Crisis In The Courts
The Challenge: Spread awareness on how the Trump administration and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have remade the federal judiciary over the past four years and how reshaping the federal courts could set back reproductive health and rights for generations.
The Insight: The coordinated strategy by state and federal politicians to remake the judiciary branch in order to overturn Roe v. Wade was being overlooked due to a lack of public knowledge regarding the role of the courts.
The Campaign: A dynamic and information-rich website that allows the user to dive into detail about how Trump and McConnell have worked together to appoint 200 federal judges in record time, the importance of the lower courts in protecting our civil and reproductive rights, and the troubling records of some of the judges the Senate has confirmed.
Learn more about the campaign here.
We Demand More
The Challenge: Leverage the collective power of progressive organizations to fight for women, especially women of color, who are on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis.
The Insight: Building consensus and stability both internally and externally will strengthen your message and impact.
The Campaign: A new brand, We Demand More, and a cohesive campaign that guided a coalition of 70+ organizations — including Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Women’s March, Supermajority, UltraViolet, MomsRising, and more.
Learn more about the project here.
Defend Dreamers
The Challenge: On September 5, 2017 the Trump administration announced it will kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The decision meant over 800,000 young undocumented immigrants (aka Dreamers) could be deported, forced back to a country they don’t even remember and where they might not even speak the language. We needed a rapid response campaign that would allow our members to stand up for their friends and family who were at risk of deportation.
Insight: There was a wide spectrum of awareness when it came to The DACA program and the immigrants’ rights movement. Some DoSomething members had an intimate understanding of the country’s immigration program and policies while others were new to the movement.
The Campaign: We rolled out a Week of Action to Defend Dreamers. Each day we had a new action our members to take. To meet members where they were, we had a variety of low-barrier and high barrier calls to action such as calling Senators and House Reps, making their communities safe spaces for dreamers, and providing a platform for DoSomething members who are Dreamers and DACA recipients to share their stories. You can find more information and metrics on the campaign here.
Lose Your V-Card
The Challenge: 19% percent of 18- to 29-years old cast ballots in the 2014 elections. That was the lowest youth turnout rate ever recorded in a federal election. This was a huge issue that DoSomething.org wanted to address, but studies showed that talking about millennial apathy and low voter turnout only normalizes it.
The Insight: Research done by multiple organizations found that sending a peer a card to celebrate their first election, with a direct and tangible way to register, significantly increases the likeliness of that person registering and turning out to vote.
The Campaign: During the 2016 election, DoSomething helped change the narrative around youth voter turnout by celebrating the act of voting for the first time, aka losing your V-Card! We framed voting as an awesome rite of passage that should be celebrated, and created FOMO (fear of missing out) around the election. Young people shared funny and flirty memes on social media to invite their first-time voter friends to lose their voting virginity. Once a young person clicked on the meme they were brought to a voter registration form. To normalize the act of voting even more, we recruited tons of young celebrities and influencers who were also celebrating losing their V-Card in their first election. In just two months, over 147,000 young people signed up for Lose Your V-Card and 10,000 young people registered to vote directly through the campaign.
Little Rock Nine Text
The Challenge: U.S. schools are more segregated now than they were in the 1960s. Nationwide, roughly 75% of black students attend so called majority-minority schools. DoSomething wanted to educate young people about the importance of fighting for diversity in our country’s schools.
Insight: The Little Rock Nine were just kids when they took on the roles of brave civil rights activists. Their stories are relatable and inspiring to today's youth.
The campaign: I created a choose-your-own adventure SMS game that brought users through a day in the life of the Little Rock Nine. Throughout the game, users had to make tough decisions in the face of racism. At the end of the experience, young people were encouraged to teach friends about why we must continue to fight against school segregation.
Guns Out
The Challenge: In March 2016, at least 15 states were debating bills that would allow guns on college campuses.
The Insight: Over 85% of DoSomething members said they felt silenced in the debate surrounding gun violence prevention.
The Campaign: Thousands of DoSomething members tweeted #GunOut photos at college presidents, urging them to sign the official letter against concealed carry on campus. For more information and metrics of the campaign, click here.
Planet Zombie
The Challenge: The environmental movement is struggling to build a strong coalition against climate change. A large reason for the movement’s lack of allies is due to that fact that since its inception in the 1800s, environmentalism has retained an elitist reputation and is known as the movement focused on protecting nature to benefit upper-class. We wanted to widen the funnel into the climate change movement by showing that the fight against climate change isn’t just about preserving nature but fighting for each other’s basic rights to survival.
The Insight: Young people are obsessed with zombies. From blockbuster movies to primetime TV, zombies are everywhere.
The Campaign: To introduce young people to the concept of climate justice, I created Planet Zombie, a choose-your-own-adventure SMS zombie apocalypse game where users try to survive the from the point of view of someone living in a low-income community. The game shows users the impact of climate change and how this issue relates to others they are passionate about, like discrimination, poverty, health, and others. The experience concludes by asking users if they want to be climate justice activists. Choosing “yes” is accompanied by a prompt to tweet and a sample message that can be sent to their state’s governor asking them to support the Clean Power Plan.
Who Has Their Eye On You?
The Challenge: truth and DoSomething.org wanted to shine a light on how the tobacco industry deliberately singles out communities that already face adversity and inequality with aggressive marketing tactics.
The Insight: Young people love compatibility quizzes. Big Tobacco has a "type" and is obsessed with getting black, latino, and low-income communities hooked on its deadly products.
The Campaign: In efforts to bring awareness to predatory marketing, teens were encouraged to sign up and take a fun, emoji compatibility quiz to find out if they were a "match" with a mystery single, who they later learned was no other than Big Tobacco. After completing the quiz, young people took steps to becoming a part of the generation that ends smoking for good. 114,175 young people signed up for the campaign and the quiz was shared on social media over 15,000 times. The campaign reached 302,548,348 impressions and was a finalist for a Shorty award.