Organizational culture through onboarding

• What is culture change to you?
  • Core beliefs and norms/defaults
  • The same thing as social change?
  • Changes in the way people think and talk about a social phenomenon
  • By definition, happens over time, potentially by the youth culture becoming the dominant culture
  • Not necessarily permanent! Not necessarily positive!
  • Is not necessarily legislative change, nor necessarily reflected by institutions
  • What do people find acceptable? What’s okay, what’s not okay?
  • Lasts longer than any nonprofit, legislator, etc; “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a well-known article in this space
  • Speaks to core human expectations, desires, world views, and core myths
• How do we do this?
  • By confronting institutions, organized action
  • Identify your culture/issue’s base
  • Work with youth
  • Very multi-pronged; information and messaging does not necessarily result in culture change, you must listen and empathize
  • Need to be clear on power analysis
  • Requires long-term funding rather than reactive funding
  • Political education
  • Culture change can be enabled by (or result in) unlikely alliances
  • Requires proponents to be “out” in private and public conversations
  • Can help by framing collective actions/culture as being beneficial to the individual
  • Potentially build upwards from the local level
  • Think about how the other side views the world, and build communication/strategies that take that into account
• How do we measure it?
  • What is being said locally and nationally in media (measurable via PR tools)
  • Social media keywords
  • Track behavior of artists
  • Legislation patterns/waves
  • Depends on which lenses we’re using: impact? permeation?
  • Measuring how much one side alludes to the other side’s narratives
  • Opinion polls
  • Actions by individuals (eg, adopting tools, going to spaces, getting medical procedures, etc)
  • When people stop feeling stigmatized to be “out” as a proponent/actor
  • Unfortunately, nonprofits can rarely get funding based on long-term measures
  • How many affinity or student groups have emerged on this issue
  • There are both process measurements and outcome measurements
  • Changes in usage of opposition messaging, and what the opposition is allowed to say; eg, around gay marriage or climate change
  • Testimonials and stories
  • Where are lobbying or philanthropy dollars being spent
  • What are underutilized data points?
  • Form 990 data
  • What are the underlying dynamics/myths playing out in popular culture – although these are dominated by money and power
• Examples of culture change
  • USA Today no longer using mugshots in articles
  • What does the NRA do?
  • The American right-wing creates the problem of “safety” and sells you the solution
  • Gay marriage, especially though changing the narrative to be about love and speaking to peoples’ positivity
  • Panic around supplies during COVID lockdown, but also increased caring about your community