Using Research to Change Narratives About Direct Cash Assistance for UpTogether

The Challenge

During the pandemic, many Americans had a chance to experience what it felt like to have a little bit of help when times were tough. Pandemic income assistance through COVID-19 relief checks and the Child Tax Credit provided help to many who were facing income insecurity and helped our communities survive the conditions of poverty accelerated by the pandemic. Americans were receiving cash that allowed them to make financial choices more confidently in a time of great uncertainty. And people liked these policies.

But sustained support for guaranteed income faces a major hurdle: long-standing deep narratives about poverty, including bootstrap individualism, resistance to handouts, and deservingness. 

In 2023, UpTogether – a national nonprofit dedicated to community-based solutions to poverty – requested proposals for a narrative change strategy that could help their team challenge the existing narratives about poverty in Massachusetts. Their goal: to build support for direct cash programs across the state. They wanted to know what stories they should tell and what language they should use to resonate with various actors across the state.

The Center proposed a year-long project to understand the worldviews and values of Massachusettsans, test messages and metaphors that resonated with them, and help UpTogether develop a toolkit of narrative themes that UpTogether and their collaborators could employ to accomplish their goal. While the purpose of the project was to understand Massachusetts, the long-term focus of the project was to provide UpTogether and its coalitions with research and tools they could adapt to their strategies in other states.

Let’s strategize

Research in Action 

This project had two major components: research and training. Our project began with a literature review and landscape scan to understand the current conversations around guaranteed income and direct cash. We used this research and client meetings to develop a mixed-method research plan that included interviews and three different surveys. 

The Center’s process is always interactive — we design our projects to bring practitioners into the world of research. Throughout the project, the UpTogether team was invited to develop questions, provide insight, and recommend interviewees in a way that was compliant with IRB standards. Additionally, we developed tailored workshops that introduced UpTogether and the Trust + Invest Collaborative to our frameworks as well as provided space for collaborative strategy development. Through this, we identified which of the Six Spheres of Influence UpTogether should prioritize and how they could bring this research to their Massachusetts-based collaborators.

The research led us to three major findings: 

1. Messages that lean into in-group loyalty resonated well with Massachussettsans of all political backgrounds. 
2. People respond better to abundance metaphors regardless of political affiliation — framing basic income as a “strong foundation” or a place to “nurture community” rather than a tool in the “war on poverty.”
3. The terms we use on this topic need to be concrete – people are more comfortable with terms that are less abstract like “direct cash,” but are open to terms like “guaranteed basic income” if we define them clearly. 

We used this research to develop a collection of seven narratives, frames, and stories that UpTogether could use to build messages that can move Massachussettsans to take action. We provided immediate tailoring support for members of the UpTogether team so that they could bring these research-backed messages to coalition meetings and policy hearings.

Measurable Change 

This project wrapped in Summer 2024, and we are paying close attention to the long-term effects of these messages. Programs like the ones UpTogether supports have shown up in political conversations throughout this year’s elections, and we are tracking how the narrative has shifted or stayed the same from the early phase of our research. 

In the short term, UpTogether is reporting some success locally in Massachusetts in conversations with funders and various leaders across the Commonwealth.