From Fixers to Builders

This piece was originally published in the Stanford Innovation Review on January 9, 2025.

How do we get people of all political identities to willingly support social progress without compromising anyone’s values? In September 2024, two months before the American public voted Republicans into control of every branch of the US national government, that question was definitively answered at a private, non-political gathering of philanthropic foundation executives and their communications officers.

The Next Narrative Summit was sponsored and facilitated by BMe Community and leading foundations including Robert Wood Johnson, Bill & Melinda Gates, Annie E. Casey, New Pluralists, Nellie Mae, The Kresge Foundation, New Commonwealth Fund, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Joyce Foundation, Prudential, Best Buy, Omidyar Network, Comcast NBC Universal, and The Communications Network.

Communication in a New Era of Social Change

This essay series, presented in partnership with The Communications Network, will share stories, strategies, and lessons from forward-thinking foundations and nonprofits that have begun evolving the way they think and do communications.

These organizations’ 161 foundation and communications leaders learned how their peers have recently united liberals and conservatives to achieve historic victories on the same issues that traditional appeals are now losing. These new appeals had several commonalities: They define people by aspirations before noting challenges; they replace jargon and fear-triggering with common language and inspiration; and they hold presumed opponents and America accountable without vilifying either. The following examples illustrate the power of next narrative appeals to win civil rights, invest billions for equity, revive educational institutions, and win public support across the political map today.

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In 2023—the same year that the US Supreme Court ruling on Students for Fair Admissions caused philanthropists to reconsider their stance on equity goals or avoid using the term “equity” altogether—Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota (a “blue state”) became the first US city to raise $1 billion in a single year to support racial equity and carbon neutrality. The effort, led by Tonya Allen of the McKnight Foundation, used a next narrative strategy to rally the GroundBreak Coalition—a group of more than 40 corporate, civic, and philanthropic allies—to not only make fundraising history, but also regard their billion dollars as the downpayment on a $5.3 billion goal.

In May 2022, Michigan (a “swing state”) became the first US state to reopen a historically Black college. The next narrative campaign behind the effort, led by former Nike footwear design executive D’Wayne Edwards, won political support and corporate backing to fund and reopen Pensole Lewis College (PLC). In fact, Edwards has relaunched PLC as the only historically Black college specializing in the design industry.

Some of the most impressive gains may be in “red states.” In 2018, Desmond Meade of the Florida Restoration Rights Coalition led a historic campaign using next narrative appeals that overturned 150-year-old laws—an achievement that Democratic leader and activist Stacy Abrams called “the largest expansion of civil and voting rights in a half-century.” Meade’s appeal restored rights to 1.4 million neighbors in Florida who had served their time for past crimes and thereby earned their right to full citizenship. While Governor Ron Desantis quickly erected administrative barriers to the public will, the campaign overcame that too. Over 5 million Republicans, Democrats, and Independents voted together for historic progress.

Sheena Meade, Desmond Meade’s wife, is meanwhile expanding civil rights across the United States using a similar next narrative stance. Her Clean Slate Initiative received $75 million from The Audacious Project to help states automate the process of expunging criminal records once someone has completed their sentence. Her TED Talk on “How Second Chance Laws Can Transform the Justice System” has been viewed more than 1.1 million times.

Finding a New Narrative Norm

The Next Narrative Summit was three years in the making. In 2021, the communications firm Hattaway Communications researched whether social impact appeals that don’t rely on narratives of crisis, fear, and denigration can effectively engage people. The results were game-changing: The firm found a very large market—one that spans all races, genders, ages, regions, and political identities—for next narrative appeals.

According to Hattaway’s research, 39 million Americans vote, volunteer, donate, and want to achieve goals like racial equality, social justice, and fairness. But they’re fundamentally turned off by progressive stances expressed in jargon that suggest all systems are broken, individuals are powerless, and populations should be defined by their challenges. BMe Community dubbed this next narrative demographic “builders”; 51 percent of this group are Democrats, 22 percent are Independents, and 20 percent are Republicans.

Builders are the kind of people who help their neighbors without asking their political affiliation first. They aren’t prone to protesting but typically help people in their communities before protests erupt, during protests, and after news agencies and protestors leave their community. The research found that 63 percent of builders are 45 or older, 59 percent are not college graduates, and 57 percent earn $60,000 or less a year. They’re proportionately distributed in the north and south (53 percent to 47 percent, respectively), and by race (58 percent white, 19 percent Black, 12 percent Latino, 6 percent Asian, 2 percent Native American, 1 percent other). Builders are self-actualized but often invisible to progressive activists or mislabeled as “disengaged” by progressive researchers because they don’t respond to progressive appeals.

Yet builders outnumber progressive activists by 3 million (39 to 36 million people). For perspective, the size of this rarely addressed market is 14 times the margin of victory in the 2024 presidential race. The 20 percent of builders (7.8 million people) who are Republicans are three times the margin of victory alone. Simply learning to speak builder language presents social change organizations with enormous opportunity to engage people of all political identities to support progressive goals without compromising anyone’s values. Let’s unpack the common denominators of next narrative appeals to builders.

1. People want to be defined by their aspirations, not their problems.

The entire social impact sector, including medicine, is hooked on “the problem statement” and consequently labels entire populations and patients according to problems. For instance, the field often defines communities solely as “low-income.” This kind of framing has the unintended but lasting consequences of stigmatizing populations, because they become known only for how they’re behind, below, less than, and lower than whatever is socially normal. Narratives that hide their aspirations and contributions also make it seem like social impact leaders are here to save them and like society must pay a price to lift up people that traditional framing puts down. This self-aggrandizing posture feels righteous, because in that narrative, the advocate for the downtrodden is effectively the hero of the story.

The Time Magazine article written by Stacey Abrams illustrates how ridiculous this negative labeling can become. It introduces civil rights attorney, Nobel Prize nominee, and American history maker Desmond Meade as, “Homeless and suicidal, with a felony record…” I pointed out to Meade that there were times in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life when he was all three of those things, but who would introduce him that way? Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPCL) introduces Meade as: “The former drug user who had been convicted of a felony was building himself a new life. He had climbed out of homelessness, incarceration and addiction.”

To be clear, Abrams and Margaret Huang, who runs SPLC, are Meade’s allies. They, like many progressives who label communities by their worst experiences, mean no harm. But Huang’s bio introduces her this way: “An experienced human rights and racial justice advocate, Huang leads the SPLC in its mission to serve as a catalyst for racial justice in the South…” So, it’s worth noting that Meade is literally all those things too, but progressives and news media often treat the worst experiences of stigmatized populations as credentials and disregard the credentials they’ve earned.

Rather than starting with a problem statement and how to “fix a broken world,” next narratives assume that the sector exists to “build a better world.” They start with aspirational statements—not an organization’s aspirations but the aspirations of the people it seeks to serve. From there, next narratives introduce the challenges that thwart those groups’ worthy ends and invite others to do their small but significant part to make a better world.

Allen, Edwards, and Desmond and Sheena Meade define the people who are experiencing unfairness or injustice as the protagonists in their own lives, introducing their aspirations and contributions before noting their challenges. This is called “Asset-Framing.” I coined Asset-Framing and have taught it since 2013. Its primary benefit is preventing stigma and thereby preventing the belittling, blaming, and shaming that arise from stigma. With stigma removed, systemic unfairness becomes much easier to see. When we define groups by how they earn, yearn, seek, strive, work, and build yet see they still experience deep hardship, it becomes much easier to accept that some outside influence is obstructing their success. So, the story of the “under-resourced communities” to Allen is more clearly about giving wealth builders of color fair lending. The story of “disadvantaged youth” to Edwards is more accurately about students and aspiring designers seeking a fair opportunity to learn. The story of “ex-convicts” and “formerly incarcerated” people to Sheena and Desmond Meade are more accurately about people seeking a second chance after having paid their debt to society. These more common-sense articulations of aspiring people facing systemic challenges to their worthy goals resonate with builders.

2. You can love your country and still want to build better systems.

Progressives regularly describe America as racist, sexist, classist, toxic, and capitalist. These may be true, but just as calling impoverished people poor or incarcerated people criminal may be technically true, they’re not the whole truth.

Next narrative strategies extend Asset-Framing to systems—again, defining systems and even the United States in this case by its aspirations and contributions before noting their challenges. America’s highest promise to the world is that it can be a land of liberty and justice for all, wherein people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of prosperity. That is the aspiration. The fair criticism that it hasn’t lived up to those aspirations is what inspires so many to want to “fix broken systems.” Nonetheless, builders need to hear organizations say that they’re working to fulfill the aspirations first, not just solve the problem or paint the picture that all the systems are broken and anyone who benefits from them should be stigmatized as well. Essentially, if you can define people by their aspirations and contributions en route to solving problems, then you can define America that way too. It doesn’t need to be flag-waving or jingoism, but millions of people who know that things are broken also love their country. Messaging that doesn’t vilify them for doing so works better than messaging that does.

When appropriate, you can even use Asset-Framing for the perceived opposition to your campaign. In every example listed here, Meades, Allen, and Edwards defined institutions by their positive purposes regardless of political affiliation. State governments aspire to protect democracy and prosper their citizens. Banks aspire to build wealth. And school systems aspire to build knowledge and capable graduates.

3. Jargon only communicates to your in-group.

This one is communications 101, but as we try to evolve people’s thinking and awareness, we inevitably come up with jargon like “intersectionality,” “toxic masculinity,” and “critical race theory.” We know that at least 39 million Americans essentially agree with progressive goals but are not ready for jargon 401-level narratives. This doesn’t make them evil, cancelable, nor dumb any more than it will make you those things if you must look up the meaning of “oleo” simply because you don’t know what it is.

Jargon is not an expression of intelligence nor necessarily even evolved thinking; it’s literally just shorthand language for the in-group that knows it. So, next narrative strategies speak to people in plain language about passions rather than politics. To be clear, when speaking with groups that are into jargon like Asset-Framing, then obviously you can use it. But even then, they’ll remember it better if you can break it down to a more commonsensical expression like, “State their best before the rest.”

4. Fear is not a progress emotion.

In politics, both the left and the right over-rely on fear to engage people in causes. So, both succeed at engendering a great sense of dread and over time diminishing hope. In the current narratives from both sides and the news media, we seem to continuously live in a broken world. It’s exhausting. It’s literally toxic according to the American Psychological Association, which advises people to moderate their news consumption so that they don’t increase stress-related emotional and physical illness.

Next narrative strategies do not anchor attention to brokenness, threats, and fear because fear is a reactive emotion. It triggers our survival response, which is counter to empathy, true hope, and a growth mindset. Next narrative strategies lead with positive aspirations then focus on how we can build better futures together, not just fix a broken world. Since builders are disaffected by broken-world scenarios, talking about what they can help build engages them much better than talking only about what we can fix. As I pointed out earlier, change agents can define America by its challenges, or they can define it as a nation that has promised liberty and justice for all before listing all the same challenges.

Continuing to Build

To put the need for next narratives in context, it’s helpful to understand the history of the old ones. Boomers—people born during the post-World War II baby boom and the largest generational group in the history of the United States—have been adults for over 50 years and shaped all kinds of cultural norms. While they presided over the largest expansion of material wealth in history, they also made fear, blame, shame, and crises our default tools of mobilization. Boomers declared War on Poverty, War on Crime, War on Drugs, and War on Terror, and invented the “burning platform” metaphor, which argues that major change requires a sense of imminent danger.

Today, after half a century of exposure to this cultural phenomenon, we don’t question it much. It continues to influence messaging of all kinds, including political campaigns. Yet, as institutional power shifts to the next generation, we have a chance to establish a different narrative norm for social innovation. The social sector has the opportunity to leave old narratives behind and to begin its thoughts and proposals with aspirational rather than problem statements. From there, it can talk about the striving people in whom it seeks to invest and the better systems we can work to build. Detailing the systemic dysfunctions and unfairness in this light will make it far easier for people of all identities to see them. From a shared knowledge of each other’s genuine aspirations and contributions, society can stop believing that giving certain groups the rights and privileges they’ve earned is somehow an act of charity.

Shifting to more aspirational, dignifying, values-driven, problem-naming, and accessible ways of communicating offers social sector organizations the chance to make our communications more effective. Campaigns that have used next narrative approaches have already raised billions for progressive causes; engaged millions of people from across the political spectrum in institutional, legal, and historic progress; increased hope; and decreased stigma. Nothing theoretical about it. All is doable today if we’re willing to speak the language of allies we’ve ignored and move on from the narrative identity of being fixers of a broken world to the next narrative of being builders of a better one.