Our Work in Action

We roll up our sleeves and help drive projects that share knowledge and build awareness, change behavior and policies and measure impact. Amplify's approach is driven by your goals.     
Making the Case
Challenge: How do you help save funding for a program by efficiently showing its impact?  

Solution: Proven, effective, and at risk of being underfunded, HUD's Section 4 Capacity Building for Community Development and Affordable Housing Program grants provide poor communities with funding to strengthen housing options for vulnerable populations. We worked closely with Enterprise Community Partners to develop brief explanatory case studies that highlight the funds’ impact on housing security and local economies. Our data-driven case studies drew attention and support for the program from Congressional offices.     
Narrowing the Audience
Challenge: How do you figure out your communication strategy when your audience is the general public?  

Solution: Organizations and governments are adopting zero waste plans to divert 90% or more from landfill and combustion through "reduce and reuse" as well as recycling and composting. To help Virginia’s Arlington County form a communications strategy for their forthcoming zero waste launch, we did a target audience analysis and shared best practices from other cities and counties. We identified two key audiences to narrow their focus: owners and managers of multi-family buildings, where the vast majority of residents live, and newcomers, since the County has very high residential mobility. Arlington County is using our findings and recommendations to develop their communication strategy.
    
Changing Behavior
Challenge: How do you build a conservation movement?  


Solution: Each year, an estimated 18 billion pounds of plastic ends up in the ocean. 40% of all plastic produced is used once for packaging and then thrown into a landfill. To build awareness about the problem of plastic trash and spark individual and household behavior changes on consumption habits, Amplify helped EcoAction Arlington, a non-profit addressing environmental challenges, launch an inaugural ‘Plastics Free Challenge’ social marketing campaign. We crafted the outreach and engagement strategy, developed e-communications, and set goalposts to help them measure their campaign’s success. The result? Over 800 households participated in the first EcoAction Arlington challenge and committed to stop or reduce their use of single-use plastics.
Building a Strategic Roadmap
Challenge: How do you build a cohesive pathway forward between teams with different areas of focus?

Solution: Programs often have different priorities within an organization. This can be challenging for leadership teams working to identify organization-wide goals when strategic planning. Amplify helped surface the synergies and common goals across five impact initiatives within National Geographic’s Science and Exploration Team through our facilitation of a senior leadership strategy offsite. We identified a pathway of actions that offered short-term, mid-term and longer-term steps and topics to help build coordination, synergy and drive for the National Geographic Society Science and Exploration Team.
Engaging in Conservation
Challenge: How do you effectively engage people in conservation?

Solution: To motivate people in conservation, you have to do more than just raise awareness and educate – you need to actively engage them. For the past several years the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has been doing just that; funding programs that have inspired people into conservation. Through interviews and a deep-dive review of NFWF’s Engaging People in Conservation program, we helped NFWF gain a deeper understanding of their impact and the most effective strategies they support that are leading to improved conservation outcomes. Our recommendations to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation are informing the development of their strategic plan. In collaboration with Dantzker Consulting.
Measuring
Impact
​​​
​Challenge: How do you measure impact in land use and development issues?

Solution: Measuring impact in land use and real estate development is challenging. Competing priorities, long build and development timeframes, and complexities within the community make it hard to define impact and identify metrics. Based on findings from research, interviews and surveys, Amplify developed a multi-phased evaluation framework for the Urban Land Institute’s Advisory Services Program (ASP) to help them measure the short- and long-term impact of their strategic services assisting communities and their leading institutions find solutions to their complex problems. Now armed with tools and over 100 metrics developed by Amplify, the Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Program has the opportunity to measure the impact they are making on cities and their residents.
Improving Process
Challenge: How do you identify process improvements and foster change?   

Solution: The Third National Climate Assessment Report summarizes the impact of climate change on the United States today and in the future. With over 300 contributing expert scientists guided by a 60-member advisory panel, this federally mandated quadrennial report is complex and multilayered. Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, we collected input from participants and panel members to identify improvements to create a more efficient and effective development process for future report generation. As manager of the National Climate Assessments, the North Carolina Institute for Climate Change adopted our recommendations. In partnership with Dantzker Consulting and New Knowledge.
     
Changing Policy
Challenge: How do you overcome resistance and build support for a policy change?

Solution: Smoking in multifamily housing increases illness, property maintenance costs and the risk of fires, yet public housing authorities (PHAs) needed more tailored encouragement to help them pass smoke-free policies. We worked hand-in-hand with small to large PHAs to document and share their success stories; provided trainings with real-world solutions led by PHA staff, public health, and legal experts; and developed an implementation manual that led many public housing authorities to voluntarily adopt smoke-free policies. As a result, HUD announced a rule that all public housing would be smoke-free and converted the manual into their guidance document. 
    
Strategic Review
Challenge: How do you evolve a program to make it a formidable change agent in the field over the next five years?     

Solution: Deciding what to emphasize or change in an organization demands serious self-scrutiny. It sometimes takes a third party’s fresh perspective to offer insights and point out strengths and areas of opportunity. Amplify assessed a legacy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and provided recommendations that can transform the program by building on its key differentiators. We interviewed several dozen people and developed a SWOT analysis with overarching themes. With findings from our research, we drafted a strategic plan with clear metrics that the program used as a guide in developing their campaign. The senior management team appreciated our consultative approach and embraced the clarity of our recommendations.
     
Changing Behavior
Challenge: How do you mobilize communities to rethink their approach to disease management?  

Solution: Asthma is an environmental justice and public health crisis. That’s why we worked closely with EPA on a national strategy to mobilize communities into action on a multi-pronged, systems approach to reducing asthma disparities. We engaged with leaders in schools, housing, hospitals, health clinics, and health insurance to share evidence-based practices; developed trainings, toolkits, social marketing campaigns and an interactive website to encourage behavior change and cross-sector coordination. Our efforts led EPA to become the go-to trusted source on this issue for national, state and local policymakers and advocates.

    
Sharing Knowledge
Challenge: How do you ensure access to cutting edge research and evidence-based solutions when a program sunsets? 
    
Solution: Asthma takes a big and disproportionate toll on low-income people of color, and for over 10 years Merck Childhood Asthma Network led the nation in funding research and resources for community-based asthma clinics. When the program sunsetted, we ensured continued access to resources, tools and research by forming strategic partnerships with national organizations, migrating content to an engaging  public  website and communicating the transition to community programs. Web analytics confirm the strategy and execution worked.
Evaluating Programs
Challenge: How do you drive collective impact among organizations working towards the same goal?
    
Solution:  We conducted an evaluation of the National Fish and Wildlife’s Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Program to determine the most effective way to share best management practices in improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. After interviewing over 20 grantees and watershed programs, we crunched data and synthesized our findings to develop recommendations and share our learnings with over 15 programs serving the nation’s largest estuary. In partnership with Dantzker Consulting.