December 7, 2022
Case study: How listening sessions changed Beacon Center’s top priorities
Goal: The Beacon Center of Tennessee wanted to ensure their policy agenda truly served average Tennessee families.
Strategy: Beacon launched statewide listening sessions, online focus groups, and large-scale polling to understand what problems Tennesseans face in their everyday life and what issues prevent them from living a good life.
Results: Beacon discovered none of the policy reforms they typically worked on were top issues for Tennesseans. With the information gleaned from listening to their constituents, Beacon is realigning their policy priorities to better match the top priorities of Tennessee families.
For more than 18 years, the Beacon Center of Tennessee has improved the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Tennesseans. Through policy advocacy, the Center has advanced state-level reforms in education, healthcare, economic regulation, and tax policy.
Their work was making an impact and changing lives. But one day in late August 2021, Beacon’s vice president of strategy and communications, Mark Cunningham, had a thought: Do the issues they work on really solve the big problems people face?
Mark had an uneasy feeling they did not. Beacon’s usual policy issues—including occupational licensing, property rights, and worker freedom—although important, were niche issues and likely not a top concern for most Tennesseans. Mark felt like the organization was not on the same page as the people of Tennessee—the people who Beacon works for and represents. Mark added: “It just felt like we were a little out of touch with what normal people were thinking.”
Mark took his thoughts to Beacon’s President and CEO Justin Owen, who agreed Beacon should dive into this question further. Mark and Justin realized the best way to gauge what issues Tennesseans cared about was to ask them directly.
In the spring of 2022, the Beacon Center launched listening sessions—events that bring people within a state or community together to discuss the challenges they face in their everyday life. Listening sessions are a way for state think tanks like Beacon to hear from people directly and learn about the barriers that prevent them from living a successful, prosperous life. Beacon’s listening sessions consisted of two parts: online focus groups and in-person events across the state.
The online focus groups were professionally moderated events with 10-12 people. Beacon hired an outside consultant to bring the participants in and make the groups as representative of the state as possible.
The moderator asked open-ended questions to the group about what issues mattered most to them. Beacon hosted six of these online focus groups, and at the end of each session the moderator gave Beacon notes on the top issues that came up in conversation. Beacon used the themes from these focus groups to form questions for their poll of 1400 residents across the state. This statewide poll was another tool Beacon used to identify what issues matter most to individuals and families in Tennessee.
Beacon also held in-person events in Chattanooga and Memphis. These in-person events were moderated by Beacon’s Mark Cunningham and Taylor Dawson—who asked attendees what prevents them from pursuing the American Dream.
The event in Chattanooga involved small business owners, while the Memphis event hosted Tennessee parents. Beacon worked with local influencers in those areas to bring people to the sessions, and Beacon ensured the groups consisted of people from all backgrounds, races, neighborhoods, income levels, and political ideologies. Mark added: “We tried to do our best to have an audience that looked like what the state looked like, not what our donors or supporters looked like.”
It turns out Mark was right. Beacon’s priorities were out of step with what average families want. The top issues that came up, in both the online focus groups and in-person events, were not issues that the Beacon Center has ever worked on.
Tennesseans mentioned issues such as inflation, inadequate roads, learning loss from the pandemic, supply chain issues, unaffordable medication, and mental health. Housing costs were the top issue in both the online focus groups and in-person events. Beacon heard stories from families who were unable to afford to move into a bigger apartment or couldn’t afford to buy a house.
Several participants of Beacon’s listening sessions noted their dissatisfaction with education, but no one mentioned the need for more school choice, a policy priority for Beacon. When asked to elaborate on their discontent, participants mentioned inadequate school lunches and mental health problems in schools—two other issues Beacon hadn’t previously worked on.
Mark gathered the information from the listening sessions and presented the findings to the entire staff. Beacon sat down as a team, analyzed the issues that participants mentioned, and discussed what issues they should focus on.
Beacon is considering how to realign their policy priorities based on what they learned in the listening sessions. Mark explained: “Our entire agenda, not just for this year, but for the next few years, will be dependent on what these results show.”
The information gleaned from the listening sessions will also help Beacon Impact in their outreach to state lawmakers. Beacon now has solid data on what issues matter most to voters—which Beacon can share with lawmakers as they pursue different policies. Cunningham added: “In addition, this will help our influence because both the general public and politicians will see that Beacon isn’t just working on our pet issues, but issues that matter to the state as a whole.”
Beacon will face some challenges with this information, though. Beacon noted they need to make sure the new issues they focus on are consistent with their principles and mission. Another challenge is identifying where they can be most effective. Mental health, although a very important issue, isn’t an issue Beacon can readily address.
When asked about how state think tanks should approach listening sessions, Mark Cunningham encouraged state leaders to separate themselves from the people they represent. Mark elaborated by noting his favorite issue to work on is corporate welfare. He realized, however, that for most people, corporate welfare is not an important issue that directly impacts their life.
“Just because you care about something, doesn’t mean other people do,” said Mark. “Working on a pet project or issue because it’s important to you does not mean it’s important to the very people you’re representing.”
State think tanks often fall into a trap of focusing on specific policies just because they’ve always worked on those reforms. It’s not to say those policies aren’t important or don’t impact people’s lives. They do. But it’s an important exercise for a state think tank to step back and talk to directly to the people in their communities to understand what issues matter most to them. Listening sessions are an opportunity for state think tanks to develop relationships with the people they represent, understand the barriers they face, and advance better solutions that address those problems.
If your organization would like information on how to start a listening session, please reach out to State Policy Network’s Sarah Keenan at sarah@spn.org.
What are Listening Sessions and why should your organization host one?
