There's a lot of squabbling in the Democrat/liberal/progressive community about single issue groups, and whether they contribute or take away from the goal of winning back power from the Republican Party.
Here's an article from Andy Goodman's Free Range Thinking Newsletter (PDF) that doesn't explicitly address that issue, but which immediately brought it to my mind.
In Kansas City, a children's advocacy organization and a local marketing agency crafted a strategy around one central question used by the Hopi people: "Is it good for the children?" First, they did a poll to see if that question would resonate with people. Next, the president of the children's organization and his colleagues did 400 interviews with civic leaders to build support for the question. They didn't ask for a commitment, just a conversation. Then they lauched a campaign of 15-second television ads using recognizable community leaders to ask the question "and deliver the equally important message: 'It's your decision.'"
Three years into the campaign, over 700 local organizations had officially adopted the question:
These commitments were reflected in many ways: the city council put it on all purchase orders, religious organizations printed it on Sunday bulletins, school districts added it to their stationery. And the question kept popping up at meetings. Westbrook recalls one such meeting in 1998 in which a local CEO announced a summer schedule giving employees a 4-day week in return for working from 7:00 am until 5:30 pm each day. “A grandmother in the back asked, ‘Is it good for the children?’” says Westbrook, “and it absolutely changed the whole meeting.” The discussion turned to issues around daycare and carpools, and the proposed plan - which clearly would not be good for children - was dropped.
There isn't a whole lot in this article on the results, but their methods are striking. Instead of "We need message discipline, everybody get in line!", they took the time to build relationships. Instead of providing an answer, they provided a lens based on their values.
