Dissemination Lessons Learned

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Abstract

This paper describes the strategies and tactics used by the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism (ANF) project to communicate changes in the social safety net in the wake of welfare reform. From 1997 to 2004, the growth of electronic communications revolutionized the way people communicate. This report documents how ANF adapted to these changes and offers lessons for future work. Several themes run through this work: continual evaluation of the dissemination program led to continual evolution; cost, time and outcomes were major measures of effectiveness; and being timely and relevant required new communication strategies.

Introduction

The Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism (ANF) project was designed to document changes in the social safety net during a period of great change in the mid- to late 1990s and to help national and state policymakers make decisions based on the best available data and research. Accomplishing this goal required ANF to implement a multifaceted dissemination program.

This paper describes the strategies used by the ANF project to communicate research findings about the complex changes taking place in the social safety net as a result of welfare reform. During the period covered in this report, 1997–2004, electronic communications via email and the Internet grew dramatically. This report describes how the ANF communications strategy adapted to these changes. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of various strategies and identifies lessons learned for future work.

From a dissemination perspective, ANF posed interesting communications challenges.

• Covering all aspects of the social safety net (welfare and work, health, child welfare, child care, racial and ethnic disparities, immigration, and fiscal and budget issues) as well as the general well-being of families, the project was data-intensive.
  
• ANF aimed to be a nonpartisan source of data and research that all sides of the political debate would consider reliable.
  
• ANF wanted to reach a very broad range of stakeholders—elected officials, executive agency administrators, service providers, professional associations, advocates, the media, and researchers—at the local, state, and national levels.

ANF viewed the communications strategy as an evolving program. ANF consistently evaluated its activities and, as needed, made trade-offs to achieve project goals. For instance, Assessing vi the New Federalism ANF decided that giving stakeholders access to research before its official release was a useful departure from the traditional “embargo” approach. Prerelease allowed ANF to maintain its objectivity by creating opportunities for all stakeholders to learn about the research before its release, to understand it, to interpret it independently, and to comment on it to reporters. As a result, the ANF communications strategy increasingly focused on mobilizing intermediaries who could turn the research into policy.

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The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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