By growing its audience, the Grassroot Institute is softening the ground for free-market policy reforms that might never have been possible otherwise.
