Discovering the Activation Point ™: Smart Strategies to Make People Act

"Real change requires action, and the key to moving people from knowledge to action is persuasion."

This resource aims to help nonprofit organisations harness the power of persuasion to make more progress toward their social change goals - from the environment to health care to foreign aid. An activation point occurs when the right people at the right time are persuaded to take action that leads to measurable social change. But before people will act, they must view the issue as relevant to their daily lives and believe that change is possible and something good will happen as a result.

Questions that can be used as a starting point for discovering the activation point for an intended audience:

Who do you need to persuade...to do what?

• What do you need to persuade people to do?
• What will their action accomplish for your organisation or issue?
• What is the smallest number of people you can activate to get what you want?
• How many audience segments do they break down to?
• Can you test your requested action to learn where it falls in the audience's comfort zone?

What stage of persuasion is the audience in currently (sharing knowledge, building will or reinforcing action)?

• What does the audience already know (or think it knows) about your issue?
• Does your audience need more information or more reason to care or act?
• How can you connect your issue to your audience's existing values?
• How can you make the issue more personal and emotionally relevant to the audience?
• How can you phrase your ask so it sounds like a suggestion rather than a command?
• Do your messages show you respect your audience?

What can be done to build the audience's will to act?

• What are the audience's current barriers?
• Is your request in their comfort zone? If not, how far out of their comfort zone do you need them to go?
• What is the perceived risk and how can you mitigate that risk?
• How can you make the benefits appear greater than the perceived risk?
• How can you position the issue and the requested action as the social norm?

What barriers need to be overcome and how?

• How can you acknowledge that the audience is pressed for time? Are there easy ways for them to get involved?
• Can you demonstrate a real hope for change?
• Can you show the audience that individual participation makes a difference?
• Can you protect the audience from feelings of rejection, failure, or judgment?

When is the best time to persuade?

• When is your issue already on the public radar? Are there certain times of year or is there a certain point in an audience member's life when your issue is more likely to resonate?
• What would make your efforts timely? How can you create those opportunities?

Once your audience takes action, how do you reinforce that action?

• How can you showcase the benefits of people taking action?
• What small, ongoing victories can you show to keep the audience engaged?
• How can you reflect that this win reinforces your audience's values?
• When you follow up, how can you make it personal?

Amongst the key points:

• "When people have a high level of awareness of an issue, they are not motivated by more information. In fact, it can contribute to their state of inertia.
• Hope is the only absolutely, positively essential ingredient to campaigns trying to inspire action. You must make people believe that the situation will get better - with their help.
• There are several stages to successful persuasion:
  1. Stage One: People need to know, believe and care enough to want to act.
  2. Stage Two: People must have the will to act.
  3. Stage Three: Once people act, they must be rewarded for doing so.
• Timing is everything. Deciding when it is the right time to persuade people is a critical factor to defining an activation point - and can be very tricky.
• Understanding an audience's comfort zone is key. There are clear limits to what even the most passionate people are willing to do, especially if the 'ask' is outside their comfort zone. On the other hand, asking people to do things within their comfort zone allows them to feel good about helping without putting themselves at risk.
• People are selfish. They need to feel an issue is directly relevant to their own lives before they will act."

This resource was made possible through the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.

Discovering the Activation Point™ 2.0 is coming soon.