Tips for communicating to polarized audiences

This article is published in Fundraising Matters.

My grandfather ran a flower shop in Woonsocket, RI, that was founded in 1948. My mother recalls that he was often asked to post signs from local politicians in the store, but he always refused. He reasoned it was better to sell flowers to both sides. When we worked on the promotional campaign for the Rescue Dinner, the $16 million fundraiser for the International Rescue Committee we needed to avoid the extremes of the immigration debate. Melissa Meredith, Director of strategic events, set the tone by saying, “We were looking for a fresh way to convey our values and communicate a message of hope to counter the divisive rhetoric in the marketplace.” We needed to convey that the refugee and displaced people crisis is not just about “them” it is about “us.” Our theme was, “We’re all in this together.”

It’s not always easy to see the other side and make peace with the great divide in our country. There’s so much at stake for both sides. Yet, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how we treat each other after the fact. Building a communication plan for your organization that brings people together from both sides is a tall order that requires us to be open to other people’s perspectives. We need to be curious instead of hostile to views that don’t necessarily align with our own. To do that, we should look at some of the root causes of our separation and examine how we act towards one another. According to Anu Gupta, the root cause of our conflicts in “bias.” Gupta is a human rights lawyer and author of Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come from and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them. He tells us that just as unconscious biases can be learned, they can also be unlearned. He identifies five habits that impact our ability to communicate with those who are different from us.

1. Mindfulness: First we have to be aware that there is a problem. When the election is won by a couple of percentage points we have a winner, but half of the country is disappointed. We may choose to operate in a winner-take-all fashion, but we risk alienating the other half. Our mission should be to attract as many people as possible. As David Foster Wallace says in his parable about the fish who doesn’t realize he is living in water, “It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: ‘This is water, this is water.’ It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

2. Stereotype Replacement. When we have a pre-conceived notion that “if they aren’t with us they’re against us,” we are reinforcing the conflict. Gupta argues that we need to replace these knee-jerk impressions with healthier alternates that are fact-based. “This practice supports leaders in building alternative mental models around particular identities that over time weaken the hold of stereotypes to reduce unconscious bias.” We need to be curious and open to the idea that not all members of an ethnic groups think the same way. Not all LGBTQ+ people have the same agenda. When I was younger I joined a theater group because I wanted to design posters for shows. I never was much of a sports fan, and found common cause with the theater geeks. On the weekends I would escape to the rehearsals and help out backstage. I met a gay couple who were very involved in the theater but did not show up on Sundays. I was asked to go to their apartment to share my latest show poster sketches and found them whooping and screaming as they watched the Giants game on tv. I thought, “Gay people aren’t supposed to like football!” I couldn’t believe that I was the straight guy who had to interrupt a football game to get them interested in my theater artwork. This shattered my stereotype about what it meant to be gay.

3. Individuation. Find out what makes each person tick. Be curious and cultivate interest in the people you see. Trabian Shorters says, "You can't lift people up by putting them down.” Shorters calls this “asset framing.” When you meet people you want to start by acknowledging their achievements and aspirations. You don’t want to use labels that stigmatize and alienate. First you learn about who they aspire to be, then you can talk about the opportunities and challenges that they may be encountering. Too often we start with the mindset of negativity. We do this by trivializing the beneficiaries that our organization are built to support. We do this with elitist attitudes and know-it-all solutions. Shorter warns, “Philanthropy has a responsibility to not reinforce that. In fact, we must reinforce a narrative that says that we actually all have shared interests.” Otherwise, your organization — and the way you communicate — becomes the real problem.

4. Prosocial Behavior. A smile is not a trivial expression. There was a missionary supported by a church where I used to attend who told us this real life story of what happened after she had been robbed. She said she was quite distraught, as a volunteer working in a poor country she felt betrayed. She was there to help, and yet she was robbed. She said the worst part was that for days and weeks later everyone she passed in the streets was glaring at her. She felt alone and abandoned. Why was everyone looking at her that way? Then she realized that she was the one with the sad and terrified face. The passersby were just reflecting her face and she understood the impact that her expression had on everyone else. Once she started smiling, people would respond with a smile. I think of this all the time when I’m on the subway or in a public space, when you catch the eye of another person and smile, they smile back. We always say that a brand is the reflection of what other people think about your organization. Your brand lives in the hearts and souls of the people who know you and see you. How can your organization proactively produce the attitude you want to see in everyone else?

5. Perspective-Taking. This is the idea that if you can walk in someone else’s shoes you can begin to empathize with them. Invest your time in trying to understand why they think and act as they do. We use “consumer personas” to build personalities for the audiences that we want to attract to our organizations and campaigns. We strive to understand the details of what people do and learn about their priorities. Details matter. How do they spend their money? What are their challenges? Where do they shop? What tv shows do they watch? Ultimately, we want to gather information so we can learn what’s important to them and can take on their perspective. David Blankenstein is the president of Braver Angels, an organization that is working to bridge the partisan divide through workshops and conversations. He wrote in a recent letter to the New York Times, “The greatest problem we face is a nation where rancor and mistrust are riding high and each half of the country increasingly detest the other.” We need more places and spaces where open dialogue can exist, and that can begin in nonprofits where a common goal can unite those who are not ideologically aligned.

My wife, Shelley, always reminds me that when people feel safe and are financially secure, they are more likely to be generous on social issues and support others. We need to build a community that respects others. We need to acknowledge that people are not feeling safe today, and that’s when anger and retribution grow. We need to be the curious ones. Address the issues and communicate clearly that we are ready to listen.