March 1, 2021
How Tennessee created meaningful policy change through relationships—and your state can, too
By Justin Owen, president and CEO of the Beacon Center of Tennessee
What makes a think tank successful? No, it’s not the number of white papers it churns out each year. Like with many other successes, it revolves around one word: relationships.
Sure, relationships with policymakers are crucial if you want to influence them to advance better policies. Relationships with media help get the word out about your work and change public opinion. And relationships with investors secures the resources to execute on our shared vision.
But the relationships that matter most and make the greatest impact are those with the people your policies actually help. At the Beacon Center, we call these individuals our “heroes.” And they come from all walks of life. There’s the farmer who wants to pass on everything he’s built to his family rather than having the government take a slice via the death tax, the sick patient who needs access to better healthcare, the parent who demands a better education for her child. These heroes walk among us day in and day out. If we really want to solve their problems and allow them to lead a prosperous life, well, we need to get to know them.
Many in our Network have become exceptional storytellers, showcasing the real-world impact of their policy solutions through humanized expression rather than stats and data. But it’s one thing to tell someone’s story; it’s another thing entirely to empower them to tell it themselves.
In order to do this, you must go into communities to learn what problems people face. Understanding the hurdles they must overcome will help you prioritize your work and focus on eliminating problems that matter. The Beacon Center has occasionally proposed a policy solution to a problem only to find that those we thought would benefit couldn’t care less about it. By building relationships and understanding the real challenges people face, you can better solve their actual, rather than perceived, problems.
We not only connect with our heroes to identify problems, but to also work hand-in-hand with them on solutions. Crafting bottom-up solutions alongside those impacted is a far more effective strategy than sitting in our ivory towers and manufacturing policy from the top down.
Here’s an example. Until a few years ago, I had never even heard of animal massage therapy, and perhaps you haven’t either. But when two women from a small town south of Nashville—Martha Stowe and Laurie Wheeler—learned about our occupational licensing work, they reached out to us for help. The state veterinary board had threatened them with jail time if they didn’t close their thriving equine massage business because they weren’t licensed veterinarians. No one on our team knew anything about equine massage, but Martha and Laurie did. They didn’t know how to fight a state regulatory board, but we did. We teamed up and sued the board, which put pressure on the state legislature to intervene and protect their right to earn a living.
Martha and Laurie not only testified before the Legislature about their plight, but they literally helped draft the bill to repeal the vet board’s rule and replace it with a voluntary certification for their burgeoning industry.
When we proposed a Right to Try law for Tennessee, lawmakers named the law after our hero Amanda Wilcox, a cancer patient (now survivor!) who bravely made the case for the law while undergoing treatment, sometimes even from her hospital bed.
We don’t just work with our heroes to change laws; our team members become and remain an integral part of their lives long after our policy work is done. Our heroes regularly call us to check in and update us on how our work has benefited them. Our outreach director goes to the grand openings of the businesses started by the women we worked with to repeal Tennessee’s hair braiding license. And as I write this, one hero called just yesterday to ask how she can replicate what we did together for her friends and family in another state. She wants to take her freedom show on the road, and we’re going to help her do it. These examples demonstrate the power of a connected network of people pulling for a common cause.
Witnessing our Network move from white paper factories to passionate storytellers has been exciting. But if we really want to change lives, we must take the next step and build meaningful relationships with the beneficiaries of our policies. We must listen to them and understand where they’re coming from. We must engage them in the fight. And we must stand by their side and celebrate with them when they prove that our work together made them freer and more prosperous than they’ve ever been.
